South Korea Proposes Military Talks With North at Their Border
By CHOE SANG-HUNJULY 17, 2017
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea on Monday proposed holding military
and humanitarian talks with North Korea, aimed at easing tensions along their heavily armed border and arranging reunions of families divided decades ago by the Korean War.
The South wants to send a military delegation to the border village of Panmunjom on Friday to discuss "stopping all hostile activities
that raise military tension" along the border, Vice Defense Minister Suh Choo-suk said on Monday.
Also Monday, the South Korean Red Cross Society proposed a meeting at Panmunjom on Aug. 1 with its North Korean counterpart, to arrange reunions of relatives in the North
and South who have not seen each other since being separated during the 1950-53 Korean War.
Suh, the vice defense minister, on Monday called on the North to restore a military hotline
that Pyongyang cut off in 2016, amid tensions following its nuclear test in January of that year.
Such a meeting would be the first between the two governments since 2015 and the first inter-Korean military dialogue since 2014.
In past meetings, North Korea has demanded that the South stop holding joint military exercises with the United States
and end the use of loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda along the border.
North Korea has said it will not allow another round of reunions unless the South sends 12 North Korean waitresses back to the country.
