Rare Korean talks off to good start
North Korea to send team to Winter Games, South to consider lifting some sanctions temporarily
SEOUL: North Korea said during rare talks with the South yesterday it would send a delegation to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea next month and Seoul said it was prepared to lift some sanctions temporarily so the visit could take place.
At the first formal talks with South Korea in more than two years, North Korean officials said their delegation to the Games would consist of athletes, highranking officials and a cheering squad.
North Korea said that they are determined to make today’s talks fruitful, and make it a groundbreaking opportunity.
South Korea has unilaterally banned several North Korean officials from entry in response to Pyongyang’s ramped-up missile and nuclear tests, held despite international pressure.
However, some South Korean officials have said they see the Olympics as a possible opportunity for easing tension.
Foreign ministry spokesman Roh Kyu-deok said Seoul would consider whether it needed to take ‘prior steps’, together with the UN Security Council and other relevant countries, to help the North Koreans visit for the Olympics.
At Tuesday’s talks, the first since December 2015, Seoul proposed inter-Korean military discussions to reduce tension on the peninsula and a reunion of family members in time for February’s Lunar New Year holiday, South Korea’s vice unification minister Chun Haesung said.
The North has finished technical work to restore a military hotline with South Korea, he added, with normal communications set to resume on Wednesday. But Chun did not immediately say what information would be transferred along the hotline.
The North severed communications in February 2016, following the South’s decision to shut down a jointly run industrial park in the North.
South Korea also proposed that athletes from both sides march together at the Games’ opening ceremony and other joint activities during the Winter Olympics, Chun told reporters outside the talks.
Athletes from the two Koreas have paraded together at the opening and closing ceremonies of major international games before, although this has not been seen since the 2007 Asian Winter Games in China, after relations chilled under nearly a decade of conservative rule in the South.
It would also be the first time since 2005 that the North will send its female cheerleaders, dubbed the ‘cheering squad of beauty’ by the South Korean media.
The meetings continued on Tuesday afternoon after the two sides broke up for separate lunches. Officials began speaking at 10am (0100 GMT) in the three-storey Peace House just across the demilitarised zone on the South Korean side of Panmunjom truce village.
“North Korea said that they are determined to make today’s talks fruitful, and make it a groundbreaking opportunity,” South Korea’s Chun said.
Chun also said the South Koreans proposed resuming negotiations over the North’s nuclear programme, but there was no specific response from the North.
However, North Korean officials said during the meeting they were open to promoting reconciliation through dialogue and negotiation, according to Chun.
The head of the North Korean delegation, Ri Son Gwon, said, “We came to this meeting today with the thought of giving our brethren, who have high hopes for this dialogue, invaluable results as the first present of the year ...”
North Korea entered the talks with a “serious and sincere stance”, said Ri, chairman of the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland.
South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon expressed optimism as the meeting began.
“Our talks began after North and South Korea were severed for a long time, but I believe the first step is half the trip,” said Cho. “It would be good for us to make that ‘good present’ you mentioned earlier.”
“Everything feels slightly new as we have not had talks in a while,” he said.
Each side’s delegation consisted of five senior officials.
The North Korean delegation walked over the border inside the joint security area to the Peace House around 0030 GMT, an official from the South’s Unification Ministry told reporters. — Reuters
South Korea’s Chun
SEOUL: North and South Korean officials exchanged warm greetings amid light flakes of snow on the world’s last Cold War frontier yesterday, in contrast from previous frosty gatherings.
The delegates shook hands and even cracked a joke as they posed for photographers at the border truce village of Panmunjom, before starting talks focused on the North’s participation at next month’s Winter Olympics in the South.
“We have to curry favour with them,” the North’s chief delegate Ri Son-Gwon quipped as he shook hands with his Southern counterpart Cho Myoung-Gyon for a second time at the request of photographers.
The pair broke the ice with small talk about meteorological conditions.
“Despite the cold weather, the people’s burning desire to see inter-Korean dialogue and rapprochement are like streams flowing beneath the ice,” said a poetic Ri.
Ri, the head of the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, and his colleagues walked across the concrete blocks that delineate the Military Demarcation Line at Panmunjom.
Ri donned civilian clothes for the meeting – and, in keeping with social norms in his country, a lapel badge depicting the North’s founding father Kim Il-Sung and his son and successor Kim JongIl.
Ri is said to be close to Kim YongChul, another top North Korean military official and former director of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the North’s spy agency, who is blacklisted by South Korea’s unilateral sanctions.
In the past Ri has worn military uniform for talks.
He angrily stormed out of one meeting minutes after it began, denying any role by his country in the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship with the loss of 46 lives.
But yesterday he suggested the talks be fully opened to the media, “in light of the great expectations and huge interest from here and abroad in these talks”.
Cho Myoung-Gyon, the leader of the Seoul’s delegation – who wore a badge with the South Korean flag – demurred.
The two five-strong delegations sat opposite each other at a long table in the Peace House, the talks venue on the southern side of the Demilitarised Zone that splits the peninsula.
Cho, the South’s Unification Minister in charge of relations with the North, is a veteran crossborder negotiator who has taken part in talks with the North since the 1990s, including their second and last summit in 2007.
“It looks like North Korea is exuding a lot of confidence,” said Koo Kab-Woo, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“I can’t say exactly where that confidence stems from but it has so far been positive,” he told AFP.
It was a markedly different atmosphere to the last talks between the two Koreas in December 2015, observers said.
The mood then was grim and tense before the encounter even got under way.
Talks broke down with the two sides failing even to agree on further meetings. — AFP