Over at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom,... officials from South and North Korea are holding their high-level talks,... the first round since the April 27th summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
A lot of topics to hammer out,... as the two Koreas are expected to discuss ways to carry out plans stipulated in the summit agreement, the Panmunjom Declaration.
We have our Unification Ministry correspondent Oh Jung-hee, who's been following today's high-level talks,... and she joins us live at Seoul's Office for Inter-Korean Dialogue.
Jung-hee.

Good afternoon, Ji-yoon.
We're hearing that the inter-Korean high-level talks began two hours ago at 10AM sharp at the Peace House -- located on the South Korean side of the border village of Panmunjom.
The general session lasted for an hour and ended an hour ago.
Seoul has a five-member delegation led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon... and
Pyongyang, too, has a five-member delegation... led by Ri Son-kwon, the head of the North's inter-Korean affairs committee.
Take a listen to what leaders of each delegation had to say at the opening of today's talks:

"Over the past five months, the weather has changed a lot, but I think what changed even more -- in fact, incomparably -- are inter-Korean relations. We've seen things that'd take years happen in a matter of months. I think we should speed it up even more."

"Because this is the first round of high-level talks to implement the Panmunjom Declaration, I wish we could open up our meetings to reporters. Our talks are different now -- there's no more distrust, conflict or confrontation. We're all smiles. I'm pretty sure our meeting will be full of good discussions."

As you've heard, North Korea's Ri Son-gwon suggested that the talks be opened up to the reporters, saying there's nothing bad to be shared between the two delegations.
This was an unexpected suggestion from the North... and the South Korean side explained... that basic stances of each delegation will have to be exchanged first... to decide what can be opened up to the press later on.

Pyongyang's Ri Son-gwon stressed the value of trust and consideration.
He said today's high-level talks wouldn't have been held until the end of this year or even next year... if the leaders of the two Koreas hadn't met over the weekend.
It seemed that he wanted to imply that Seoul is to blame for the cancellation of the talks two weeks ago.

So for now, the delegations of Seoul and Pyongyang are done exchanging their basic views on how to implement the April 27th summit agreement.
They dealt mainly with when to hold a string of inter-Korean talks -- Red Cross talks, sports talks and military talks -- as well as holding a joint event on June 15th and establishing a joint liaison office in the North Korean city of Kaesong.
They've agreed to meet again in the afternoon after discussing the specifics among themselves.
The authorities say the atm