hankyoreh

The inter-Korean joint liaison office

Forestry cooperation subcommittee talks took place on Oct. 22 at the inter-Korean joint liaison office in the Kaesong Industrial Complex as agreed upon in high-level inter-Korean talks on Oct. 15.

The senior representatives to the talks were Korea Forest Service Deputy Director Park Jong-ho on the South Korean side and Ministry of Land and Environmental Protection General Forestry Bureau Deputy Director Kim Song-jun on the North Korean side, the South Korean Ministry of Unification announced on Oct. 21.

Priority discussions reportedly focused on joint pest control efforts in border regions including Mt. Keumgang and modernization of North Korean tree nurseries – part of an effort to “achieve substantial results in forestry cooperation” as stressed by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in their Pyongyang Joint Declaration in September.

Military authorities are also moving to accelerate the process for implementing the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) according to the Panmunjom Declaration. The second round of trilateral talks involving South and North Korea and the UN Command were held on Oct. 22 at the House of Peace in Panmunjom. The second meeting took place only five days after the first.

The Ministry of National Defense has also announced that inter-Korean general-level military talks will be held at Unification House (Tongilgak) in Panmunjom on Oct. 26.

While the dates have not yet been announced, public health/healthcare subcommittee talks and athletic talks are also scheduled to take place at the Kaesong liaison office within the month.

During this week or the beginning or middle of next week at the latest, the two sides are further expected to begin a joint local examination of the Gyeongui (Seoul-Sinuiju) railway line (West Sea line), which they had initially planned to carry out on Aug. 22 before being blocked by the UN Command. In their high-level talks on Oct. 15, the two sides said they would be “beginning a joint examination of the Gyeongui line in late October,” while Blue House Spokesperson Kim Eui-kyum said on Oct. 18 that Seoul was “cooperating closely with the US” on the railway cooperation issue and expecting a “positive result.”

A South Korean government official predicted there will “not be any setbacks in the schedule South and North agreed upon.”

Indeed, the two sides have been exchanging telephone messages since the high-level talks to coordinate the schedule for the Gyeongui line survey. Sources familiar with the situation said the main issues in current inter-Korean discussions concern the survey’s schedule and start date rather than its methods. In terms of methods, the joint survey approach agreed upon in August is to be applied: a South Korean train consisting of a locomotive and six passenger and freight cars (including a conference room, sleeping car, dining car, fuel car, and water) is to depart Seoul Station and cross the Military Demarcation Line (MDL), at which point the locomotive is to be replaced with a North Korean one and North Korean officials will join the train’s journey to Sinuiju via Kaesong and Pyongyang.

But with the South insisting on a period of around ten days for the survey and North Korea maintaining it could done in six days, the two sides are expected to settle on a schedule somewhere in between.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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