Reclusive North Korea’s decision comes amid easing tensions between North and South, technically still at war after their 1950-53 civil conflict ended in a mere truce, not a treaty.

The two sides agreed last week to reopen a jointly-run industrial complex inside the North, which was abruptly closed in April at the height of tensions, with the North threatening nuclear attack on the South and on the United States.

The North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement carried by KCNA news agency on Sunday the two sides should work together to resume family reunions.

If the token and highly choreographed reunions are held, they would be the first in nearly three years, with grieving family members falling in number due to old age.

“The reunion of separated families and their relatives shall be made in Mountain Kumgang resort on the occasion of the upcoming Harvest Moon Day,” a committee spokesman said.

Pyongyang and Seoul would arrange details of the event including dates and venue through working-level talks on Friday, the statement added.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it took the North’s offer positively but asked for a change of venue.

“We would like the venue of meeting to be at the truce village of Panmunjom as we initially proposed, ” ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk told reporters.

An American Christian missionary imprisoned in North Korea is in deteriorating health and has been moved from a prison work camp to a hospital within the past two weeks, his sister said at a vigil for her brother on Saturday.

Kenneth Bae was sentenced in May to 15 years of hard labour after North Korea’s Supreme Court convicted him of state subversion. The court said Bae, 45, had used his tourism business to form groups to overthrow the government.

Bae was detained in November as he led a tour group through the northern region of the country. His sentencing came amid acrimonious relations between Pyongyang and Washington over the reclusive state’s nuclear program.

Bae’s sister Terri Chung said that her brother had until recently been held at a prison for foreigners and put to work ploughing and planting fields.

However, he is suffering from a range of health problems including an enlarged heart and chronic diabetes as well as back and leg pain, necessitating his transfer to a state hospital, she said.

Chung said she learned of her brother’s transfer from the Swedish ambassador to North Korea, who visited Bae on Friday. The ambassador, who has met with Bae a handful of times since his detention, has been his only foreign visitor, Chung said.

Chung’s comments came at a prayer vigil for Bae at a Seattle Church on Saturday evening attended by more than 100 friends, family and supporters. Chung also read from a letter sent by Bae to his supporters written on June 13, in which he encouraged them to push his case with American officials.

“The only way I can be free to return home is by obtaining amnesty,” Bae wrote. “In order for that to happen it will take more active efforts from the US government side.”

Two American journalists arrested in 2009 by North Korea and held until former president Bill Clinton travelled there to negotiate their release were organising a satellite vigil in New York, one of the journalists, Euna Lee said.

North Korea has in the past used the release of high-profile American prisoners as a means of garnering a form of prestige or acceptance by portraying visiting dignitaries as paying homage to the country and its leader.

That pattern has complicated the response of US lawmakers and the State Department, which has called for Bae’s immediate release on “humanitarian grounds”, but resisted sending high-profile envoys to negotiate, as it has done in the past.

An internet petition started by Bae’s son urging US President Barack Obama to secure a “Special Amnesty” for Bae has garnered nearly 8,000 signatures.

There have been other calls for his release, such as a Twitter message from former basketball player Dennis Rodman, who visited North Korea in February, but Chung said US officials have assured her they are pursuing quieter clemency efforts.

Reports last month that former US President Jimmy Carter was set to visit North Korea to negotiate for Bae were ultimately denied as false.

Bae, a naturalised US citizen born in South Korea who moved to the United States with his family in 1985, has spent much of the last seven years in China, where he started a business leading tour groups into the northern region of North Korea, Chung said.

SEOUL, South Korea: Government delegates from North andSouth Korea held a marathon session of preparatory talks Sunday at a “truce village” on their heavily armed border aimed at setting ground rules for a higher-level discussion on easing animosity and restoring stalled rapprochement projects.

The meeting at Panmunjom, where the armistice agreement ending fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War was signed, was the first of its kind on the Korean Peninsula in more than two years. Success will be judged on whether the delegates can pave the way for a meeting between the ministers of each country’s department for cross-border affairs. Such ministerial talks haven’t happened since 2007.

South Korea has proposed they take place Wednesday in Seoul.

There was still no agreement early Monday morning, more than 15 hours after the delegates began discussions Sunday morning, although South Korean officials earlier seemed confident that they would eventually work out an accord on the ministerial talks.

The South Korean Unification Ministry, which is in charge of North Korea matters, sent reporters a brief text early Monday saying an agreement is being delayed because of an unspecified disagreement over the agenda. But there was no elaboration and it was unclear if a new round of talks would be held Monday.

