{"id":21400,"date":"2015-11-26T00:14:27","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T00:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/north-and-south-korea-hold-rare-talks-aimed-at\/"},"modified":"2015-11-26T00:14:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T00:14:00","slug":"north-and-south-korea-hold-rare-talks-aimed-at","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/north-and-south-korea-hold-rare-talks-aimed-at\/","title":{"rendered":"North and South Korea hold rare talks aimed at improving ties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Officials from North and South Korea are meeting for rare talks aimed at improving long-strained ties, after a military standoff in August.}<\/p>\n<p>The meeting is taking place at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone.<\/p>\n<p>Tension between the two sides ramped up in August when a border blast injured two South Korean soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>Meetings at that time eventually led to the two countries stepping away from a tense military confrontation.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC&#8217;s Stephen Evans in Seoul says Thursday&#8217;s talks, agreed after the standoff, are unlikely to produce any grand result, but their significance is that they are taking place in what has been a continual atmosphere of mistrust.<\/p>\n<p>There are no big issues on the agenda, but rather matters of how to continue meeting, perhaps at increasingly senior levels, he says.<\/p>\n<p>In June 2013, the two sides agreed to hold what would have been the first high-level dialogue for six years. But just the day before the scheduled meeting, Pyongyang cancelled it, citing the seniority of the South Korean negotiator.<br \/>\nDe-escalation<\/p>\n<p>On 4 August two South Korean soldiers by the border were seriously injured by a landmine blast, which was blamed on the North. The North denied planting the landmine.<\/p>\n<p>The South began propaganda broadcasts into the North, infuriating Pyongyang which in turn declared a &#8220;semi-state of war&#8221; and began deploying troops to the frontline.<\/p>\n<p>But after talks, also held at Panmunjom, the two countries reached a deal to de-escalate tensions with the South stopping the broadcasts and the North pulling back troops.<\/p>\n<p>They also agreed to work towards a resumption of reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, a recurring point of contention. That conflict ended with an armistice, which means the two countries are still technically at war.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-9356 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_86883567_004366284-1.jpg\" alt=\"The officials are meeting in the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone \" \/><\/figure>\n<p>SOURCE:BBC:[North and South Korea hold rare talks aimed at improving ties->http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-asia-34929557]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Officials from North and South Korea are meeting for rare talks aimed at improving long-strained ties, after a military standoff in August.} The meeting is taking place at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone. Tension between the two sides ramped up in August when a border blast injured two South Korean soldiers. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000070388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-21400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":{"id":2000070388,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21400.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21400.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21400.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21400.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21400.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton21400.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000070388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21400"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=21400"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=21400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}