AP, SEOUL, South Korea: Military officers from North and South Korea sat down for talks inside the heavily guarded Demilitarized Zone on Tuesday in the rivals' first official dialogue since the North's deadly artillery barrage of a South Korean island in November.
Tensions on the divided Korean peninsula rose sharply after the artillery bombardment killed four people on South Korea's front-line Yeonpyeong Island. That attack came eight months after the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack. Pyongyang has steadfastly denied its involvement in the sinking, which killed 46 sailors.
Colonel-level officers of the two Koreas met Tuesday at the border village of Panmunjom to set a date and work out other details for higher-level defense talks aimed at discussing the two attacks last year, according to South Korea's Defense Ministry.
"It's not that cold today and I think today's talks will go well," Col. Moon Sang-kyun, the chief South Korean delegate, said during a meeting with Unification Ministry officials in Seoul, ahead of his departure to the border.
It's not clear whether the one-day preliminary meeting will finalize all the details for defense talks that are expected to involve the countries' defense chiefs or general-grade officers. If they were to take place, they would be the first such high-level defense talks between the two Koreas in more than three years.
Tuesday's talks were arranged amid North Korea's recent push for dialogue after weeks of threatening war. South Korean officials have said the North must use the talks as a chance to take responsibility for the two attacks and change its pattern of raising tensions through provocation, and then seeking negotiations to win badly needed aid.
"The fact the two Koreas are meeting in the aftermath of continued military tensions means that hostility on the Korean peninsula could be reduced," said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University.
Pyongyang has expressed its desire to return to stalled six-nation talks on ending its nuclear weapons program in return for economic aid and other incentives. But South Korea and the U.S. have responded that the North must first exhibit sincerity toward its nuclear disarmament before the talks can resume.
The North's nuclear capability took renewed urgency in November when the country showed a visiting American scientist a uranium enrichment facility that could give it a second way to make atomic bombs. South Korea says the North's uranium enrichment program is a violation of a past six-nation deal and U.N. resolutions.
A U.N. Security Council committee on international sanctions on North Korea is expected to report to the council about the North's nuclear activities later this month. "We are paying attention to how the uranium enrichment program will be handled" during that meeting, South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Kim Young-sun told reporters Monday.
The two Koreas technically remain in a state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Panmunjom — the venue for Tuesday's talks — is a cluster of blue huts inside the heavily guarded 154-mile (248-kilometer) -long Demilitarized Zone, which is jointly administered by the American-led U.N. forces and North Korea.
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