SEOUL – North Korea on Wednesday reopened a cross-border hotline and sought talks on strengthening business projects with South Korea, continuing apparent peace overtures made after months of high tensions.
The South stuck to its conditions for any talks – that the North take responsibility for provocations including a deadly artillery attack and confirm it is serious about scrapping its nuclear programme. “Our stance remains unchanged,” said Lee Jong-Joo, spokeswoman for Seoul’s unification ministry, after confirming that the North Wednesday sent an official message seeking economic dialogue.
She told AFP the North wants talks next month on restarting cross-border tours to its Mount Kumgang resort and on improving cooperation at the Kaesong industrial estate also in the North. Both the jointly-run projects have been valuable sources of hard currency for the cash-strapped communist state. The South halted the tours to Kumgang in July 2008 after a soldier shot dead a visiting Seoul housewife.
Liaison officials of the two countries made their first contact in nearly eight months through the phone hotline at the border village of Panmunjom.
The North shut down the Red Cross hotline last May after South Korea announced reprisals for what it said was a North Korean torpedo attack on a warship.
The North denied involvement in the sinking, which killed 46 sailors. Tensions rose to their highest level for years when the North on November 23 shelled a South Korean border island, killing four people including civilians. But in a change of tack this year, the Pyongyang regime has been calling for dialogue. On Monday it sent its first official proposal for talks and said it would restore the hotline, long used as an official communications channel.
The South rejected that proposal and stated its terms for any government-level dialogue. Seoul says Pyongyang’s overtures are a cosmetic exercise to improve its international image.
Spokeswoman Lee said the ministry did not see the reopening of the cross-border phone link as representing an improvement in relations.
