North, S.Korea Hold High-Level Talks Meant to Ease Animosity

South and North Korea kicked off high-level talks Friday on ways to mend frayed ties following heightened cross-border military tensions in August, government officials said.

Jon Jong-su, the North’s chief negotiator, called for mutual efforts to bring warmth to the icy relations between the two Koreas.

A priority for South Korea is the organization of reunions of separated families on a regular basis.

“We believe it is critical for the council to continue to shine a light on the abuses in North Korea and speak regularly about the DPRK’s human rights situation – and what we can do to change it – for as long as the crimes committed there persist”, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said in a statement. Analysts have said cash-strapped North Korea might seek the South’s commitment to restart joint tours to its scenic Diamond Mountain resort, which were suspended by Seoul in 2008 following the shooting death of a South Korean tourist there by North Korean soldiers. North Korea conducted underground tests to set off nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and 2013, for which it has been subject to U.N. Security Council sanctions banning trade and financing activities that aid its weapons programme.

But Kim asserted this week that North Korea had become “a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation”, while visiting the site of a former munitions factory in central Pyongyang, according to the official Korean Central News Agency.

Also on Thursday, the UN Security Council held its second meeting on human rights in North Korea, despite the objections of four countries including China, its main diplomatic and economic backer.

In a paper published by the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington in September, David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini said that North Korea might be trying to use the only operational reactor at its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, to produce tritium.

Experts in Seoul say it is going to be very hard for South Korea to resume those tours without getting an apology or an explanation from North Korea on that incident.

Heading the South’s side at Friday’s talks was Hwang Boo-Gi, deputy head of Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border affairs. This was despite the opposition of four member countries, including China.

The last round of reunions were held in October but South Korea wants to make the meetings more frequent, as there are more than 60,000 South Koreans on the reunion waiting list.

Minutes before the meeting started, China demanded a rare vote on whether to discuss the issue, saying the Security Council was not the place to discuss human rights.