The intense media interest in the bureaucrats’ meeting is an indication of how bad relations between the Koreas have been. Any dialogue is an improvement on the belligerence that has marked the relationship over recent months and years.

Earlier this year, North Korea threatened nuclear war, claimed that the Korean War armistice was void, closed a jointly run factory park and vowed to ramp up production of nuclear bomb fuel. That followed a North Korean nuclear test and long-range rocket launches and, earlier, attacks blamed on the North that killed 50 South Koreans in 2010.

“Today’s working-level talks will be a chance to take care of administrative and technical issues in order to successfully host the ministers’ talks,” one of the South Korean delegates, Unification Policy Officer Chun Hae-sung, said in Seoul early Sunday before the group’s departure for Panmunjom.

He said the southern delegation will keep in mind “that the development of South and North Korean relations starts from little things and gradual trust-building.”

The delegates in the morning discussed the agenda for the ministerial meeting, location, date, the number of participants and how long they will stay in Seoul, if the meeting is held there, said the Unification Ministry.

Reporters weren’t allowed at the venue.

SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea on Friday proposed working-level talks with South Korea to be held in a border city on Sunday as the rivals look to mend ties that have plunged during recent years amid hardline stances by both countries.

In another sign of easing tensions ahead of the proposed meeting,Pyongyang said in a statement that it would reopen a Red Cross communication line with South Korea in their truce village later Friday. The North shut the communication line in March during a tense period marked by North Korean threats of war and South Korean counter-threats.

The statement by an unidentified spokesman for the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, which handles relations with Seoul, followed the countries’ agreement Thursday to hold talks on reopening a jointly run factory complex and possibly other issues. The easing tension also comes ahead of a summit by the leaders of China and the United States in which the North is expected to be a key topic.

South Korea in April proposed government-level talks about the factory complex and on Thursday suggested holding ministerial talks in Seoul on Wednesday. But the North Korean statement said that working-level talks are needed before any higher-level meetings “in the light of the prevailing situation in which the bilateral relations have been stalemated for years and mistrust has reached the extremity.”

The envisioned talks, which Pyongyang is proposing be held in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, could help ease tensions, but the topic of ridding the North of its nuclear weapons program is not up for debate.

A key issue is finding a way to reopen the factory complex in Kaesong, which is just north of the Demilitarized Zone separating the countries.

The decade-old Kaesong complex, the product of an era of inter-Korean cooperation, shut down gradually after Pyongyang cut border communications and access, then pulled the complex’s 53,000 North Korean workers. The last South Korean managers at Kaesong left last month.

PYONGYANG, North Korea: Despite North Korea’s warnings that the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula is so high it cannot guarantee the safety of foreign residents, it literally trotted out athletes from around the world on Sunday for a marathon through the streets of its capital — suggesting its concerns of an imminent military crisis might not be as dire as its official pronouncements proclaim.

As it prepares to celebrate its most important holiday of the year, the birthday of national founder Kim Il Sung on Monday, the mixed message — threats of a “thermonuclear war” while showcasing foreign athletes and even encouraging tourism — was particularly striking on Sunday.

Pyongyang crowds lined the streets to watch athletes from 16 nations compete in the 26th Mangyongdae Prize Marathon in the morning and then filled a performance hall for a gala concert featuring ethnic Korean performers brought in from China, Russia and Japan as part of a slew of a events culminating in Kim’s birthday — called the “Day of the Sun.”

After racing through the capital, the foreign athletes and hundreds of North Korean runners were cheered into Kim Il Sung Stadium by tens of thousands of North Korean spectators. North Korea’s official media said the marathon was larger than previous years and that enthusiasm was “high among local marathoners and their coaches as never before.”

“The feeling is like, I came last year already, the situation is the same,” said Taiwan’s Chang Chia-che, who finished 15th.

Showing off foreign athletes and performers as part of the birthday celebrations has a propaganda value that is part of Pyongyang’s motivation for highlighting the events to its public, even as it rattles its sabers to the outside world. In recent weeks, Pyongyang has said it could not vouch for the safety of foreigners, indicated embassies consider evacuation plans and urged foreigners residing in South Korea to get out as well.

But there does not appear to be much of a sense of crisis among the general population, either.

Pyongyang residents are mobilizing en masse for the events marking the birthday, rushing to tidy up streets, put new layers of paint on buildings and erect posters and banners hailing Kim, the grandfather of the country’s new dynastic leader, Kim Jong Un.

