Top aides to the leaders of North and South Korea held talks at the Panmunjom truce village straddling their border late yesterday, raising hopes for an end to a standoff that put the rivals on the brink of armed conflict.
The meeting at the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) village, known for its sky-blue huts and grim-faced soldiers, began soon after the deadline for North Korea’s previously set ultimatum demanding that the South halt its loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border or face military action.
That deadline passed without any reported incidents. The negotiations continued after roughly three hours, according to the South’s Unification Ministry.
An exchange of artillery fire on Thursday prompted calls for calm from the United Nations, the United States and the North’s lone major ally, China.
South Korea’s military remained on high alert despite the announced talks, a defence official said.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s national security adviser and her unification minister met with Hwang Pyong So, the top military aide to the North’s leader Kim Jong Un, and Kim Yang Gon, a veteran official in inter-Korean affairs.
“The South and the North agreed to hold contact related to the ongoing situation in South-North relations,” Kim Kyou-hyun, the presidential Blue House’s deputy national security adviser, said earlier in a televised briefing.
Pyongyang made an initial proposal on Friday for a meeting, and Seoul made a revised proposal yesterday seeking Hwang’s attendance, Kim said.
The North’s KCNA news agency also announced the meeting, referring to the South as the Republic of Korea, a rare formal recognition of its rival state, in sharp contrast to the bellicose rhetoric in recent days.
North Korea, technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, declared a “quasi-state of war” in front-line areas and on Thursday set the deadline for Seoul to halt its broadcasts.
South Korea began blasting anti-North propaganda, news reports and even entertainment over the DMZ on August 10, days after landmine explosions in the DMZ wounded two South Korean soldiers. Pyongyang denies it planted the mines.
Seoul said it would continue the broadcasts unless the North accepted responsibility for the blasts.
“The situation on the Korean peninsula is now inching close to the brink of a war due to the reckless provocations made by the south Korean military war hawks,” the North’s KCNA news agency said earlier.
North and South Korea have often exchanged threats over the years, and dozens of soldiers have been killed in clashes, yet the two sides have always pulled back from a return to all-out war.
