South and North Korea agreed Friday to open high-level talks on Dec. 11 to seek ways to defuse tension and mend ties.
The two sides will hold a vice-minister level dialogue at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea, the Ministry of Unification said.
The agreement came in the wake of marathon-talks Thursday.
At the December talks, the two nations will discuss whether to slate the reunion of separated families on a regular basis and whether to resume the joint tour program on Mount Geumgang in North Korea.
But the significant deal of the Thursday talks remains elusive, according to Yonhap news agency, as the two sides failed to bring up any "big agreement" and showed differences in where to hold the December talks. South Korea hoped to hold the talks in either Seoul or Pyongyang as agreed in the Aug. 25 accord, but the North refused to do so.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, was quoted by Yonhap as saying "The choice of the venue indicates the North's intent not to hold government-level talks in Seoul and Pyongyang on a regular basis."
The result of Thursday's working-level meeting was to maintain the momentum in implementing the August deal in future bilateral talks. The August deal was reached by Kim Yang-gon, the North's top communist party official in charge of daily inter-Korean affairs, Hwang Pyong-so, the North's chief military official on political affairs, and their southern counterparts, including South Korean President Park Geun-hye's top security advisor Kim Kwan-jin and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo. The meeting had produced a set of landmark deals on ending a military crisis and paving the way for additional dialogues.
"There are big differences in issues that can be agreed upon at the minister-level and vice ministerial talks (between the two Koreas)," Cheong Seong-chang, senior fellow at the Sejong Institute, was quoted as saying. If the North has the "strong will" for improved ties with the South, the North's Kim Yang-gon should come to the bargaining table himself, Cheong stressed.
