North Korea, South Korea, and the United Nations Command (UNC) held their first three-way talks on Tuesday; they were planned a month ago, when the two countries agreed on disarming the border.
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Other agreements considered removing mines in the small zones and building roads for the pilot project of excavation of the remains of the soldiers missing from the 1950-53 Korean War, which is set to start in April 2019.
Both sides also agreed to withdraw all firearms from the Joint Security Area (JSA) at Panmunjom, keeping only 35 personnel from each side in this zone and share information about their surveillance equipment. The JSA would also become one of the few areas with free access for tourists.
“Most of the operations will actually be executed by the two Koreas, but ensuring UNC support matters, as it has US elements and also manages the Military Armistice Commission,” a South Korean military source said on condition of anonymity.
North and South Korea are still technically at war, as a treaty formally ending the Korean War was never signed. However, according to the Washington Post, the two Koreas are planning to hold more bilateral talks on increasing military engagement to reduce the threat of conventional warfare, put forward a joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics on the Korean Peninsula, and about facilitating contact between families that were divided by the war more than 60 years ago.