Koreas resume talks as Seoul sees N Korea troop movement

Senior officials from North and South Korea were on Sunday in their second day of marathon talks meant to pull the rivals back from the brink, even amid reports of unusual North Korean troop and submarine movement that Seoul said indicated continued battle preparation.

The first round of talks, which started Saturday evening and finished just before dawn Sunday, came to nothing, but the second day of diplomacy has, for the time being, pushed aside the heated warnings of imminent war.

These are the highest-level talks between the two Koreas in a year. And just the fact that senior officials from countries that have spent recent days vowing to destroy each other are sitting together at a table in Panmunjom, the border enclave where the 1953 armistice ending fighting in the Korean War, is something of a victory. The length of the first round of talks, nearly 10 hours, and the lack of immediate progress are not unusual. While the Koreas often have difficulty agreeing to <g data-gr-id="31">talks</g>, once they do, <g data-gr-id="29">overlong</g> sessions are often the rule. After decades of animosity and bloodshed, however, finding common ground is much harder.

Neither side has disclosed details about the first round of talks. The second session started Sunday 

afternoon and stretched into the night.

The decision to hold talks came hours ahead of a Saturday deadline set by North Korea for the South to dismantle loudspeakers broadcasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda at their border. North Korea had declared that its front-line troops were in full war readiness and prepared to go to battle if Seoul did not back down.

South Korea said that even as the North was pursuing dialogue, its troops were preparing for a fight.

An official from Seoul’s Defense Ministry said that about 70 percent of the North’s more than 70 submarines and undersea vehicles had left their bases and were undetectable by the South Korean military as of Saturday. The official, who refused to be named because of office rules, also said the North had doubled the strength of its front-line artillery forces since the start of the talks last evening.

The standoff is the result of a series of events that started with the explosions of <g data-gr-id="27">land mines</g> on the southern side of the Demilitarised Zone between the Koreas that Seoul says were planted by 

North Korea.