South Korea, DPRK agree to resume military talks
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-02-04 09:09

South Korea and the Democratic People 's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed Friday to reopen the general-level military talks sometime between late February and early March to continue the discussions on reducing tension on the Korean Peninsula.

The agreement came at the end of the one-day working-level meeting between the two sides at the border village of Panmunjom, an oval-shape area in the western part of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two countries.

South Korean Army Col. Moon Sung-wook, right, is escorted by an unidentified North Korean officer at the border village of Panmunjom in North Korea, Friday, Feb. 3, 2006. [AP]

The third round of inter-Korean general-grade talks will last for two days at Tongilgak, a pavilion on the northern side of the truce village of Panmunjom, South Korean Yonhap News Agency reported.

The high-level inter-Korean military talks have been suspended since July 2004.

In the previous two rounds of the general-level talks held in 2004, the two sides agreed on a set of measures of reducing tension on the peninsula, such as dismantling of propaganda facilities along the 248-kilometer-long inter-Korean land border and establishing hotlines between the navies.

In June 2005, the two sides agreed to resume the high-level military talks at the DPRK's highest mountain Paekdu (Changbai mountain), but failed to implement the agreement amid the international standoff over the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula.