South, North Korea officials to meet in bid to ease tension

Top aides to the leaders of North and South Korea will meet at the Panmunjom truce village straddling their border on Saturday, the South said, raising hopes for an end to a standoff that put the two sides on the brink of armed conflict.

The meeting is due to take place half an hour after North Korea’s previously set ultimatum demanding that the South halt its loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border or face military action.

South Korean president Park Geun-hye's national security adviser and her unification minister will meet with Hwang Pyong So, the top military aide to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and an senior official who handles inter-Korean affairs , the Blue House said.

“The South and the North agreed to hold contact related to the ongoing situation in South-North relations at 6pm our time at Panmunjom,” Kim Kyou-hyun, the Blue House’s deputy national security adviser, said in a televised briefing.

Pyongyang made an initial proposal on Friday for a meeting, and Seoul made a revised proposal on Saturday seeking Hwang’s attendance, Kim said. He left the briefing without taking questions.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been running high since an exchange of artillery fire on Thursday, prompting calls for calm from the United Nations, the United States and the North's lone major ally, China.

North Korea, technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, had declared a "quasi-state of war" in front-line areas and set the deadline for Seoul to halt the broadcasts from loudspeakers placed along the border.

“The situation on the Korean peninsula is now inching close to the brink of a war due to the reckless provocations made by the south Korean military war hawks,” the North’s KCNA news agency had said earlier.

Seoul had said it would continue the broadcasts unless the North accepted responsibility for landmine explosions this month in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that wounded two South Korean soldiers. Pyongyang denies it planted the mines.

South Korean vice defence minister Baek Seung-joo had said on Friday his government expected North Korea to fire at some of the 11 sites where Seoul has set up loudspeakers.

The United States, which has 28,500 military personnel based in South Korea, said on Friday it had resumed its annual joint military exercises there after a temporary halt to coordinate with Seoul over the shelling from North Korea.

The drills, code-named Ulchi Freedom Guardian, began on Monday and run until next Friday. North Korea regularly condemns the manoeuvres as a preparation for war.

Reuters