North Korea and South Korea to hold rare high-level talks

North Korea and South Korea are to hold rare high-level talks on Wednesday, Seoul has announced, ahead of family reunions planned for later this month.

The meeting will take place at the border village of Panmunjom, a South Korea’s Unification Ministry spokesman said.

No agenda had been set but the planned family reunions were expected to be discussed, he said.

The agreement followed a proposal from North Korea to hold talks.

There is hope in Seoul that it might kick-start a regular dialogue, our correspondent adds.

North Korea and South Korea are due to hold reunions of families divided by the partitioning of the Korean Peninsula at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, for five days from February 20.

The last such reunions took place in 2010. But these reunions coincide with the start of US-South Korea joint military drills – annual exercises which anger North Korea.

In a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, So Se Pyong, spoke of the need to terminate all hostile military actions which he described as the main obstacles to peace.