Turkey- Koreas aim to narrow divide across negotiating table
Date
11/26/2015 5:40:26 AM
(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) The two Koreas began working-level talks Thursday following up on August's breakthrough agreement.
Having held reunions for family members divided by the tense inter-Korean border last month officials gathered at Panmunjom truce village in an effort to further heal frayed ties.
"We will do our best to help get the inter-Korean deal fully implemented" Seoul representative Kim Ki-woong told reporters before heading to the border meeting.
Seoul and Pyongyang have rarely been able to maintain bilateral cooperation since reaching an uneasy truce at the end of the Korean War in 1953.
A key element of their recent deal was arranging a high-level dialogue -- the logistics of which were expected to be Thursday's main focus.
A technical hitch delayed the talks for more than two hours while the Koreas have been known to carry on marathon discussions well into the night.
Although a number of major stumbling blocks stand between the two sides -- from the North's nuclear ambitions to sanctions imposed by the South -- other more practical issues are also of significant concern.
These include deciding who would represent each government in a higher-level meeting -- an issue that caused the last planned senior talks between the Koreas in 2013 to be abandoned by Pyongyang at the last minute.
By Alex Jensen
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