South and North Korea Agree to Resume High-Level Talks

Saturday, October 4, 2014

3:57 AM

By Unknown

In: 2014, News, Top story, Update

South and North Korea Agree to Resume High-Level Talks - New York Times

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Asia Pacific |South and North Korea Agree to Resume High-Level Talks

http://nyti.ms/1EcsTNm

SEOUL, South Korea â€” South and North Korea agreed on Saturday to resume high-level talks this year, raising hopes for a thaw in the long-tense relations on the divided peninsula.

A statement from South Korea announcing the agreement did not specify what would be discussed. But South Korea had proposed in August that officials on the vice ministerial level meet to discuss a new round of reunions of family members separated by the Korean War six decades ago, a program that has proceeded in fits and starts for years as inter-Korean relations have fluctuated.

The North had rejected the August overture, insisting that Seoul first stop activists in the South from sending balloons into North Korea bearing antigovernment propaganda.

But a breakthrough appeared to come Saturday, when top South Korean policy makers met with a North Korean delegation visiting the city of Incheon to attend the closing ceremony of the Asian Games, a surprise visit that South Korea announced just an hour before the officialsâ€™ arrival. The delegation included three of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-unâ€™s most trusted aides.

During the meeting Saturday, the two sides agreed to resume formal dialogue between late October and early November, the Southâ€™s Ministry of National Unification said in a statement. â€œWhile calling the upcoming talks a second round of dialogue, the North explained that it intended to hold more rounds of South-North talks in the future,â€ the statement said.

The mention of a â€œsecond roundâ€ appeared to refer to the last time officials met to discuss the family reunions, in February. Soon after that meeting, hundreds of aging Koreans from both sides of the border were allowed to hold emotional family reunions at a North Korean resort. No further reunions have been held since then.

The Koreas have technically been at war since the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with a truce rather than a peace treaty, and their relationship has been particularly sour during the last few years. But signs of a possible thaw have emerged in recent months.