Two Koreas open historic military talks
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-05-26 14:21

Generals from opposite sides of the world's last Cold War frontier sat down for talks on Wednesday in the highest-level meeting between military officers from North and South Korea since the 1950-53 war.

Officers from the two sides spent more than three hours at a resort in North Korea discussing specific measures to prevent naval clashes in the Yellow Sea west of the Korean peninsula.

South Korean chief delegate Commodore Park Jung-hwa proposed to set up a hotline connecting the military authorities of the two Koreas and to require vessels navigating in the coastal waters to share common radio frequencies and signaling using flags, South Korean pool reports from the talks said.

Park also proposed to turn the high-level military talks into a running channel of discussions between the militaries aimed at reducing tension and building confidence, the reports said.

North Korea's response and whether it made any confidence-building proposals to the South was not immediately known as the talks carried on into lunch and the afternoon.

The North is believed in the west to be operating nuclear weapons programs now subject to slow-moving multinational negotiations aimed at ending them, but the programs were not expected to be taken up at the general-level talks.

In recent years, the rich Yellow Sea fishing grounds have been the scene of naval clashes during the crab-fishing season in May and June that have killed or wounded scores of sailors on both sides.

Naval gunfights threatened to escalate military tension on the peninsula bisected by a heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates some 1.8 million troops, but the clashes have not stopped growing commercial and cultural exchanges between the two Koreas.

The last gun battle in the Yellow Sea in June 2002 killed six South Korean sailors and wounded more than a dozen. The North's death toll was believed to be over 30 but was never confirmed.

The selection of a Navy officer to head the South Korean delegation highlights Seoul's determination to prevent naval clashes, a defense ministry official said in Seoul.

Five-member delegations headed by South Korea's Park and North Korean Brigadier General An Ik-san were meeting at an exclusive guest house in Mount Kumgang. The house was where North Korean leader Kim Jong-il hosted the late Hyundai mogul Chung Ju-yung to lay the groundwork for North-South business ties.

The two sides began the talks amid an air of optimism. "If the next talks are held here, preparations are sure to be good," An was quoted as saying at the opening in the pool reports.

South Korean delegates are scheduled to cross the fortified border back to the South in the afternoon.

The two Koreas technically remain at war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

North Korea's military is the world's fifth largest with about 1.1 million active forces and the army plays a dominant role in the country's politics and economy. South Korea has the six-largest military in the world, with 690,000 troops.

The defense ministers of the rival Koreas met once in 2000 and more junior officers have worked together successfully in the building of rail and road links through the DMZ.

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