North and South Korea set out their stalls but did not trade yesterday during a brief initial round of high-level talks being closely watched by the US and other regional players in diplomacy on the divided peninsula.
The talks, which are expected to last three days, are significant because they are part of a broader pattern of inter-Korean meetings and dialogue that embraces two other rivals of the North -- Japan and the US. They also come after Pyongyang has introduced tentative economic changes to its creaking communist system and months before a December presidential election in the South.
After a two-hour delay over timetable differences, the two delegations met for just over an hour and went over the agenda, a senior South Korean Unification Ministry official told reporters.
"This is our first round of talk so we exchanged greetings and our basic point of view on the agendas," Unification Ministry official Rhee Bong-jo said at a briefing. "The atmosphere was not bad because it was the first day."
Asked what the outcome of the talks would be, North Korean delegation chief Kim Ryung-sung said: "You may expect something positive. I am expecting a large fruit."
The negotiations resume today and are expected to focus on restarting a stalled project to link a railway line by the end of the year through the heavily mined Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has bisected the peninsula since the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
The teams and dozens of guests were dining together yesterday at a hotel in central Seoul. The delegation chiefs exchanged banter about World Cup soccer before the talks.
"When South-North relations improve and a single team is formed we could become the world's best in all sports," South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun told the North's Kim in opening remarks in front of reporters.
Yet, in a sign of how swiftly moods can swing, the day South Korea played Turkey in the World Cup third-place playoff on June 29, the two Koreas' navies clashed in disputed waters.
Jeong, who heads Seoul's delegation, reiterated the South's demand for an apology, Rhee said. But the North repeated its stance that it regretted the event but would not apologize.
Twenty-nine North Korean officials, journalists and aides flew directly to South Korea's Inchon international airport for talks expected to focus on severed rail and road links, military ties and family reunions -- deals already made but not delivered.
The US will be scrutinizing the meeting to gauge what is motivating Pyongyang's burst of diplomatic activity and how to respond when it holds its own talks, possibly next month.
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