Nearly a year after North Korea cut its communication lines with South Korea, officials in Seoul vowed to reestablish them as well as set up a new, embassy-like mission between the two countries.

On Wednesday, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification released this year’s plan to engage with North Korea and end the two countries’ current diplomatic dry spell. 

“We will push forward, step by step, for establishing an organization for communication … with the ultimate goal of establishing Seoul-Pyongyang missions,” the ministry said in a document submitted to the National Assembly on April 28.

The ministry also said it will try to jointly host an Olympics with North Korea in 2032 and that it will push forward with its plan to ratify the three-year-old Panmunjom Declaration at the National Assembly. The declaration promised to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and was signed by both South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a face-to-face meeting on April 27, 2018.

“We will find spaces where [the two Koreas] can immediately cooperate once the relationships improve,” the ministry stated, adding that COVID-19 and sanctions against North Korea limited progress in inter-Korean projects last year. “We will push forward with ‘individual tourism’ and barter trade projects with North Korea, depending on the COVID-19 situation.”

The Ministry of Unification said it hopes to someday reopen tourism to the border regions of Kaesong and Mount Kumgang and eventually expand trips out to the North Korean capital city of Pyongyang. In terms of trade, the ministry specified that it will look at “liquor, water, processed food” and other items not subject to economic sanctions against North Korea.

Edited by Kelly Kasulis