North and South Korea agreed Friday to hold military talks on June 14 and a Red Cross meeting on June 22 on reunions of families separated by the 1950-1953 Korean War, according to a South Korean joint press corps.
The Koreas reached the agreements at a high-level meeting between the two countries held at the border village of Panmunjeom.
The meeting, itself rescheduled after the North abruptly postponed it in mid-May, was to follow up on a series of agreements reached at a summit between the leaders of the two countries in late April.
The two Koreas had agreed at the April 27 summit to the holding of military talks "at the rank of general" and an inter-Korean Red Cross meeting, that latter aimed at discussing and solving various issues including family reunions.
Friday's meeting was held at the Peace House, a building in the southern side of Panmunjeom in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas.
(Cho Myoung Gyon,right, of South Korea and Ri Son Gwon of the North)
[Pool photo]
"I believe that there is no problem that we cannot solve together if we deal with it based on trust, respect and understanding of the other side, which is the basic mindset that South and North Korea both agree to," said Unification Minister Cho Myoung Gyon, the South's chief delegate, at the start of the talks, according to the press corps.
Ri Son Gwon, head of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland and the North's delegation chief, compared inter-Korean ties to "a cart that runs toward peace, prosperity and unification," adding that the driving force behind the cart is mutual trust and respect, according to the media corps.
Other participants in the talks included vice ministers of transport and culture from the South, and vice ministers of railroad and sports from the North.
Their inclusion has led to expectations that the officials will discuss following up on the agreements made at the April 27 summit and take practical steps toward connecting and modernizing railways, and to jointly participate in the Asian Games in Jakarta this summer.
During the morning session, North Korea proposed holding joint events in South Korea to mark this month's anniversary of the historic, first inter-Korea summit in 2000, a South Korean Unification Ministry official said.
The North Korean proposal relates to the summit between then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and then South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in Pyongyang on June 13-15, 2000. The leaders issued a joint declaration on the last day of the summit.
Officials from the two sides also exchanged ideas on schedules for talks on each topic, with no big differences between them emerging during the exchanges, according to the ministry official.
(The Peace House in Panmunjeom)
The North put off the inter-Korean meeting indefinitely on May 16, the day it was scheduled to be held, citing a U.S.-South Korean joint air exercise under way at the time.
But when South Korean President Moon Jae In and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met at Panmunjeom last Saturday for the second time in a month, they agreed to hold the meeting on Friday.
Saturday's surprise summit was held shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump, citing the North's "open hostility," canceled his planned summit with Kim but then quickly revived hopes of holding it as originally scheduled on June 12 in Singapore.
The South's Unification Ministry said earlier this week that at the high-level inter-Korean meeting, both sides would discuss ways to implement in a swift manner the Panmunjeom Declaration, which was issued at the April 27 summit between Moon and Kim.
The declaration calls for the "complete" denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and efforts to declare a formal end to the 1950-1953 Korean War, among other things.
