North Korea reopened a Red Cross hotline with South Korea on Friday and invited officials from Seoul to talks over the weekend, a further sign the North wants to improve ties after a barrage of threats to wage war this year.
On Thursday, North Korea proposed talks to normalize commercial projects, including a joint industrial zone it shut down at the height of tension in early April.
North Korea had stopped responding to calls on the Red Cross hotline in March. Another hotline, used by military officials, remains down.
“We appreciate the fact that the South side promptly and positively responded to the proposal made by us for holding talks between the authorities of both sides,” the North’s official KCNA news agency quoted a spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea as saying.
The two Koreas have not held talks since February 2011.