On Friday, Seoul’s Unification Ministry announced that North Korea had accepted the South’s invitation to hold a working-level meeting in the truce village of Panmunjom, in the Demilitarized Zone.
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The South’s chief negotiator, Kim Ki-Woong, told reporters before the meeting: “We are resolved to maintaining the momentum for dialogue that was started by the August agreement”.
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 treaty, which replaces a previous accord reached in 1972, opens the possibility of South Korea gaining the ability to enrich uranium to produce non-weapons-grade nuclear fuel depending on future negotiations with the United States.
Seoul is expected to push for an expansion of reunions of families separated by the Korean War six decades ago.
“The overall atmosphere for a successful conclusion of these talks is really not that favourable”, said Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst with the Sejong Institute think tank in Seoul.
South Korea has been seeking the ability to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel, which it says will help reduce import costs and support its reactor exports.
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Pyongyang’s state-controlled newspaper Rodong Sinmun stated in an editorial issued Wednesday that the United States would be engaging in a “serious provocation” if it were to re-designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terror, Yonhap reported. “Citizens, activists, and North Korean defectors will come out and show their concern and support for the refugees, and urge the Chinese government to not repatriate them but allow them to go to South Korea”. The talks, scheduled for Thursday, are supposed to prepare the way for high-level discussions between the two Koreas, to be held in either Pyongyang or Seoul.
