South and North Korea begin first official talks in two years

TIL Desk/World/Seoul/ North and South Korea began their first official talks in more than two years today, focussing on the forthcoming Winter Olympics after months of tensions over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.

The talks in Panmunjom, the truce village in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula, came after the North’s leader Kim Jong-Un indicated in his New Year’s speech that he could send a delegation to next month’s Games in Pyeongchang in the South.

Seoul responded with an offer of a high-level dialogue, and last week the hotline between the neighbours was restored after being suspended for almost two years. Seoul’s five-member delegation, led by unification minister Cho Myoung-Gyon, travelled to Panmunjom in a convoy of vehicles, passing a group of well-wishers holding a banner at a checkpoint leading towards the DMZ.

The North’s group, of similar size and led by senior official Ri Son-Gwon, walked over the Military Demarcation Line at Panmunjom for the talks, pictures showed — just yards from where a defector ran across in a hail of bullets two months ago.