Koreas to hold high-level talks in Dec on ways to improve ties

On Friday, Seoul’s Unification Ministry announced that North Korea had accepted the South’s invitation to hold a working-level meeting in the truce village of Panmunjom, in the Demilitarized Zone.

“I’ll do my best to sincerely implement the agreements reached during the high-level talks (in August)”, Kim said. In June 2013, Pyongyang and Seoul agreed to hold what would have been the first high-level dialogue in six years.

Under the terms of the August accord, Seoul switched off loudspeakers blasting propaganda messages across the border after the North expressed regret over mine blasts that maimed two South Korean soldiers.

The tours, a source of badly needed hard currency for the cash-strapped North, were suspended by the South in 2008 after a female tourist was shot dead by a North Korean guard.

No details have been released about the talks but likely topics included regular reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and the resumption of tour groups from the South to the Mount Kumgang resort in the North.

There is no guarantee of the December talks’ success, however.

An extradition treaty signed by Russian Federation and North Korea could be used to send back defectors from the North and put them at risk of serious harm in their home country, including torture, the United Nations human rights investigator on North Korea said on Thursday.

There are no big issues on the agenda, but rather matters of how to continue meeting, perhaps at increasingly senior levels, he says.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he was discussing with North Korea the dates for his visit to the isolated state but no decision has been made in his first public comments on the trip since news reports last week said he would go soon.

The Marine Corps of South Korea held a live-fire drill on Monday at the Yellow Sea to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the North Korean shelling of the Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 that led to the death of two Marines and two civilians, reported Korea JoongAng Daily on Tuesday.

That’s why it’s not too surprising to learn that North Korea experts estimate that Kim Jong-un has purged at least 70 rivals, including his uncle, the No. 2 man in the country, since he came to power less than four years ago.