Speculation had been rampant that the two Koreas would soon hold a military dialogue to discuss how to ensure the safety of a North Korean delegation when it crosses the heavily fortified border via a land route on Feb. 1.

But as the two Koreas have begun to restore cross-border military communication channels, there appeared to be a sense that military dialogue could be put on hold for a while, as they have at least secured measures to prevent a miscalculation. 

The South Korean military announced last week that a military communication channel on the western side of the border had been “fully restored,” saying they fixed a glitch in the copper cable of the channel. Pyongyang severed the channel in 2016 to protest Seoul‘s shutting down of a joint industrial complex in Kaesong.

When asked about the prospect of military talks, an anonymous senior defense official told reporters last week they would “start from easy issues and proceed gradually,” as there are many issues to be dealt with between the two Koreas.

Fueling such a sense of caution is the possibility that military talks would distract public attention away from the government’s efforts to hold what it calls a “Peace Olympics” if they clash with North Korea on sensitive topics.

South Korea has focused on implementing measures to prevent accidental skirmishes along the border, particularly the region near the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the two, where the North sank a South Korean naval vessel and shelled its island of Yeonpyeongdo.

North Korea, for its part, has demanded the South do away with propaganda loudspeakers positioned along the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, which blare news of the outside world and criticism of the North’s leader Kim Jong-un, as well as South Korean pop music, toward the tightly controlled regime.

The prospect of the talks would become much grimmer if North Korea brought up the issue of South Korea’s joint military drills with the US and demands the South suspend them permanently, which would most likely be rejected.

“Inter-Korean talks and war drills can never be compatible,” Pyongyang’s propaganda website Uriminzokkiri said in a commentary on Jan. 12. “It’s nothing but an attempt to bring disaster and misfortune to our people.”

Although the US and South Korea have yet to announce when they will kick off the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises-- which ran from March 1 to April 30 last year -- the drills are widely expected to resume in early April this year, with the scale of the drills expected to be similar to last year.

(jasonyeo@heraldcorp.com)