North and South Korea have held their highest-level military talks for seven years in an attempt to lower tensions following an exchange of cross-border gunfire.
Generals from both sides met on Wednesday at Panmunjom, the “truce village” that straddles the heavily fortified border dividing the peninsula since the end of the 1950-1953 Korean war.
Senior military officials reportedly discussed the exchange of fire across land and sea borders after activists in the South let off balloons carrying messages criticising North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
Kim reappeared earlier this week after more than 40 days out of the public eye. State media coverage of his recent, but undated, visit to a residential area and energy research complex in the capital Pyongyang were designed to put an end to rumours of political instability inside the regime. It appears that Kim, 31, who was pictured using a walking stick, had been recuperating following treatment on an unspecified leg condition or injury.
Pyongyang takes exception to the longstanding practice of floating balloons across the demilitarised zone to deliver anti-regime propaganda to North Korean soldiers and civilians. It had warned that high-level political talks scheduled for next month could be cancelled if Seoul allowed activists to continue their balloon campaign.
While South Korea has urged campaigners not to inflame tensions, it said it had no legal means of preventing them from letting off propaganda balloons.
North Korean soldiers opened fire on the balloons after they were released last Friday, with some of the bullets landing on the southern side of the border. South Korean troops responded with gunfire, but there were no casualties and the exchange did not escalate.
There had been a similar exchange earlier in the week after a North Korean patrol boat crossed the countries’ disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea.
South Korea’s defence and unification ministries declined to confirm the Panmunjom meeting had taken place. Yonhap news agency cited a parliamentary source as saying that “general-level military talks” had begun at 10am local time.
The talks, while reportedly confined to the recent shooting incidents, raised hopes of a thaw in inter-Korean ties as the neighbours prepare to meet to discuss possible reunions among families divided by the civil war and sanctions Seoul imposed after North Korea attacked one of its frontline islands in November 2010.
The agreement to hold those talks came after three high-ranking North Korean officials, including Hwang Pyong-so, who is believed to be Kim’s second-in-command, made a surprise visit to Seoul after attending the closing ceremony of the Asian Games in nearby Incheon this month.
North and South Korea last held working-level military talks in February 2011 but have not held general-level talks, in which each country is represented by two-star generals, since December 2007, Yonhap said.
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/15/north-south-korea-military-talks