Senior officials from North and South Korea meet for talks amid rising tensions

South Korea and North Korea were holding their first high-level talks in nearly a year at a border village on Saturday to defuse mounting tensions that have pushed the rivals to the brink of a possible military confrontation. The talks came shortly after an afternoon deadline set by North Korea for South Korea to dismantle loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda at their border. North Korea had declared its front-line troops are in full war readiness and prepared to go to battle if Seoul doesn’t back down.

The army and people of the DPRK are poised not just to counteract or make any retaliation but not to rule out all-out war to protect the social system, their own choice, at the risk of their lives.

North Korea Foreign Ministry

The South Korean presidential office said earlier that the country’s national security director, Kim Kwan-jin, and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo would sit down with Hwang Pyong So, the top political officer for the Korean People’s Army, and Kim Yang Gon, a senior North Korean official responsible for South Korean affairs. Hwang is considered by outside analysts to be North Korea’s second most important official after supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

I’m not sure Kim Jong Un understands the rules of the game established by his father and grandfather on how to ratchet up tensions and then ratchet them down. I’m not sure if he knows how to de-escalate.

Evans Revere, a former senior State Department official

World Korea tension