Trucks carrying flour pass the Civilian Control Line (CCL) in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday. A total of 400 tons of flour were shipped as the first civilian flood aid from South Korea. Gaeseong was its final destination, where it will feed 30,000 people for one month. / Korea Times photo by Kim Ju-sung

By Jung Sung-ki

North Korea has proposed holding colonel-level military talks with the South next week, the Ministry of National Defense said Thursday.

The proposal comes on the heels of Seoul announcing it will send 5,000 tons of rice and other aid to the flood-stricken North in a sign of easing tensions that had risen following the sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

Representatives of the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) Military Armistice Commission and the North Korean People’s Army Panmunjeom Mission held a working-level meeting earlier in the day at the truce village. Both sides discussed ways of easing tension on the peninsula, according to UNC officials.

North Korea made the proposal for the working-level military meeting via a faxed message using a military hotline over the tense West Sea border, a ministry spokesman said.

In the message, the North demanded that the two sides discuss the issue of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto inter-Korean sea border in the West Sea, and anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets being flown by South Korean activities into the North, according to the spokesman.

Pyongyang is also expected to take issue with Seoul’s naval exercises in the West Sea, he said.

The North suggested that the meeting be held Sept. 24 at the southern side of Panmunjeom, he added.

“We’re reviewing the seriousness of the North’s proposal carefully since the regime has not apologized for the sinking of the frigate Cheonan,” he said.

A Seoul-led multinational team of investigators determined in May that the ship was sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine. Earlier this week, the team released a final report pointing to the North’s involvement in the incident that killed 46 sailors.

North Korea has denied it had anything to do with sinking and instead blamed South Korea for “fabricating” the results of the investigation.

The NLL, unilaterally drawn by the UNC at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, was the scene of deadly naval clashes between the two Koreas in 1999, 2002 and last November. It is also the area where the Cheonan, a 1,200-ton South Korean frigate, sank from what a multinational group of investigators concluded was a torpedo attack.

Pyongyang insists that the NLL be redrawn further south.

The North has frequently protested leaflets sent by civic groups, including those led by North Korean defectors and families of those abducted by Pyongyang, flown across the border tied to balloons.