North,South Korea agree to hold first dialogue in years

North and South Korea Thursday agreed to hold their first government dialogue in years,raising hopes that they were moving

CHOE SANG-HUN

North and South Korea Thursday agreed to hold their first government dialogue in years,raising hopes that they were moving toward a thaw in relations after a prolonged standoff marked by military provocations from the North and retaliatory economic penalties from the South.

The development came after North Korea made a surprise overture on Thursday,proposing official negotiations with the South to discuss reopening two shuttered joint economic projects as well as humanitarian projects. South Korea,which has demanded such talks in recent months,quickly accepted the offer,proposing that the two sides hold a cabinet minister-level meeting in the South Korean capital,Seoul,next Wednesday.

The quick sequence was a dramatic turn of events on the divided Korean Peninsula,and it comes a day before President Obama is to meet in California with President Xi Jinping of China,North Koreas main ally,where the Norths behavior was expected to be a main topic.

The two Koreas had cut off official dialogue soon after North Korean soldiers shot and killed a South Korean tourist in 2008 and the Souths government retaliated by suspending tours to a North Korean mountain resort.

North Korea proposed that the two Koreas discuss reopening the Kaesong joint industrial complex just north of the Demilitarized Zone separating the countries. The eight-year-old complex,a symbol of inter-Korean cooperation,was shuttered after North Korea cut cross-border communications and pulled out all its 53,000 workers in April.

North Korea also proposed resuming the cross-border tours suspended since 2008,as well as reviving Red Cross programmes for arranging the temporary reunions of aging Korean families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

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The Souths Unification Ministry accepted the North Korean overture as a positive sign.