North and South Korean generals to meet: Seoul

By Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – North and South Korean generals will
resume talks later this month or early in March on reducing
military tensions and building confidence to help improve
cross-border ties, a South Korean official said on Friday.

Lower-level, but senior, military officers from the two
sides met on Friday at a border truce village and agreed on
resuming the generals’ talks, which have been suspended since
June 2004, Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo told a news
conference.

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.

“We look forward to a military guarantee agreement that
will reduce military tension and build confidence and also
promote further economic cooperation between the South and
North,” Rhee said.

South Korea’s delegation to Friday’s talks met with the
North Koreans at the Panmunjom truce village. Panmunjom is at
the heart of the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone frontier
and has conference buildings that straddle the border.

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 then.

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

RAIL AND TRADE

Improvements on such measures and on developing joint
fishing zones will be on the agenda when the generals meet for
two days, Rhee said.

South Korean 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.

Rhee said Lee had discussed using the railway to send South
Korean fans to the World Cup soccer games in Germany in June,
but added the idea needed considerable work to be realized.

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 did not materialize.

(Additional reporting by Lee Jin-joo)