North Korea accepts talks offer from South

International Desk: North Korea has accepted South Korea's proposal for official talks, in what will be the first high-level contact to take place between the two countries in more than two years.

South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Baik Tae-hyun told reporters Friday North Korea informed its southern neighbor by fax at 10:16 a.m. local time (8:16 p.m Thursday ET) that they have accepted the South's offer to initiate talks.

The person-to-person talks will be held January 9th -- one day after North Korean leader Jim Jong Un's birthday -- at the Peace House, located on the South Korean side of the so-called truce village of Panmunjom, located in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two nations, Baik said.


The spokesman said the two sides agreed to work on the details of the talks "through the exchange of documents," and added the agenda items of the talks will be "issues related to improving inter-Korean relationships including the Pyeongchang (Winter) Olympic Games."

The faxed message accepting the long-standing offer of talks was from Ri Son Kwon, chairman of the North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland. It was addressed to his de facto counterpart, South Korea's Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, Baik added.

The last high level inter-Korea talks were a deputy ministerial meeting between South and North Korea that took place in December 2015, at the jointly-run Kaesong industrial zone in North Korea.

The industrial park, which opened in 2004 in a rare show of cooperation between the two Koreas, was shuttered in 2016 in response to Pyongyang's ramping-up of missile and nuclear testing.

Source: Agencies



risingbd/Jan 5, 2018/Mukul