North-South Korea Talks Resume, Railway in Focus
The bitter rivals held an initial session on Monday, the first of three days of talks under close international scrutiny. Neither side gave much away, with the South saying the two sides had set out their agendas rather than negotiated.
The delegations were to eat lunch separately and meet for dinner after the North's team tours a folk village, Reuters reported.
"I couldn't sleep at night because you said yesterday you would bring us lots of gifts," Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun told the North's chief delegate as the talks resumed.
"Starting from today, I am going to expect presents from you. We cannot just finish the talks without any fruits."
The North's Kim Ryong-song replied he was optimistic. "I am convinced we can iron out good results if we can combine our wisdom and power," he said. "Let's try to reach agreements on all agendas in a short period. Let's start talks right away."
--- President's Pneumonia --- The minister-level negotiations resumed at 0100 GMT. Soon after, the presidential Blue House said South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was being treated for pneumonia but had attended a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He missed appointments on monday.
At a summit in 2000, Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed to rebuild a railway line through the heavily Fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that has bisected the peninsula since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war.
The South's Kim is 77 and won the Nobel Peace Prize for his "sunshine policy" of engaging the North, although the public has grown weary of seeing talks but few results.
He has also been under pressure in his last year in office because of financial scandals involving two of his three sons.
The two leaders agreed at their summit to family reunions and other projects only partially realized so far.
A South Korean Unification Ministry official told Reuters that the main focus on Tuesday would be on military and economic talks to facilitate construction of the rail link.
The South has completed its rail work and a parallel road right up to the edge of the DMZ, but the North has done little.
Military and economic talks are needed because the DMZ is mined and the North needs help to fund its part of the route.
More than a million soldiers face each other across a frontier packed with mines and criss-crossed with razor wire.
--- Closely Watched --- The inter-Korean talks got under way on Monday after a two-hour delay due to what officials said were timetable differences. At an initial meeting lasting just over an hour, the two delegations went over the agenda, a South Korean unification Ministry official told reporters.
The talks, the first at this level for nine months, are being closely watched in Washington and throughout the region.
They are part of a broader pattern of inter-Korean meetings and dialogue that also includes Japan and the United States.
The timing too is significant, coming after Pyongyang has introduced tentative economic changes to its creaking communist system and months before a December presidential election in the South. Many South Koreans are fed up with talks that produce rhetoric, not results.
The teams and guests dined together on Monday at the central Seoul hotel where the talks are taking place.
Before the serious discussions began, the delegation chiefs exchanged banter about world cup soccer.
Once they got down to business, Jeong reiterated the South's demand for an apology for a June naval clash, South Korean officials said. But the North repeated its stance that it regretted the event but would not apologize.
A South Korean government source told Reuters the delay in opening talks had been caused not by time-tabling differences but by the North's objections to Seoul's decision to ask again for an apology.
The two Koreas are technically still at war because the Korean war ended in a truce instead of a peace agreement. (additional reporting by kim myong-hwan)