This paper provides a historical analysis of North Korea’s two diplomatic initiatives in 1980 which were aimed at fostering favorable conditions for Korean unification: a call for inter-Korean Prime Ministerial Talks and a meeting between the US Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz and Kim Il Sung. Based on primary sources from archives in the ROK and the US, I argue that Pyongyang’s conciliatory gesture towards Seoul in 1980 was mostly opportunistic in nature and was mainly prompted by political instability in the South. I also suggest that the DPRK leadership misread the intention of Solarz and became overly optimistic about the prospects of a breakthrough in DPRK-US relations; while Solarz visited Pyongyang on a personal capacity as a fact-finding mission, the North Korean leadership expected that Solarz could influence the US government to advance its relations with the DPRK, which was not what Solarz intendedto achieve.