Two Koreas to hold talks at Tongil-gak Monday

Two Koreas to hold talks at Tongil-gak Monday. January. 15, 2018 08:15. by Jin-Woo Shin niceshin@donga.com.

Two Koreas will hold a working-level dialogue Monday at Tongil-gak located in Panmunjom, the so-called truce village in the DMZ, to discuss North Korea’s sending of performance artists to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The two countries alternately held talks in their own country based on custom. As high-level inter-Korean talks were held Tuesday at Peace House on the South Korean side of Panmunjom, the dialogue is to take place at Tongil-gak on the North Korean side this time.

Tongil-gak is a 1500m²-wide, two-storied building built on the northern side of the Joint Security Area. Kim Jung-il named the building himself in 1985. When a fire broke out during the internal construction of the building in 2012, a fire truck at the Kaesong Industrial Complex extinguished the fire.

South Korea enjoyed the benefit of hosting the Tuesday talks, as it was able to closely monitor North Korean delegates at the Office of Inter-Korean Dialogue and the South Korean presidential office Cheong Wa Dae through the CCTV installed at Peace House. The opposite will happen on Monday as North Korea can have the benefit through the CCTV at Tongil-gak. South Korea will only be able to transmit the sound of the dialogue in real-time. According to a government source, “Tongil-gak has equally advanced CCTVs as Peace House.”