ABCNews.com(PYEONGCHANG, South Korea) — Officials from North and South Korea will meet this week to discuss again North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics amid cooling tensions between the two, but the North warned it could choose to cut off its cooperation at any time.
North Korea Monday proposed the working-level talks for Wednesday during a meeting between the two sides, according to the South Korean Unification Ministry, which said it accepted the proposal.
Officials from the two Koreas met Monday to iron out details about the North’s plan to send a delegation to the South during next month’s Winter Olympic in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
During Monday’s talks, a follow-up to a breakthrough meeting with high-level officials from both sides last week, North Korea said it would send three delegates to attend Wednesday’s meeting.
The two sides met today on the southern side of Panmunjom, a demilitarized zone known as the truce village. It was the second such meeting in less than seven days.
But the relationship between the two Koreas is still a complicated one, which North Korea proved Sunday when it indirectly threatened to pull out of the Olympics to protest what it called South Korea’s “sordid acts of chilling” reconciliation efforts, North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency said.
“They should know that train and bus carrying our delegation to the Olympics are still in Pyongyang,” Korean Central News Agency said. “The South Korean authorities had better ponder over what unfavorable results may be entailed by their impolite behavior.”
The Korean Central News Agency also criticized South Korean president Moon Jae-in for suggesting that President Donald Trump deserved credit for bringing the two sides together.
“The South Korean leader shouldn’t be caught up in illusions,” the media agency said, referring to Moon’s comments on Trump. “We will, as ever, strive to improve the North-South ties but will never remain an onlooker to sordid acts of chilling the efforts.”
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