By Jung Sung-ki
South and North Korea will hold their first military talks in nearly two years Thursday, the Ministry of National Defense said.
The colonel-level meeting comes as tension remains high on the Korean Peninsula following the sinking of one of South Korea’s warships in March and the de facto father-to-son power transfer in North Korea Tuesday.
In a message sent to the South earlier in the day, North Korea accepted Seoul’s proposal to hold the meeting Thursday at the truce village of Panmunjeom near the Demilitarized Zone, a ministry official said.
North Korea had proposed holding the talks on Sept. 15, but the South asked for readjusting the time schedule.
The South Korean delegation led by Col. Moon Sang-kyun at the ministry’s North Korea bureau will raise the issues of North Korea’s attack on the Cheonan ship, the North’s repeated slandering of the Lee Myung-bak government, and reducing tension near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), the de facto sea border with the North.
North Korean delegates, headed by Col. Ri Seon-kwon, are expected to raise the issues of measures to prevent conflicts near the NLL and South Korean activists’ sending of anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, the official said.
Inter-Korean relations plunged to their lowest point in years after a Seoul-led multinational team of investigators determined that the Cheonan was sunk by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine. Forty-six sailors were killed in the incident. The North has denied the charge.
But in recent weeks, North Korea has made some peace overtures toward Seoul, freeing a seized South Korean fishing boat and offering to hold reunions of families separated across the border since the 1950-53 Korean War.