Time yesterday ran out on a proposal for rare inter-Korean military talks, with the North refusing to respond to South Korea’s offer to open dialogue to ease simmering tension.
Seoul had proposed to hold the rare talks this week at the border truce village of Panmunjom to ease hostilities after a series of missile tests this year, but the North has remained silent so far, prompting the South Korean Ministry of National Defense to admit that it was “practically” impossible for the meeting to go ahead.
“It is an urgent task to reduce tension between the two Koreas... to achieve peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula,” ministry spokesman Moon Sang-kyun said. “We urge the North again to respond to our talks proposal.”
The military talks would mark the first official such talks since December 2015.
North Korea has also remained silent on an offer made by the South’s Red Cross to meet on Aug. 1 and discuss potential reunions for families separated by the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
Millions of families were separated by the conflict that sealed the division of the Korean Peninsula. Many died without getting a chance to see or hear from their relatives on the other side of the border.
A senior North Korean official last month said that Pyongyang would rule out any more family reunions unless Seoul returns a group of North Koreans who defected to the South last year.
The proposals are the first steps toward rapprochement with the North since South Korea elected President Moon Jae-in in May.
Moon has advocated dialogue with the nuclear-armed North to bring it to the negotiating table and vowed to play a big role in efforts to tame the unpredictable regime.
His conservative predecessor, former South Korean president Park Geun-hye, had refused to engage in substantive dialogue with Pyongyang unless it made a firm commitment to denuclearization, but Pyongyang has staged a series of missile launches in violation of UN resolutions — including its first intercontinental ballistic missile test on July 4 that triggered global alarm and a push by US President Donald Trump to impose harsher UN sanctions.
The US has detected signs of potential preparations for another intercontinental ballistic missile test in North Korea, CNN reported on Thursday, citing US officials, but Korean Institute for National Unification analyst Cho Han-bum said there were still chances that Pyongyang might respond.
“The North often takes a considerable amount of time before responding to Seoul’s dialogue offers, to offer their own counterproposals,” Cho said.
Pyongyang could demand that an upcoming military exercise by the US and South Korea be suspended or that the level of talks be raised to a higher, ministerial level, he added.
“The government proposed the military and Red Cross meeting because it considered peace in the Korean Peninsula and humanitarian issues as urgent,” South Korean Ministry of Unification spokeswoman Eugene Lee said. “We need to remain calm and take one step forward at a time, without fretting too much about how the North reacts each time.”
Additional reporting by AP
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