North Korea, South Korea Agree to Hold Military Talks - Joint Statement

North and South Korea agreed to hold military talks, a joint statement said after the two Koreas engaged in formal dialogue on Tuesday for the first time in more than two years, according to a Reuters report.

North Korea also decided to send a high-ranking delegation and a cheering squad to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea next month, but the head of its delegation in the talks on Tuesday expressed negative sentiment over the mention of denuclearisation during Tuesday’s discussions, the South Korean government said in a statement.

The two sides, according to AFP, decided to hold military talks and to restore a military hotline closed since February 2016.

Seoul and Olympic organisers have been keen for Pyongyang – which boycotted the 1988 Summer Games in the South Korean capital – to take part in what they repeatedly proclaimed a “peace Olympics” in Pyeongchang next month.

But the North had given no indication it would do so until leader Kim Jong-Un’s New Year address last week, instead pursuing its banned weapons programmes in defiance of United Nations sanctions, launching missiles capable of reaching the United States and detonating its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

“The North Korean side will dispatch a National Olympic Committee delegation, athletes, cheerleaders, art performers’ squad, spectators, a taekwondo demonstration team and a press corps and the South will provide necessary amenities and facilities,” they said in a joint statement.

Tuesday’s talks were held in Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarised Zone that splits the peninsula.

The North’s delegation walked over the Military Demarcation Line marking the border to the Peace House venue on the southern side, just yards from where a defector ran across in a hail of bullets two months ago.