North Korean and South Korean officials are holding rare talks aimed at improving long-strained ties, after a military stand-off in August.
The meeting is taking place at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone.
Tension between North Korea and South Korea ramped up in August when a border blast injured two South Korean soldiers.
Meetings at that time eventually led to the two Koreas stepping away from a military confrontation.
The two sides are expected to discuss details such as the timing and agenda of higher-level talks, reported South Korean news agency Yonhap.
South Korea’s chief negotiator, Kim Ki-woong, told reporters before the meeting: “We are resolved to maintaining the momentum for dialogue that was started by the August agreement.”
In June 2013, North Korea and South Korea agreed to hold what would have been the first high-level dialogue for six years. However, just the day before the scheduled meeting, Pyongyang canceled it, citing the seniority of the South Korean negotiator.
On August 4, two South Korean soldiers by the border were seriously injured by a landmine blast, which was blamed on the North. North Korea denied planting the landmine.
South Korea began propaganda broadcasts into the North, infuriating Pyongyang which in turn declared a “semi-state of war” and began deploying troops to the frontline.
However, after talks, also held at Panmunjom, the two countries reached a deal to de-escalate tensions with South Korea stopping the broadcasts and North Korea pulling back troops.
South Korea has accepted an offer from North Korea to hold talks on November 26, Seoul officials have confirmed.
The talks, to be held at the Panmunjom truce village, will set the stage for high-level meetings which were agreed in principle in August.
That deal followed a stand-off in August that began with landmine explosions on the border and involved an exchange of artillery fire.
South Korea said it had sent requests for meetings before but had no response.
North Korea and South Korea are technically still at war because the 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
In August 2015, a landmine explosion at the heavily militarized border seriously injured two South Korean soldiers.
In response, South Korea resumed its abandoned practice of blasting propaganda over the border, and evacuated people from the border region. North Korea said it had put its military on a “war footing”.
Tensions bubbled over in a brief exchange of fire at the heavily guarded border.
After crisis talks, South Korea agreed to turned off the loudspeakers while North Korea agreed to step down its military.
The agreement included a pledge to resume talks on improving ties, and to hold the first reunions for families separated during the Korean War in over a year.
North Korea also expressed regret over the mine explosions, though later clarified it was not accepting responsibility for the blast.
North Korea and South Korea are holding their first high-level talks since 2007.
The meeting – requested by Pyongyang – is taking place at the border village of Panmunjom.
No agenda has been set but the issue of family reunions planned for later this month is expected to be discussed.
Pyongyang has threatened to cancel the reunions because of the annual military exercises South Korea and the US are due to stage in February.
The morning session started at 10:00 local time and lasted for 90 minutes. Delegates then reconvened at South Korea’s side of Panmunjom in the afternoon, AFP news agency said.
South Korea’s Deputy National Security Adviser Kim Kyou-hyun is leading Seoul’s delegation at the Panmunjom talks.
North Korea and South Korea are holding their first high-level talks since 2007
Ahead of the meeting, Kim Kyou –hyun said: “This is an opportunity to open a new era of the Korean peninsula.
“I would like to attend the meeting with ‘open attitude and mind’ to study the opportunity.
“We will make an effort to proceed with the separated families reunion event as agreed.”
North Korea’s delegation has been headed by Won Tong-yon, a senior official specializing in inter-Korean ties, South Korean officials said.
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.
North Korea and South Korea are to hold rare high-level talks ahead of family reunions
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.
North Korean and South Korean officials are holding their first government-level talks in more than two years.
The talks are taking place at Panmunjom, a military compound in the demilitarized zone between the two countries.
The meeting comes after months of rising tension and war-like gestures from both sides.
They culminated in the suspension in April of all activity in the Kaesong joint commercial zone.
Kaesong Industrial Complex, which is seen as a symbol of North-South co-operation, had run successfully just inside North Korea for more than eight years.
With tensions between the two countries easing, South Korea invited the North to high level talks in Seoul, but Pyongyang said it wanted lower-level discussions first.
The South Korean delegation hopes to negotiate plans for ministerial-level talks later this week.
At the end of the morning session, a spokesman for the South’s Unification Ministry said the two sides had discussed technical issues for the future ministerial meeting.
“The atmosphere of today’s meeting… was such that the talks have gone smoothly without any argument,” Kim Hyung-suk told reporters in Seoul.
North Korean and South Korean officials hold key talks at Panmunjom, a military compound in the demilitarized zone between the two countries
The South’s three-person delegation – led by the director of the Unification Ministry – left Seoul just before 08:00 for Panmunjom.
Ties between the two Koreas deteriorated earlier this year in the wake of the North’s nuclear test on February 12.
Pyongyang withdrew its workers from Kaesong in April, apparently angered by tightened UN sanctions in the wake of the nuclear test and annual South Korea-US military drills.
Around 53,000 North Korean workers are employed at the Kaesong factory complex by more than 120 South Korean factories.
The zone is a key source of revenue for the North and the biggest contributor to inter-Korean trade.
Last Thursday the North offered talks with the South on the resumption of operations and said it would reconnect a Red Cross hotline if Seoul – which had been seeking such talks – agreed.
The talks closely follow a summit in California between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Both leaders agreed that North Korea had to denuclearize and that neither country would accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said on Saturday.
China is seen as a key ally of Pyongyang.
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