Kim Ki-woong, head of the Unification Ministry’s special office for inter-Korean talks, led Seoul’s delegation while the North’s was led by Hwang Chol, a senior official on the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.
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He cited Pyongyang?s irritation with recent South Korean military exercises and Seoul’s participation in global moves to censure the North for human rights violations.
Working-level officials of the two Koreas met at the truce village of Panmunjeom and reached the agreement around midnight Thursday after eleven hours of negotiations.
Held in the border village of Panmunjom, about 34 miles north of Seoul, the meeting saw the two sides ironing out a framework to resume high-level talks, although they did not arrive at a precise timeline.
While the talks about talks are a modest step forward and could yet fail to produce a deal, they represent a continued focus on diplomacy following a spike in military tension in the summer.
The upcoming talks are expected to help bring rapprochement to the Seoul-Pyongyang relations if the two sides can yield tangible results, analysts said.
Jeong said Seoul had pushed for the Kaesong meeting to prioritise the issue of regular reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, which cemented the division of the Korean peninsula.
The tour has been put on hold since 2008, following the death of a South Korean female tourist by a North Korean solider at the scenic resort. Some 66,000 South Koreans are estimated to have family members living across the border.
A less likely trend is the Kim Jong-un look which is about to sweep North Korea – well among those that want to avoid his wrath.
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South Korean President Park Geun-Hye recently reiterated her willingness to hold face-to-face talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un – but only if Pyongyang showed some commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons programme. North Korean officials are pressing for the resumption of a long-suspended inter-Korean tourism programme, a symbol of unity that would also be an important source of foreign currency for sanctions-bound Pyongyang.
