The working-level talks is held to prepare and lay the groundwork for high-level talks including the agenda, venue, schedule and rank of the participants.
Advertisement
The North Korean delegation will be led by Hwang Chol, a senior official at the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the North Korean body that handles inter-Korean affairs.
The latest ministerial-level talks between the two Koreas were held in Pyongyang from February 27 to March 2 in 2007 and in Seoul from May 29 to June 1 in the same year. Analysts say Washington’s concerns on allowing reprocessing stem less from a distrust of Seoul’s ultimate intentions than from the impact it might have on negotiations with other countries. The rare meeting is the first intergovernmental interaction since August when the two sides met to defuse a crisis that had pushed them to the brink of an armed conflict. The Koreas had had bumpy ties since the Korean War, which divided the peninsula and left millions of people displaced and many families permanently separated.
North Korea also said Seoul’s opposition to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program was “anti-North Korea” while the South engages in everyday exercises with “foreign forces” on an invasion of the North.
Each side then fired artillery across the border and South Korea turned on loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda messages into North Korea.
According to Seoul’s Unification Ministry, there are now 172 “non-protected” North Korean defectors, and unlike peers, are ineligible for benefits such as resettlement money, housing subsidies and vocational training. Both countries signed a joint agreement agreeing on details such as who would represent their respective governments and the issues that would be on the agenda.
The population of North Korean defectors in South Korea continues to grow, but an increasing number of new arrivals are falling through the cracks and are ineligible for the benefits that come with resettlement.
Tension between the two sides ramped up in August when a border blast injured two South Korean soldiers.
Advertisement
This report was produced in collaboration with the VOA Korean service.
