After South-North talks, Seoul tries to chart slow-but-steady course
Ri Son-kwon, the head of the North Korean delegation that met with South Korean negotiators on Tuesday, wanted his counterparts to know that it’s been an unusually cold winter in the North. So cold, he told them, that rivers and mountains are frozen.
“But it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that inter-Korean relations have been frozen more than the cold weather,” he said in a rhetorical flourish. “However, regardless of how cold it is, the people’s hope for the improvement of the relations between the North and the South is like the water flowing under the frozen rivers.”
It didn’t take long for signs of a much-needed thaw to emerge from the meeting held in the border village of Panmunjom. The biggest breakthrough, the North’s decision to
'The timing is perfect' Familiar pattern
