SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea agreed to lift its “semi-state of war” with South Korea at the same time as the South halts propaganda broadcasts across their heavily fortified border, ending a standoff that roiled financial markets in Seoul.
Marathon high-level talks aimed at defusing tensions in the demilitarized zone finally ended in agreement, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday morning, echoing televised remarks moments earlier by South Korea’s presidential security adviser Kim Kwan Jin. The two sides will seek to resume the reunions of families separated by the Korean War, while North Korea expressed its regret over Aug. 4 mine explosions that maimed two South Korean soldiers.
“The big crisis is off,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said by phone. “Both sides have taken steps back under pressure from each other. The mood will now start to shift from tension to talks.”
The uneasy 62-year truce since the end of the Korean War is periodically disrupted by exchanges of fire that peter out without escalating, though the unpredictable nature of the North Korean regime has often kept tensions high.
The two countries will hold government-level talks in the near future in either Seoul or Pyongyang, Kim said. South Korea will halt its propaganda broadcasts at noon on Tuesday, he said.
Negotiations at the border village of Panmunjom had stretched for more than 43 hours, spread over about three days, and coincided with the mobilization of forces on both sides. The two sides exchanged fire across the border on Thursday, South Korea said, though North Korea denied it fired.
The standoff exacerbated the turmoil in South Korea’s financial markets, triggering a selloff that sent the Korean won to a four-year low and drained more than $900 million from Korean equities in a week.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Monday said South Korea should “never back off” in the standoff with North Korea and that she would seek a clear apology over the mine blasts that prompted South Korea to resume the propaganda broadcasts. North Korea earlier denied setting the devices.
“She didn’t get that clear apology,” Yang said. “But she got the family reunions and the pledge to increase civilian exchanges.”
Park has called for measures to build trust, starting with small-scale gestures such as bringing together estranged relatives from the two sides. That, in turn, could be the base for greater political reconciliation.
Her strategy has been to pledge large-scale economic assistance on condition that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shows he’s serious about ending his nuclear ambitions and penchant for provocative behavior.
“the U.S. and South Korea should not bet on North Korea’s lies and instead hit Pyongyang where it hurts: palace coffers and cult of personality,” Lee Sung-yoon, a professor of Korean studies at Tufts University, said by email after the talks ended. “The alternative is to fall prey yet again to Pyongyang’s pattern of provocation-negotiation-concession and live with an ever-growing threat.”
Kim has defied international pressure by conducting North Korea’s third nuclear test. He declared a state of war in the aftermath of the detonation in 2013 and purged a series of officials to consolidate his grip on power after taking over the country in late 2011. On Tuesday he marks the day of Songun, a military-first policy chartered by his father, while Park passes the midpoint of her single, five-year term.
The crisis on the Korean Peninsula tested Park’s crisis-management skills as she tried to prevent tensions with North Korea from erupting into open conflict while shoring up the economy that showed signs of slowing after the spread of the Middle East respiratory syndrome earlier this year.
“She’s doing pretty good on North Korea,” said Robert Kelly, an international relations professor at Pusan National University in South Korea. “She didn’t get rattled. She stood up to that deadline. You gotta be tough with the North. You can’t roll over.”
