South Korea on Monday offered talks with the North to ease animosities along their tense border and resume reunions of families separated by their war in the 1950s.
It was unclear how North Korea will react since it remains suspicious of new South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s outreach to it. But Mr. Moon’s overture, the first formal offer of talks since his inauguration in May, indicates he wants to use dialogue to defuse the international stand-off over North Korea’s weapons programmes, despite having condemned the North’s first intercontinental ballistic missile test on July 4.
If realised, the talks would be the first inter-Korean dialogue since December 2015. Ties between the Koreas have plunged over the North’s expanding weapons programmes and the hard-line policies of Mr. Moon’s conservative predecessors.
South Korean Vice-Defence Minister Suh Choo Suk proposed on Monday that defence officials from the two Koreas hold talks at the border village of Panmunjom on Friday on how to end hostile activities along the border. South Korean acting Red Cross chief Kim Sun Hyang told a news conference that it wants separate talks at the border village on August 1 to discuss family reunions.
North Korea’s state media didn’t immediately respond to South Korea’s proposals. But analysts say North Korea may accept the defence talks because it wants the South Korean army to halt loudspeaker broadcasts at the border that began after North Korea’s fourth nuclear test in January 2016. Prospects for talks on family reunions are less good because North Korea has previously demanded that South Korea repatriate some North Korean defectors living in the South before any reunions take place, according to the analysts.
