North and South Korea sat down to rare, high-level talks on Friday, aimed at building on an August agreement to ease cross-border tensions after a flare-up brought them to the brink of an armed conflict.
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The vice-ministerial talks, which began at 10:40 a.m. Friday at the Kaesong joint industrial complex, were still ongoing as of press time.
It escalated to threats of war and a brief exchange of fire across the border.
The sides did not arrange a specific agenda for the latest negotiations, but Seoul was set on inducing Pyongyang’s promise to hold regular reunions of the families displaced by the 1950-53 Korean War and drawing what it describes as a “fundamental solution” to tackle the issue.
“Last year Kim Jong Un ordered the improvement in the quality of cultural life in North Korea by modernizing it and allowing a generous spectrum as well”, said Lee. This possibly ruled out discussions on more important issues. “Whether North Korea can make nuclear weapons using tritium is unknown although we believe that it remains a technical problem North Korea still needs to solve”.
The talks were agreed to in August as part of a deal that ended a standoff over a landmine incident that wounded two South Korean soldiers near the border.
However, Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said the US and South Korea had both indicated there is no evidence for the claim.
“We don’t have any information that North Korea has developed an H-bomb”, a South Korean intelligence officer said.
Officials around the world are dismissing the idea that North Korea has a hydrogen bomb.
Hyon heads the Moranbong Band, hand-picked by North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un, who sent the band to Beijing on Thursday for a six-day “friendship” tour, in an apparent move that indicates that once-strained ties between the allies are warming.
North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un boldly claimed Thursday that his country had developed a hydrogen bomb, a ferocious weapon that would mark a major advancement in North Korea’s nuclear weapons development.
A U.S. National Security Council spokesman responded that the United States did not think the North Koreans had such a capability.
“The U.N. Security Council should put Pyongyang on notice that those implicated in crimes against humanity may soon have to face justice”.
Experts saw the visit to China as signaling the beginning of a rapid improvement in the relations between the two countries, even potentially foreshadowing Kim Jong Un’s visit to China in upcoming year.
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The Security Council is due to vote on the resolution next week.
