South Korea's unification minister Hyun In-taek met with his counterpart from Pyongyang on Saturday in the first high-level cross-border contact in nearly two years.
Hyun held talks with Kim Yang-gon, head of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s Workers' Party unification front department and a key figure in inter-Korean relations.
Kim and his five other DPRK officials were in Seoul for paying respects to late former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung on Friday.
"Now that we meet here, I'm going to raise inter-Korean issues, " Hyun said while he arrived at a hotel where the DPRK team is staying.
Asked by a reporter what message he would send in the closed- door meeting, Hyun said, "I'm the minister in charge of inter- Korean relations, and I think this meeting itself is a message."
The meeting was the first high-level inter-Korean dialogue since the inauguration of South Korea's Lee Myung-bak administration in February last year. |
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