Pyongyang’s statements are commonly marked by alarming hyperbole and it has not ordered the small number of foreigners who are here to leave. Several embassies in Pyongyang refused to comment on the suggestion they consider evacuating, referring questions back to their home countries. But there were no reports that any diplomatic missions had actually left.

Even so, its warning has heightened concerns in a region struggling to assess how seriously to take North Korea’s recent torrent of angry rhetoric over ongoing U.S.-South Korea military maneuvers just across the border. Officials in South Korea, the United States and Japan say intelligence indicates that, fresh off a successful nuclear test in February, North Korea’s leaders are ready to launch a new medium-range missile.

North Korea has also taken the unusual move of suspending work at the Kaesong factory complex on its side of the Demilitarized Zone, a major source of foreign currency and one of the last remaining symbols of inter-Korean rapprochement.

On Sunday, it rejected South Korea’s proposal to resolve tensions through dialogue. It said it has no intension of talking with Seoul unless it abandons what it called the rival South’s confrontational posture.

Secretary of State John Kerry, in the region to coordinate the response with U.S. allies and China, warned North Korea not to conduct a missile test, saying it will be an act of provocation that “will raise people’s temperatures” and further isolate the country and its people.

Kerry was in Tokyo on Sunday after meeting with Chinese leaders in Beijing on Saturday. In Tokyo, Kerry and Japan’s foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, opened the door to direct talks with North Korea if certain conditions are met. Kerry said the U.S. was “prepared to reach out” to North Korea, but that Pyongyang must first lower tensions and honor previous agreements.

North Korea has issued no specific warnings to ships and aircraft that a missile test is imminent, and is also continuing efforts to increase tourism.

“We haven’t experienced any change,” said Andrea Lee, president and CEO of Uri Tours, which specializes in bringing tourists to North Korea. “They have been encouraging us to bring in more people.”

Lee said about 2,000-3,000 Western tourists visit North Korea each year and that the level is rising, though the recent tensions have sparked a significant number of cancellations. Air Koryo, North Korea’s flag-carrier, announced it is planning to add more regular passenger flights to and from Beijing, another sign that Pyongyang — while certainly not ready to throw open its doors — wants to make it easier for tourists to put North Korea on their travel itineraries.

“I never considered canceling,” said Sandra Cook, a retired economics professor from Piedmont, California, who planned her trip in November, before the tensions escalated. “I think it is a particularly interesting time to be here.”

With Lee as her guide, Cook and several other Americans and Canadians toured the North Korean side of the DMZ, Kaesong and a collective farm. She said that aside from the North Korean DMZ guides’ harsh portrayal of the “American imperialists'” role in the Korean War and on the peninsula today, she was surprised by the seeming calm and normalcy of what she has been allowed to see.

“The whole world is watching North Korea, and there we were yesterday peacefully strolling along the river in the sunshine. It’s surreal,” she said. “If you didn’t know about the tensions, you would never know it. You would think everything is fine. The place feels so ordinary.”

WASHINGTON: A U.S. intelligence report concludes thatNorth Korea has advanced its nuclear knowhow to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, a jarring revelation in the midst of bellicose threats from the unpredictable communist regime.

President Barack Obama urged calm, calling on Pyongyang to end its saber-rattling while sternly warning that he would “take all necessary steps” to protect American citizens.

The new American intelligence analysis, disclosed Thursday at a hearing on Capitol Hill, says the Pentagon’s intelligence wing has “moderate confidence” that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles but that the weapon was unreliable.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., read aloud what he said was an unclassified paragraph from a secret Defense Intelligence Agency report that was supplied to some members of Congress. The reading seemed to take Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by surprise, who said he hadn’t seen the report and declined to answer questions about it.

In a statement late Thursday, Pentagon press secretary George Little said: “While I cannot speak to all the details of a report that is classified in its entirety, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced” in Lamborn’s remarks.

‘”The United States continues to closely monitor the North Korean nuclear program and calls upon North Korea to honor its international obligations,” Little added.

Still later Thursday, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, issued his own statement, saying he concurred with Little.

“I would add that the statement read by the member (Lamborn) is not an intelligence community assessment. Moreover, North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile,” Clapper said.

The DIA conclusion was confirmed by a senior congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Pentagon had not officially released the contents. The aide said the report was produced in March.

Since the beginning of March, the Navy has moved two missile defense ships closer to the coast of the Korean peninsula, in part to protect against a potential missile launch aimed at Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific. The Pentagon also has announced it will place a more advanced land-based missile defense on Guam, and Hagel said in March that he approved installing 14 additional missile interceptors in Alaska to bolster a portion of the missile defense network that is designed to protect all of U.S. territory.

