South Korea Proposes Military Talks With North at Their Border<br />By CHOE SANG-HUNJULY 17, 2017<br />SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea on Monday proposed holding military<br />and humanitarian talks with North Korea, aimed at easing tensions along their heavily armed border and arranging reunions of families divided decades ago by the Korean War.<br />The South wants to send a military delegation to the border village of Panmunjom on Friday to discuss "stopping all hostile activities<br />that raise military tension" along the border, Vice Defense Minister Suh Choo-suk said on Monday.<br />Also Monday, the South Korean Red Cross Society proposed a meeting at Panmunjom on Aug. 1 with its North Korean counterpart, to arrange reunions of relatives in the North<br />and South who have not seen each other since being separated during the 1950-53 Korean War.<br />Suh, the vice defense minister, on Monday called on the North to restore a military hotline<br />that Pyongyang cut off in 2016, amid tensions following its nuclear test in January of that year.<br />Such a meeting would be the first between the two governments since 2015 and the first inter-Korean military dialogue since 2014.<br />In past meetings, North Korea has demanded that the South stop holding joint military exercises with the United States<br />and end the use of loudspeakers to broadcast propaganda along the border.<br />North Korea has said it will not allow another round of reunions unless the South sends 12 North Korean waitresses back to the country.
