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SEOUL - South and North Korea have agreed to hold military talks this week amid a deadlocked nuclear disarmament deal, the South Korean defence ministry said Wednesday.
The meeting will be held on Thursday at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone dividing the Korean peninsula, the ministry said.
The North proposed last week to resume working-level military talks in a rare overture to the South.
"The North has accepted our counter-proposal to hold talks on Thursday," a ministry spokesman told AFP.
Pyongyang has suspended all government-to-government contacts with Seoul since conservative President Lee took office in February with promises of a tougher North Korea policy.
Ties soured further after North Korean soldiers in July shot dead a Seoul tourist who strayed into a restricted zone at a North Korean resort.
The North has blamed the South for the incident and refused to let it send an investigation team. Seoul cancelled tours to the resort and withdrew staff.
South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung-Soo has said he hoped the military meeting would help thaw a chill in cross-border relations. The two Koreas last held military talks in January.
The two nations have remained technically at war since their 1950-1953 war ended with an armistice and not a peace pact.
The proposal for new inter-Korean talks came after the North announced it would start work to reactivate its plutonium-producing nuclear plant in Yongbyon in violation of an international disarmament deal.
US negotiator Christopher Hill arrived in the North on Wednesday amid reports he would offer the secretive communist state a face-saving compromise to try to save a nuclear disarmament deal.
Hill crossed the heavily fortified inter-Korean border at Panmunjom around 11:00 am (0200 GMT), the US military said. - AFP/vm
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