On Thursday, the Pentagon said it had moved a sea-based X-band radar — designed to track warheads in flight — into position in the Pacific.

Notably absent from that unclassified segment of the report was any reference to what the DIA believes is the range of a missile North Korea could arm with a nuclear warhead. Much of its missile arsenal is capable of reaching South Korea and Japan, but Kim has threatened to attack the United States as well.

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing in which he revealed the DIA assessment, Lamborn asked Dempsey, whether he agreed with it. Dempsey said he had not seen the report.

BEIJING/SEOUL: China deplored rising tension on the Korean peninsula on Sunday, but said its embassy was operating normally in the North Korean capital and asked authorities there to ensure its diplomats and other citizens were kept safe.

North Korea, angry at new sanctions imposed on it for testing nuclear weapons, has made increasingly strident warnings of an imminent war with South Korea and the United States.

It told diplomats on Friday to consider leaving Pyongyang because of rising tension, but diplomatic missions appeared to view the appeal as more rhetoric and stayed put.

The United States, keen to avoid actions which could provoke the North, on Saturday postponed a long-scheduled missile test in California.

China is North Korea’s sole major diplomatic and financial backer, but official statements have reflected a degree of impatience at the actions of authorities under 30-year-old leader Kim Jong-un.

“At present tensions on the Korean peninsula are rising unceasingly, and China expresses grave concern about this,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on its website (www.mfa.gov.cn).

“The Chinese government has already asked the North Korea side to earnestly ensure the safety of Chinese diplomats in North Korea, in accordance with the Vienna Convention and international laws and norms.”

The Chinese embassy, it said, was “understood” to be operating normally in Pyongyang. China would “protect the legal rights and safety of Chinese citizens and Chinese-invested organizations in North Korea”.

A ministry statement late on Saturday quoting Foreign Minister Wang Yi, said Beijing would “not allow troublemaking on China’s doorstep”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, addressing a forum on Sunday, appeared to refer further to boosted tensions when he said no country “should be allowed to throw a region and even the whole world into chaos for selfish gain”.

“Stability in Asia now faces new challenges, as hot spot issues keep emerging and both traditional and non-traditional security threats exist,” he said on the southern island of Hainan.

“LOGICAL, PRUDENT, RESPONSIBLE”

In Washington, a defense official said a test of the Minuteman III intercontinental missile, scheduled for next week at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, would now be postponed.

“This is the logical, prudent and responsible course of action to take,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He said the test had been unconnected to “anything related to North Korea” and added that another test launch could be expected next month. The United States remained fully prepared to respond to any North Korean threat, the official said.

North Korean anger over the sanctions following its third nuclear weapons test in February has been compounded by joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises that began on March 1.

North Korea has always condemned the exercises held by U.S. forces and their South Korean allies. But its comments have been especially vitriolic this year as the United States dispatched B-2 bombers from its home bases to stage mock runs.

China’s Xinhua news agency, reporting on the North’s suggestion to diplomats to evacuate, quoted the North’s Foreign Ministry at the weekend as saying the issue was no longer whether but when a war would break out.

SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea warned Seoul on Saturday that the Korean Peninsula was entering “a state of war” and threatened to shut down a border factory complex that’s the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

Analysts say a full-scale conflict is extremely unlikely, noting that the Korean Peninsula has remained in a technical state of war for 60 years. But the North’s continued threats toward Seoul and Washington, including a vow to launch a nuclear strike, have raised worries that a misjudgment between the sides could lead to a clash.

North Korea’s threats are seen as efforts to provoke the new government in Seoul, led by President Park Geun-hye, to change its policies toward Pyongyang, and to win diplomatic talks with Washington that could get it more aid. North Korea’s moves are also seen as ways to build domestic unity as young leader Kim Jong Un strengthens his military credentials.

On Thursday, U.S. military officials revealed that two B-2 stealth bombers dropped dummy munitions on an uninhabited South Korean island as part of annual defense drills that Pyongyang sees as rehearsals for invasion. Hours later, Kim ordered his generals to put rockets on standby and threatened to strike American targets if provoked.

North Korea said in a statement Saturday that it would deal with South Korea according to “wartime regulations” and would retaliate against any provocations by the United States and South Korea without notice.

“Now that the revolutionary armed forces of the DPRK have entered into an actual military action, the inter-Korean relations have naturally entered the state of war,” said the statement, which was carried by Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency, referring to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Provocations “will not be limited to a local war, but develop into an all-out war, a nuclear war,” the statement said.

