Officers from two Koreas to meet for high-level military talks

Officers from the two Koreas will meet later this week to set up the first high-level military talks between the two sides since 2004, the South's Defense Ministry said Monday. This week's meeting, set for Friday at the border truce village of Panmunjom, is aimed at arranging details for more extensive general-level talks that the two sides agreed to resume "soon" at Cabinet-level talks in December, the ministry said in a statement.

The second and last round of high-level military talks were held in June 2004. However, the process was suspended along with other inter-Korean contacts as North Korea disputed a mass defection the following month by hundreds of its citizens to the South.

Exchanges between the two sides later resumed, but the military talks have still been on hold. The two Koreas share the world's most heavily fortified border and remain technically at war, because no peace treaty was signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. However, tensions between the two sides have lessened since a 2000 summit between leaders of the countries that paved the way to cooperation projects, reports the AP. I.L.