North and South Korea to hold official talks

North and South Korea have agreed to hold working-level talks this weekend following months of soaring tensions.

The talks, to be held in the village of Panmunjom where the two sides concluded an armistice in 1953, would be the first such dialogue between the countries in more than two years.

The two Koreas agreed to send three delegates each to Panmunjom, a traditional point of contact on the border, for talks on Sunday aimed at paving the way for higher-level negotiations, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said.

Pyongyang conveyed its decision to South Korea through an International Red Cross 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 on 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 on Sunday in the Kaesong joint industrial zone.

South Korea’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 reopening of Kaesong, the resumption of tours to the North’s Mount Kumgang resort and renewed cross-border family reunions.

The Kaesong complex, established in 2004 as a symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, was the most high-profile casualty of the recent tensions.

Operations ground to a halt after North Korea pulled all its 53,000 workers out in early April. South Korea withdrew its managers and officials soon afterwards.

Nuclear programme

As the two Koreas 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 take place.

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.

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 Washington got involved.

Pyongyang has repeatedly insisted that its nuclear deterrent is not up for negotiation.

The last working-level talks between North and South Korea were held in February 2011, and there have been no inter-Korean talks at the ministerial level since 2007.

The North’s nuclear test in February resulted in tightened UN sanctions and triggered the cycle of escalating tensions that saw Pyongyang threaten pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the US and South Korea.

China, the North’s sole major ally and economic benefactor, has been under pressure from the US to restrain its neighbour, and both Washington and Beijing welcomed the tentative talks agreement.