North and South Korea high-level meeting

The first high-level talks in nearly a year between South Korea and North Korea were adjourned after stretching into the early hours of Sunday, as the rivals looked to defuse mounting tensions that have pushed them to the brink of a possible military confrontation.

The delegates agreed to resume the meeting at 3 pm Sunday South Korean time, said Seoul’s presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook. Min did not disclose any other details about the talks, which adjourned at 4.15 am Sunday.

Marathon talks are not unusual for the Koreans, who have had long negotiating sessions in recent years over much less momentous issues.

The closed-door meeting in the border village of Panmunjom, where the armistice ending fighting in the Korean War was agreed to in 1953, began at 6.30 pm Saturday, shortly after a deadline set by North Korea for the South to dismantle loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda at their border. North Korea had declared that its front-line troops were in full war readiness and prepared to go to battle if Seoul did not back down.

A series of incidents raised fears that the conflict could spiral out of control, starting with a land mine attack, allegedly by the North, that maimed two South Korean soldiers and the South’s resumption of anti-Pyongyang propaganda broadcasts. On Thursday, South Korea’s military fired dozens of artillery rounds across the border in response to what Seoul said were North Korean artillery strikes meant to back up a threat to attack the loudspeakers.

The North denies it was behind the land mine attack and the shelling. An official from South Korea’s Defense Ministry, who didn’t want to be named because of office rules, said that the South continued with the anti-Pyongyang broadcasts after the start of the meeting and planned to make a decision on whether to halt them depending on the result of the talks. While the meeting offered a way for the rivals to avoid an immediate collision, analysts in Seoul wondered whether the countries were standing too far apart to expect a quick agreement.

South Korea probably couldn’t afford to walk away with a weak agreement after it had openly vowed to stem a “vicious cycle” of North Korean provocations amid public anger over the alleged land mine attack, said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University. It was highly unlikely that the North would accept the South’s expected demand for Pyongyang to take responsibility for the land mine explosions and apologize, he added.
However, Koh said the meeting might open the door to more talks between the rivals to discuss a variety of issues.

At the meeting, South Korea’s presidential national security director, Kim Kwan-jin, and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo sat down with Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People’s Army, and Kim Yang Gon, a senior North Korean official responsible for South Korean affairs. Hwang is considered by outside analysts to be North Korea’s second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un.