Two Koreas hold high-level talks – Neighbors seek to ease tensions

“It will be the first governmental meeting since the August 25 agreement and it will work as the first regular inter-Korean governmental talks“.

The meeting began in the morning but was adjourned due to disagreements over a joint statement.

As Friday’s meeting will only be attended by vice-ministers, it is unlikely that they will discuss the most serious issues in the two countries’ often tense relationship.

Cash-strapped North Korea was expected to try to expand on that spirit of cooperation by pushing to resurrect former projects such as South Korean tours to the Mount Kumgang region, which were put on hold when a visitor was shot dead in 2008. North Korea’s chief negotiator Jong Jong-su also called for mutual efforts to warm the frosty relations between the two Koreas. Yonhap reported from Kaesong some North Korean factory workers in the area said they hoped the talks would have a positive outcome.

The Foreign Ministry in China, North Korea’s most significant diplomatic and economical backer, said China was dedicated to solving issues through discussions and ensuring the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

The talks come a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared to claim that his country had developed a hydrogen bomb, which is more powerful than an atomic bomb, although experts and USA and South Korean officials expressed doubt that the North has such capability.

“Kim needs to shower party and political officials with gifts and boast (about) national wealth to his people”, said Nam Sung-Wook, professor of North Korean Studies at Korea University.

Senior-level inter-Korean talks were held in February last year and in August this year, but those were held to talk about urgent issues, including the reunion of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and an issue on landmines explosion and a rare exchange of artillery fire in August.

Now the reunions are being held less than once a year and with only a very limited number of participants – despite a huge waiting list of largely elderly South Koreans desperate to see their relatives in the North before they die.

North Korea has conducted some test to set off nuclear devices in 2006, 2009 and 2013, for which it has been subject to United Nations sanctions banning trade and financing activities that aid its weapons program.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, told the council that the North’s abuses represented a “level of horror unrivalled in the world”.