Koreas to hold talks in effort to ease tension

SEOUL, South Korea -- North and South Korea will meet in a village straddling their heavily armed border today for the first government-level talks on the peninsula in more than two years as they try to lower tension and restore stalled projects that once symbolized their rapprochement.

The North yesterday delivered its agreement to talk in Panmunjom through a Red Cross line restored a day earlier, Seoul's Unification Ministry said. Pyongyang had favored its border city of Kaesong, home of the industrial park emptied in May amid tensions.

Representatives of the rival Koreas met on the peninsula in February 2011 and their nuclear envoys met in Beijing later that year, but government officials from both sides have not met since. Today's meeting would be clearest sign of eased tensions since Pyongyang threatened to attack South Korea and the United States with nuclear missiles earlier this year, and the South made counter-threats.

It also comes as their top allies are meeting. President Barack Obama opened a summit Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California to discuss topics including North Korea's nuclear programs.

The talks between the Koreas could represent a change in North Korea's approach, analysts said, or could simply be an effort to ease international demands that it end its development of nuclear weapons, a topic crucial to Washington but initially not a part of the envisioned inter-Korean meetings.

The Unification Ministry, which handles cross-border relations, said the talks at Panmunjom are aimed at setting up higher-level talks.

South Korea has proposed holding ministerial talks Wednesday in Seoul to discuss the jointly run factory complex in Kaesong and other cooperation projects. Pyongyang pulled its 53,000 workers from the factories in April, and Seoul withdrew its last personnel in May.

Pyongyang requested a lower-level meeting first, citing mistrust between the sides and a lack of dialogue.