South Korea will hold talks with North Korea

Hwang is considered by outside analysts to be North Korea’s second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

An exchange of artillery fire ensued on Thursday (August 20).

Kim Kyu Hyun, deputy director of national security for South Korea’s presidential office, made the announcement of the meeting on South Korean television.

Yonhap News Agency, South Korea’s largest news outlet, was allowed to look around the downtown area on Saturday, along with other foreign reporters.

“They have a lot of ground to cover to get to common ground but there are senior people on both sides now talking rather than threatening across the border“, our correspondent said. “That would be the trick”, said James Kim, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

From 12am to 1pm on Saturday, the U.S. and South Korea conducted a joint air force training session, which practiced the targeting of an imaginary enemy, without real bombing activities.

The two Koreas remain technically at war, because the 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. This was sparked by the land mines that maimed two South Korean soldiers earlier this month.

Park’s warning was echoed by the country’s Defence Minister Han Min-koo, who reassured the public that Seoul would respond in kind to the North. “If North Korea pushes ahead with additional provocations, our military will retaliate harshly and make them pay a bitter price”, he said.

Each loudspeaker system has broadcast for more than 10 hours a day in three or four different time slots that were frequently changed for unpredictability, the official said.

No media organizations were present at the meeting in Panmunjom, a “truce village” inside the demilitarized zone, reported the BBC.

The United States is committed to defending close ally South Korea, its top military officer has said, amid another spike in tensions between Seoul and North Korea.

The military exercise, code-named Ulchi Freedom Guardian, began on Monday and is due to end next Friday.

“Any provocations by North Korea will not be tolerated,” Park told the gathering.

The meeting was first proposed by North Korea on Friday before the two sides worked out the differences on the participants.

The meeting came at the request of North Korean officials in Pyongyang, according to reports. “It is a breakthrough”.

It was highly unlikely that the North would accept the South’s expected demand for Pyongyang to take responsibility for the land mine explosions and apologize, he added.

In the South, the military is on its highest state of alert. But Pyongyang has strongly denied the accusation.

The tension, which was already near a boiling point over the broadcasts and the soldiers’ deaths, reached fever pitch on Thursday when North Korea fired four shells over the border. The South fired back 29 artillery rounds.

“It’s not easy to see a simple way out where neither side loses face”, said Dan Pinkston, Korea expert at the worldwide Crisis Group in Seoul.