Inter-Korean Ministerial-level Talks to be Held in Pyongyang
The twentieth inter-Korean ministerial-level talks meet in Pyongyang from February 27 to March 2. They come seven months after the nineteenth round of talks held in Busan last year. Those talks came right after the North conducted its missile tests.
A group of 52 South Koreans headed by Unification Minister Lee Jae-jung will leave for Pyongyang from Gimpo Airport at 3:00 via Asiana Airlines. The South Korean government's five-member delegation will include Lee, Vice Finance-Economy Minister Chin Dong-soo, Vice Culture and Tourism Minister Park Yang-woo, and two other Unification directors.
According to a government source, the North delegation will include senior Cabinet councilor and Pyongyang's chief delegate to the inter-Korean ministerial talks Kwon Ho-eung, Ju Dong-chan, Park Jin-sik, Myeng Kyong-il, and Chon Jong-soo. The source added that major agenda items of the four-day meetings will be the South’s humanitarian assistance to the North, reunions of families separated during the Korean War, pilot-testing Kyongeui train operations, cooperation in mineral resources and light industries, and resumption of inter-Korean military meetings.
The Seoul government is also supposed to persuade Pyongyang to honestly follow the joint statement agreed upon during the six-party talks, explaining a variety of economic benefits that it will receive in return for its nuclear dismantlement. The source said that the South delegation will also negotiate the matter of the current tension on the Korean peninsula to shift it into peace.
The source added, “During the talks, we are focusing on just normalizing the inter-Korean relationship, outlining inter-Korean economic cooperation projects, and examining whether previously-agreed specifics are going well or not.”
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 / 입력시간: 2007. 02.28. 10:52
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