Seoul: South and North Korea are Thursday to hold their first military talks for two years in an attempt to ease tensions heightened by a naval disaster near their disputed sea border.
Three officers from each side will meet at the border truce village of Panmunjom at 10:00 am (0100 GMT) after the North accepted the South’s revised date for the meeting.
The North had proposed holding the military talks on September 24 to discuss the Yellow Sea border and anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets floated across the border by activists.
The South suggested Thursday and said the agenda should include the North’s alleged responsibility for the deadly sinking of one of Seoul’s warships.
“At talks tomorrow, we will focus on the warship sinking and tensions along the sea border, while demanding North Korea stop slandering our side,” a defence ministry spokesman in Seoul told AFP Wednesday.
Relations have been frosty since a conservative government took office in Seoul in February 2008 and conditioned major assistance on progress in the North’s nuclear disarmament.
Ties worsened dramatically after the South accused the North of torpedoing the corvette in March with the loss of 46 lives.
The North denied involvement and threatened retaliation for a series of naval exercises staged south of the border as a show of strength.
A joint US-South Korean anti-submarine drill is under way this week.
But the North has this month made apparently conciliatory gestures as it prepares for an eventual power transfer from its leader Kim Jong-Il to his youngest son Jong-Un.
The son was this week appointed a four-star general and given two powerful posts in the ruling party.
“In order to stabilise the succession plan, the North must ease economic difficulties and for this purpose improving ties with the outside world is essential,” Koh Yu-Hwan, of Seoul’s Dongguk University, told AFP.
The North this month returned a detained South Korean fishing boat and seven crew, accepted flood aid from its neighbour and proposed a resumption of reunions for separated families.
The South accuses the North of exploiting the humanitarian reunions programme to try to force a resumption of commercial cross-border tours to a jointly run resort at Mount Kumgang.
The two sides are set to meet Friday to try to narrow differences on that issue.
The Yellow Sea border is the major flashpoint between the two sides and was the scene of bloody naval clashes in 1999, 2002 and last November. It was drawn unilaterally by UN forces at the end of the 1950-53 war but the North insists it should run further to the south.
The South says the line has been in place for more than half a century. It also says it has no legal power to stop activists launching balloons across the border, carrying tens of thousands of leaflets.
The South says part of a North Korean torpedo which was dredged from the seabed proves its neighbour’s involvement in the warship sinking.
It has rejected the North’s consistent demand to send a team to inspect the evidence and the scene of the tragedy.
