North, South Korea end talks without any breakthroughs

“Our government still maintains its basic stance to cultivate a normal relationship between the South and North, and continue conversation with North Korea”, Hwang told reporters.

North and South Korea ended two days of extensive high-level talks at a North Korean border town Saturday without issuing a statement or scheduling another meeting, leaving a mixed signal about reconciliation efforts they’ve made since stepping away from a military standoff in August.

South Korea has said that North Korea should take measures to guarantee the safety of South Korean visitors at the mountain and ensure that similar incidents do not recur.

Pyongyang pushed for the resumption of cross-border tours of the Mount Kumgang resort, just north of the demilitarized frontier, which were suspended in 2008 following the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist, according to Hwang.

Throughout the talks, South Korea demanded in that the North commit to more reunions between aging relations separated by the 1950-53 Korean War or permit them to speak by way of letters, stated Hwang Boogi, South Korea’s vice minister of unification & head negotiator for the talks.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says his country has developed a hydrogen bomb, state media reported Thursday.

The August deal set the stage for the two Koreas to sit down for dialogue, but North Korea’s consistent nuclear and missile test threats have consistently served as negative factors for better inter-Korean ties.

South Korea has called for more participants and more regular reunions, as thousands of people who had been on the waiting list have already died and many others have entered their 80s and 90s, but the North has refused to oblige.

The vice-minister-level negotiations were held Friday on the North Korean side of the border in the jointly-run Kaesong industrial zone, which opened in 2004 and has survived as a rare symbol of inter-Korean cooperation. This likely dominated out noteworthy discussions on key issues resembling the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

In October, the two Koreas held family reunions at Mount Kumgang and have held 20 rounds of such events so far since the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.

“The North would want to achieve some feats on inter-Korean affairs ahead of the ruling party’s congress for next year”, said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University.

The two countries are technically still at war, as the conflict ended only with an armistice, not a peace treaty.