Senior South, North Korean military officers meet

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – Military officers from South and North
Korea began talks on Friday to lay the foundation for more
confidence-building measures, the South’s defense ministry
said.

Efforts to reduce military tensions between the North and
South, which remain technically at war, have lagged behind
improving political and economic ties in recent years.

South Korea’s delegation, led by Army Colonel Moon
Sung-mook, traveled to the Panmunjom truce village to meet with
the North Koreans, a defense ministry official said by
telephone.

Panmunjom is at the heart of the heavily fortified
Demilitarized Zone frontier and has conference buildings that
straddle the border.

The main item on the agenda is setting up a meeting of
generals from the two Koreas. There were two rare rounds of
general-level talks in 2004 that resulted in an agreement on
measures to prevent deadly naval clashes, but generals have not
met formally since.

Naval clashes in fishing grounds of the Yellow Sea in past
years have killed or wounded scores of sailors on both sides.

South Korean government officials have said more
confidence-building measures are needed to ensure military
tension does not get in the way of growing commercial ties
across the border.

One example of this is what South Korean analysts say is
lagging support from the North’s military for linking railways
through the border and making road travel less cumbersome.

To help the effort to join transport lines, the president
of South Korea’s Railroad Corp., Lee Chul, will visit the North
at the weekend and hold discussions with Pyongyang’s rail
officials, the state-run corporation said.

Lee will fly to Beijing on Friday and enter Pyongyang on
Saturday, the corporation said in a statement.

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung is seeking to
visit the North by train some time in April, an aide has said.

Kim won a Nobel Peace prize for orchestrating an
unprecedented, and so far unrepeated, meeting of the leaders of
the two Koreas when he met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in
2000.

North Korea’s military plays a powerful role in how the
communist country is run, and much of its creaking economic
activity is geared to supporting the more than
one-million-strong armed forces.

South Korea has been pressing the North to finish the rail
work on its side of the border and to allow test trains to run.

Last year, North Korea agreed in principle to resume the
generals’ meeting but it has not materialized.

(Additional reporting by Lee Jin-joo)