Sunday Times 2
North and South Korea to hold first official talks in two years
View(s):SEOUL, June 8 (AFP) -South Korea today said the North had agreed to hold working-level talks in the border truce village of Panmunjom this weekend following months of soaring tensions — the first such dialogue in more than two years. The two Koreas agreed to send three delegates each to Panmunjom, a traditional point of contact on their border, for talks on Sunday aimed at paving the way for higher-level negotiations, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said.
Pyongyang conveyed its decision to the South through a hotline between the two sides that was reopened on Friday, the ministry said. The hotline was severed in March as military tensions soared on the divided peninsula. The two nations unexpectedly reached a snap agreement Thursday on opening a dialogue, with South Korea responding to a North initiative by offering a ministerial-level meeting in Seoul on June 12.
A spokesman for Pyongyang’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea then suggested initial lower-level talks Sunday in the Kaesong joint industrial zone.
The South’s Unification Ministry — using the newly reopened hotline — agreed but said Panmunjom would be a more appropriate venue.
The proposed agenda for the North-South talks involves the re-opening of Kaesong, the resumption of tours to the North’s Mount Kumgang resort and renewed cross-border family reunions.
As the two Koreas gingerly explored ways to resume dialogue, both sides stopped short of saying whether the thorniest issue — the North’s nuclear programme — would be on the ministerial talks’ agenda. But the South is widely expected to touch on the issue when the ministerial talks occur.
A South Korean soldier patrols at the crossing to the Kaesong industrial complex on the border (Reuters)
The North’s decision to hold talks in Panmunjom came just after a US-China summit began in California, at which the North’s nuclear programme will be high on the agenda. Analysts said North Korea’s surprise shift signalled a desire to initiate a wider dialogue in the future involving the United States.
“The North wants to create an atmosphere conducive to resuming dialogue with the United States” Professor Yoo Ho-Yeol of Korea University told AFP.
Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies said the North was seeking to prevent the United States, China and South Korea from agreeing to put concerted pressure on Pyongyang through ongoing and planned summits.
President Park Geun-Hye plans to visit Beijing for a summit late this month. But US State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki made it clear that North Korea would have to show some commitment towards abandoning its nuclear weapons programme before the US got involved.
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