Kim Dae-jung

SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- South Korean President Kim Dae-jung is urging the United States and other Western countries to end sanctions against North Korea -- a dramatic shift in policy aimed at easing relations on the troubled Korean Peninsula, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Kim made his comments in an hourlong interview Monday with the Times ahead of next week's state visit to Washington.

The South Korean leader told the paper that Western nations should show greater flexibility in dealing with Communist North in an effort to ease half a century of enmities on the Korean Peninsula.

"It would be desirable for the United States to ease its economic sanctions on North Korea," Kim was quoted as saying. "I think this would be more effective in efforts to get North Korea to open up and liberalize."

He told the Times that during next week's state visit, which will include an address to a joint session of Congress, he will urge the United States to lift its economic sanctions against Pyongyang without setting conditions. Moreover, he said the lifting of sanctions should be done as a broad transformation of Western policy toward North Korea.

"I would like to see improvement in relations between Japan and North Korea and in fact between the rest of the Western world and North Korea," Kim told the paper. "I believe these improved relations will lead to changes in North Korea and to North Korea opening up."

Emphasizing that he has no illusions about the North and its political ambitions, Kim, however, believes that this is a good opportunity to ease the state of tension between the two countries.

North Korea is the world's last Stalinist state and virtually closed off to the rest of the world. Under the Trading With the Enemy Act, U.S. companies are basically banned from doing any business in or with North Korea.

Kim is to arrive Saturday in Washington for a nine-day visit that will cover a broad range of economic, cultural and political issues.