North, South Korea hold high-level bilateral talks

North and South Korea sat down to rare, high-level talks on Friday, aimed at building on an August agreement to ease cross-border tensions after a flare-up brought them to the brink of an armed conflict.

South Korean Vice Unification Minister Hwang Boogi met with the North’s Jon Jong Su, a vice director of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, at the jointly-run Kaesong industrial zone a few miles north of their border.

“There are a lot of issues to discuss between the South and North. [We] will do our best to resolve them one at a time, step by step”, Hwang said before leaving for Kaesong.

There is no fixed agenda for this meeting although South Korea is expected to talk about setting up more reunions for families separated between the two Koreas.

The latest talks also coincide with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s claims that his country is equipped with powerful hydrogen bombs, besides nuclear weapons.

Expectations for Friday’s meeting dropped last month when both sides settled during preparatory negotiations for a meeting at the vice-ministerial level.

It marked the first inter-governmental dialogue between the two Koreas since South Korean President Park Geun-hye took office in early 2013 to discuss a comprehensive range of inter-Korean issues.

A South Korean soldier walks by barricades on the road leading to North Korea’s Kaesong joint industrial complex at a military checkpoint in the border city of Paju, August 21, 2015.

Improving relations with the South is a priority for Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s young leader, who possibly wants tangible diplomatic and economic achievements before a convention of the ruling Workers’ Party in May, according to Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that Pyongyang and Seoul remain technically at war. The Security Council is not the right place to get involved in human rights issues, Wang said.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said he supported a call by the U.N. General Assembly urging the Security Council to refer the situation in North Korea to the International Criminal Court, saying it is “essential, given the scale and extreme gravity of the allegations”.

Russia, Venezuela and Angola backed China, but the United States and eight other countries voted to go forward.

The talks began just hours after North Korea came under stinging criticism for the second consecutive year at the UN Security Council over its human rights record.