Rare top level talks on Korean conflict
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TOP aides to the leaders of North Korea and South Korea negotiated into the evening yesterday after talking through the previous night to try to ease tensions involving an exchange of artillery fire that brought the peninsula to the brink of armed conflict.
The rare and unusually long meeting at the Panmunjom truce village inside the Demilitarized Zone began on Saturday evening, shortly after North Korea’s deadline for South Korea to halt anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts or face military action.
It broke up before dawn yesterday and restarted in the afternoon with the rivals on high military alert. North Korea had deployed twice the usual artillery strength at the border and had more than 50 submarines away from base, South Korea’s defence ministry said.
South Korea, also on high alert, said it had no plans to halt the propaganda broadcasts that triggered the latest standoff.
The envoys, shown on TV exchanging handshakes and tight smiles at the start of their meeting on Saturday, discussed ways to resolve tension and improve ties, South Korea’s presidential Blue House said in a brief statement early yesterday.
The talks took place in South Korea’s Peace House, just south of Panmunjom’s often-photographed sky-blue huts, and the same venue where lower-level talks between the bitter rivals took place in February 2014, without agreement.
The negotiating session that began on Saturday was interrupted with breaks for both sides to consult with their respective governments, and for snacks, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported.
Both countries have remained technically in a state of war since their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and inter-Korean relations have been in a deep freeze since the deadly 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship, for which Pyongyang denied responsibility.
The current tensions began early this month when two South Korean soldiers were wounded by landmines along the border. North Korea denies laying the mines. Days later, Seoul began its propaganda broadcasts in random three-hour bursts from 11 banks of loudspeakers, including news reports and K-pop music, resuming a tactic both sides halted in 2004.
The crisis escalated last Thursday when North Korea fired four shells over the border, according to South Korea, which responded with a barrage of 29 artillery rounds.
North Korea declared a “quasi-state of war” in front-line areas and set an ultimatum for South Korea to halt its broadcasts.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s national security adviser Kim Kwan-jin and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo met Hwang Pyong So, the top military aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and Kim Yang Gon, a veteran North Korean official in inter-Korean affairs, on Saturday, prompting hopes for a breakthrough.
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