Hours after the statement, Pyongyang threatened to shut down the jointly run Kaesong industrial park, expressing anger over media reports suggesting the complex remained open because it was a source of hard currency for the impoverished North.

“If the puppet group seeks to tarnish the image of the DPRK even a bit, while speaking of the zone whose operation has been barely maintained, we will shut down the zone without mercy,” an identified spokesman for the North’s office controlling Kaesong said in comments carried by KCNA.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry responded by calling the North Korean threat “unhelpful” to the countries’ already frayed relations and vowed to ensure the safety of hundreds of South Korean managers who cross the border to their jobs in Kaesong. It did not elaborate.

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said the country’s military remains mindful of the possibility that increasing North Korean drills near the border could lead to an actual provocation.

“The series of North Korean threats — announcing all-out war, scrapping the cease-fire agreement and the non-aggression agreement between the South and the North, cutting the military hotline, entering into combat posture No. 1 and entering a ‘state of war’ — are unacceptable and harm the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula,” Kim said.

“We are maintaining full military readiness in order to protect our people’s lives and security,” he told reporters Saturday.

Naval skirmishes in the disputed waters off the Korean coast have led to bloody battles several times over the years.

But on the streets of Seoul on Saturday, South Koreans said they were not worried about an attack from North Korea.

“From other countries’ point of view, it may seem like an extremely urgent situation,” said Kang Tae-hwan, a private tutor. “But South Koreans don’t seem to be that nervous because we’ve heard these threats from the North before.”

The Kaesong industrial park, which is run with North Korean labor and South Korean know-how, has been operating normally, despite Pyongyang shutting down a communications channel typically used to coordinate travel by South Korean workers to and from the park just across the border in North Korea. The rivals are now coordinating the travel indirectly, through an office at Kaesong that has outside lines to South Korea.

North Korea has previously made such threats about Kaesong without acting on them, and recent weeks have seen a torrent of bellicose rhetoric from Pyongyang. North Korea is angry about the South Korea-U.S. military drills and new U.N. sanctions over its nuclear test last month.

Dozens of South Korean firms run factories in the border town of Kaesong. Using North Korea’s cheap, efficient labor, the Kaesong complex produced $470 million worth of goods last year.

SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea said Wednesday that it had cut off a key military hotline with South Korea that allows cross border travel to a jointly run industrial complex in the North, a move that ratchets up already high tension and possibly jeopardizes the last major symbol of inter-Korean cooperation.

North Korea recently cut a Red Cross hotline with South Korean and another with the U.S.-led U.N. command at the border between the Koreas, but there’s still a hotline linking aviation authorities in the North and South.

North Korea’s chief delegate to inter-Korean military made the announcement Wednesday in a statement sent to his South Korean counterpart. The hotline is important because the Koreas use it to communicate as hundreds of workers travel back and forth to theKaesong industrial complex.

South Korean officials say more than 900 South Korean workerswere in Kaesong on Wednesday. There was no immediate word about how cutting the communications link would affect their travel back to South Korea.

North Korea, angry over routine U.S.-South Korean drills and recent U.N. sanctions punishing it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test, has unleashed a torrent of threats recently, including vows to launch a nuclear strike against the United States. It has also repeated its nearly two-decade-old threat to reduce Seoul to a “sea of fire.”

Despite the rhetoric, outside weapons analysts have seen no proof that North Korea has mastered the technology needed to build a warhead small enough to mount on a missile.

Still, the cutting of the hotline could be more significant if it affects travel by the workers at Kaesong.

Kaesong is operated in North Korea with South Korean money and know-how and a mostly North Korean workforce. It provides a badly needed flow of hard currency to a country where many face food shortages.

The complex is the only remaining operational symbol of joint inter-Korean cooperation.

In March 2009, North Korea cut off the military hotline with South Korea and kept 80 South Korean workers stranded in Kaesong for a day. The cross-border travel resumed after North Korean authorities approved it through a South Korean office in Kaesong. The military hotline remained cut off for more than a week and was reconnected following the end of annual South Korean-U.S. military drills.

BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping told his South Korean counterpart on Wednesday Beijing is willing to help “reconciliation” between Seoul and Pyongyang, China’s foreign ministry said on its website.

“China is willing to provide the necessary assistance to advance South-North reconciliation and cooperation,” Xi told Park Geun-Hye in a phone call, according to the ministry statement. China is the North’s sole major ally.