Building trust has been a key feature of the South’s Park Geun-hye administration, which was reportedly hoping to arrange regular family reunions for relatives separated by the closely-guarded border.
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Also, it is unlikely that the two Koreas will be touching on more sensitive issues of concern like North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions and its human rights situation, or the sanctions imposed on North Korea by the South in 2010 when South Korea blamed a North Korean torpedo for sinking of a warship that killed 46 South Koreans. “I hope various pending issues will be solved one by one”, South Korea’s chief delegate Hwang Boo-Gi told his North Korean counterpart Jon Jong-Su as they shook hands.
The vice minister-level dialogue, held in the Kaesong joint industrial zone on the North Korean side of the border, was the fruit of crisis talks in August to ease sky-high military tensions on the divided peninsula. The lack of emphasis suggests the message was most likely intended rhetorically for a domestic audience.
And that is why experts do not expect a breakthrough at the meeting in Kaesong although they see the talks as meaningful because the two sides are implementing what was agreed between the two Koreas in August.
South Korean officials want to see more reunions in the border town of Panmunjom, which have brought together ageing family members who have been separated since the Korean War ended in 1953.
SEOUL, South Korea-North and South Korea sat down to rare, high-level talks Friday, with each side looking to squeeze concessions from the other on stalled cross-border programmes in which both their leaders have a political stake. It was the first such reunion in over a year. “We do not believe that North Korea, which has not succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear bombs, has the technology to produce an H-bomb”.
The North was expected to seek the resumption of cross-border tours from the South to its Mount Kumgang resort, a once-lucrative source of cash for the impoverished state that was suspended in 2008.
Pyongyang has repeatedly pressed Seoul to reopen the tour program in an apparent move to earn hard currency.
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The talks came a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said the country had developed a hydrogen bomb – a claim treated with scepticism by United States and South Korean intelligence officials. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war. The two Koreas went on to threaten an all-out war and exchanged brief fire.
