Senior officials from North Korea and South Korea met yesterday at the historic border village of Panmunjom in their highest-level talks in years.

North Korea’s request for the conference was greeted as a “pleasant surprise” by the South and a potential signal that Pyongyang wants better ties and the resumption of co-operative projects.

Later this month, the two Koreas are due to reunite families separated since the 1950-53 Korean war. They would be the first such reunions in more than three years.

Yesterday’s meeting began with no fixed agenda, but South Korea said that it wanted to discuss ways to make the reunions run smoothly and whether to pursue them regularly, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

North Korea cancelled planned reunions at the last minute in September and recently threatened to scrap this month’s reunions because of provocative US and South Korean military drills.

South Korea has so far dismissed northern proposals for measures Pyongyang insists are needed in order to ease tensions, saying the North must first take nuclear disarmament steps.

Wariness in Seoul is high because of a weeks-long barrage of threats from Pyongyang last spring amid world condemnation of its third nuclear test. 

Pyongyang has repeatedly vowed to expand its nuclear arsenal, but most experts say the country has yet to master the technology needed to mount an atomic bomb on a missile.

The South Korean delegation is led by vice-ministerial-level Kim Kyou-hyun, a national security official with the presidential Blue House.

The North Korean delegation is headed by senior ruling Workers’ Party official Won Tong-yon, who specialises in ties with Seoul.

North Korea had demanded South Korea send a senior Blue House official to the meeting.

The two states last held a series of high-level meetings in 2007, including a second summit of their leaders.

Nuclear envoys met in 2011 at a regional security forum in Indonesia but, since then, ties have become more fraught.