By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, left, shakes hands with Kwon Ho-ung, a senior Cabinet councilor of North Korea who headed the North’s delegation to the 17th round of inter-Korean ministerial talks, before Kwon left for Pyongyang after the end of the four-day meeting at the Lotte Hotel in Sogwipo, Cheju Island, Friday. /Korea Times
CHEJU ISLAND _ South and North Korea Friday agreed to hold a new round of inter-Korean military talks as early as possible to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
After the final session of inter-Korean Cabinet talks here, Kim Chun-sig, the South’s spokesman for the talks said that the two sides actually agreed to hold the military talks early next year.

In a nine-point joint press release adopted at the end of the four-day talks, North Korea agreed to implement at an early date the agreements of a joint statement issued at the six-nation talks on the North’s nuclear programs in Beijing last September.

The two sides agreed to cooperate to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue, the release said.

They also agreed to take steps to ``acknowledge and respect’’ each other’s ideology and system, by shedding off ``old concepts from an era of confrontation that have marred reconciliation and unity.’’

As for the inter-Korean economic cooperation, the two Koreas will expand and upgrade the level for mutual interests and prosperity and balanced development of the Korean economy, it said.

In the inter-Korean economic talks, they will discuss and try to reach a consensus on several issues such as the development of the inter-Korean industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, customs, communications and test-run of the railway link-ups across the border.

At the inter-Korean Red Cross talks to be held before next February, the two sides will tackle humanitarian issues of mutual concern, it said.

Reunion sessions for separated families through video link-ups, the third of its kind, will be held in late February, while the 13th round of face-to-face family reunion sessions will take place at Mt. Kumgang in the North in late March.

They pledged to cooperate to register the historic sites in Kaesong as the UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites as well as preserve them.

As to the promotion of taekwondo, or traditional Korean martial arts, the two Koreas will also actively support cooperation between the South’s World Taekwondo Federation and the North’s International Taekwondo Federation.

The South will hand over Pukkwan Taechop-bi, a stone monument of the Choson Kingdom (1392-1910) which it recently took back from Japan, to the North soon to restore it to its original position in the North.

South and North Korea agreed to hold the next round of inter-Korean ministerial talks on March 28-31 in Pyongyang, the North’s capital.

saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr