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As far as I know, Kim Il Sung was absolutely willing to negotiate as early as 1951 because it was clear that his original war goals were out of reach. Continuing the war was not only pointless but also rather detrimental for North Korea. It was Stalin who insisted on continuing the war and supplying the Chinese to do so with Mao's acceptance because both of them decided to make the return of POWs a central issue in order to block any agreement (because there was no way the enemy was going to forcibly repatriate all North Korean and Chinese POWs) and thus prolong the war as long as possible as they apparently thought this'd harm American interests or something (or a case of commie 4D chess, maybe). It's no surprise that a ceasefire was only reached after Stalin's death. In fact, it's reasonable to assume that Kim was willing to negotiate a truce as soon as the winter of 1950 had MacArthur not insisted on continuing the UN offensive beyond all of its original aims.
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