North and South Korean officials sat down Thursday for rare talks aimed at paving the way for a sustainable high-level dialogue that has constantly eluded the two rivals.
North and South Korean officials sat down Thursday for rare talks aimed at paving the way for a sustainable high-level dialogue that has constantly eluded the two rivals.
The meeting at the border truce village of Panmunjom began shortly before 1:00pm (0400 GMT) and marked the first inter-governmental interaction since August when the two sides met to defuse a crisis that had pushed them to the brink of an armed conflict.
That meeting ended with a joint agreement that included a commitment to resume high-level talks, although no precise timeline was given.
A similar effort back in June 2013 saw both sides agree to hold what would have been the first high-level dialogue for six years - only for Pyongyang to cancel a day before the scheduled meeting.
Thursday's talks in Panmunjom will try to avoid a repetition of that failure by thrashing out an agenda.
"We will do our best," said Kim Ki-Woong, the head of the South Korean Unification Ministry's special office for inter-Korean dialogue.
"We are resolved to maintaining the momentum for dialogue that was started by the August agreement," Kim said before leaving Seoul for Panmunjom at the head of the three-member delegation.
Likely topics for the eventual agenda include South Korea's desire for regular reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War that cemented the division of the Korean peninsula.
North Korea, meanwhile, will want to discuss the resumption of South Korean tour groups to its scenic Mount Kumgang resort.
North Korea is already under a raft of UN sanctions imposed after its three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye recently reiterated her willingness to hold face-to-face talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un -- but only if Pyongyang showed some commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
The two Koreas have held two summits in the past, one in 2000 and the second in 2007.
