Talking about talks a win for the Koreas

When negotiators from North and South Korea meet today, no one expects dramatic breakthroughs.

Kim Jong-un delivering his New Year's Day speech. Picture: AFP

When negotiators from North and South Korea meet at 10am today (12pm AEST), for the first time in two years, no one expects dramatic breakthroughs on the host of issues that have piled up between the neighbours.

But the mere fact they’re talking marks the first step towards detente after a dangerous period in which the drums of war beat ever louder.

The most likely positive outcome of today’s talks at the truce village of Panmunjon is an agreement to keep talking.

The talks in part vindicate the core purpose of the Olympic Games to replace war with athletic competition. For the initial subject of discussions will be the Winter Olympics taking place in PyeongChang, about 80km from the border, on February 9-25.

Seoul has invited Pyongyang to participate. North Korea has participated in previous Winter Olympics, starting in 1964. The prospect has been raised of its sending figure-skaters to PyeongChang.

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, who favours negotiation with the North but has worked hard to demonstrate loyalty to the American alliance, persuaded Donald Trump to postpone annual joint military exercises until after the Games.

In his New Year address, North Korea’s “Supreme Leader” Kim Jong-un wished success for the Winter Olympics, while also saying he had a nuclear button.

Pyongyang last week restored the hotline between the two ­Koreas that it pulled the plug on two years ago, which had forced South Korean officials to shout routine messages through a loudhailer across the border.

Agreement to maintain dialogue would mark a breakthrough in itself after two years during which the North has ratcheted up its warlike rhetoric and sped up its testing of nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the US mainland.

While welcoming the talks, Mr Trump has claimed they are a result of the pressure he applied by talking up the option of military action and by matching Kim’s ­aggressive rhetoric.

The alternative is Pyongyang wants to talk now because it’s confident in its capacity as a ­nuclear-armed state and has less to lose in diplomatic exchanges, which were predicated by the previous South Korean government on the North abandoning its ­nuclear program.

Japan is more circumspect about the discussions out of concern that any concessions to North Korea — or even the prospect of a softer approach — might lessen the pressure on Pyongyang to halt its rapid nuclearisation, which last year involved shooting two missiles over its northern island of Hokkaido. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says talks for the sake of talks are meaningless.

The leaders of the two Koreas will not take part in today’s talks, which will be led from the North by Ri Son-gwon, the head of the department for inter-Korean ­affairs, and from the South by Unification Minister Cho ­Myoung-gyon. Mr Ri will be accompanied by four other officials, including the head of the state sports agency.

It is unlikely the discussions at Panmunjon — the place of closest engagement between the two countries — will extend to the ever-tightening program of sanctions imposed by the UN on North Korea. But if Mr Moon were to pursue more comprehensive dialogue with Kim, the sanctions would inevitably join the agenda.

Before Mr Moon was elected President last May, South Korea had already withdrawn from the massive joint-venture industrial zone at Kaesong in the North and the program to send tourists over the border. Pyongyang would seek the restoration of both links.

But the item that would likely top Kim’s wishlist in any diplomatic exchange would be acceptance most importantly by Washington of North Korea’s status as a nuclear-armed state.