Echoing Ronald Reagan's 1987 call on the Soviet Union to tear down the Berlin Wall, US President George W. Bush urged North Korea today to open its border to South Korea.
"That road has the potential to bring the peoples on both sides of this divided land together. And for the good of all the Korean people, the North should finish it," Mr Bush said at the last South Korean train station before the North-South frontier.
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, appearing with Mr Bush at Dorasan railway station, called on North Korea to return to talks with Seoul it broke off last year.
"I earnestly hope that the North Korean authorities will soon respond to our sincere proposal for the dialogue," Mr Kim said.
Mr Bush alarmed many South Koreans with his speech branding North Korea, Iran and Iraq an axis of evil. But he stood by his tough rhetoric in public comments today. He told his audience at Dorasan station that he sympathised with the plight of Koreans cut off from loved ones for 50 years and with the suffering of people in North Korea from food shortages and a wrecked economy.
"Korean children should never starve while a massive army is fed," Mr Bush said.
"We must not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons," Mr Bush said.
Earlier, he told a news conference: "I will not change my opinion on Kim Jong-il until he frees his people and accepts genuine proposals from countries such as South Korea to dialogue."
The South Korean president, pointing to a railroad severed since the Korean war half a century ago, said: "We are witnessing the last remnant of the Cold War."