Koreas plan 2nd day of high-level talks to defuse war fears

Kirk Spitzer | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption 5 reasons North and South Korea are on the brink of war North and South Korea have been in a pseudo state of war since the Korean War ended in 1953. Here are five things to know about their most recent conflict.

TOKYO — After meeting for the first time in nearly a year, senior officials from North Korea and South Korea plan a second round of talks Sunday at the truce village of Panmunjom in an effort to end a standoff that threatened to escalate into a full-scale military confrontation.

South Korean presidential spokesman Min Kyung-wook said Saturday's initial meeting adjourned at 4:15 a.m. Sunday and the two delegations will resume talks at 3 p.m. (2 a.m. EDT), according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency. He did not disclose any other details about the talks.

Saturday's meeting began shortly after a deadline set by Pyongyang earlier this week for South Korea to remove loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korea messages across the border.

The deadline passed without incident Saturday and the discussions stretched into the early hours of Sunday morning. Lengthy talks between the two Koreas are not unusual.

Koreas hold high-level talks to defuse war fears Senior officials from both North and South Korea are meeting for the first time in nearly a year. The officials are meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom in the hopes of ending a recent standoff.

Tensions had been rising on the heavily armed Korean Peninsula since the two countries exchanged artillery fire Thursday. North Korea had said it was mobilizing troops and threatened "all-out war" if South Korea did not halt the propaganda broadcasts.

Seoul had resumed the broadcasts after an 11-year hiatus following the wounding of two South Korean soldiers by a North Korean land mine earlier this month.

About 28,500 American troops are based in South Korea, many of them close to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which separates the two countries. North Korea and South Korea technically remain at war after the Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The two neighbors have periodically clashed — sometimes with deadly consequences.

U.S. and South Korean troops have been on heightened alert since the land mine incident. By coincidence, about 80,000 U.S. and South Korean troops are engaged in an annual training exercise along the border area this week.

Robert Kelly, an associate professor of political science and diplomacy at Pusan National University in South Korea, said the talks give North Korea a face-saving way to de-escalate the crisis. He said that strategy fits a pattern of North Korean behavior.

"They really don't want to have a war because they know they're going to lose," said Kelly. "They have to gin up some kind of a crisis every few years or so to justify their regime. If there's no tension with South Korea, if there's no 'hostile policies of the Americans,' then there's no reason for that regime to exist."

South Korea's national security director and unification minister met Saturday with the top political officer for North Korea's military and with the country's top official for South Korean affairs.

"They'll talk for maybe a week and the North will walk away in a huff, and then we'll go back to the status quo," Kelly said.

The artillery exchange last week was just the latest in a series of confrontations between the two countries in recent years. The deadliest of those occurred in November 2010, when North Korea bombarded the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, killing two soldiers and two civilians.

In March of the same year, a South Korean patrol ship was sunk with a loss of 46 sailors. North Korea denied responsibility, but international investigators concluded that the ship was sunk by a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine.

More recently, North Korea also denied responsibility for the wounding of two South Korean soldiers patrolling the DMZ on Aug. 4. An investigation by the United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission, however, concluded the soldiers were wounded by "wooden box mines" that had been deliberately planted by North Korean soldiers along a patrol route known to be used by South Korean troops.

In a speech earlier this year, the top U.S. commander in South Korea, Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, warned of North Korea's growing "asymmetric" military capabilities, including nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and cyber warfare.

"These capabilities coupled with a large, albeit aging, conventional force, controlled by a young, inexperienced leader, present a dangerous and evolving threat to the Republic of Korea and the region," Scaparrotti said.