North and South Korea prepare to negotiate directly after years of mistrust

North and South Korea will sit down to their first talks for years on Sunday, confronting decades of mutual distrust in an apparent search for some positive end to months of soaring military tensions.

The working-level discussions in the border truce village of Panmunjom are intended to pave the way for ministerial-level talks in Seoul on Wednesday.

The agenda is focused on restoring suspended commercial links, including the Kaesong joint industrial complex that the North effectively shut down in April as tensions between the historic rivals peaked.

The talks came about after an unexpected reversal on Thursday from North Korea which suddenly dropped its default tone of high-decibel belligerence and proposed opening a dialogue.

South Korea responded swiftly with its offer of a ministerial meeting in Seoul, the North countered with a request for lower-level talks first and -- after some relatively benign to-and-fro about the best venue -- Sunday's meet in Panmunjom was agreed.

In a further signal of intent, North Korea on Friday restored its official hotline with the South which it had severed in March.

The two Koreas last held working talks in February 2011 -- a military dialogue that collapsed after a day -- and they have not met at the ministerial level since 2007.

The move towards dialogue has been broadly welcomed -- given the threats of nuclear war that were being flung around in April and May -- but there is sizeable scepticism in the South and elsewhere about Pyongyang's intentions.

"The North Korean offer of talks has all of the hallmarks of Pyongyang's diplomacy," said Stephan Haggard, a North Korea expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

"Pyongyang is 'sincerely' and 'magnanimously' inviting the South to fix, and pay for, problems of the North's own creation," Haggard said.

It was the North's decision to withdraw its 53,000 workers in early April that closed Kaesong which, until then, had proved remarkably resilient to the regular upheavals in inter-Korean relations.

The North also wants to discuss resuming tours by South Koreans to its Mount Kumgang resort. These were suspended after a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist there in July 2008.

Kaesong and Mount Kumgang were both significant sources of scarce foreign currency for North Korea which is squeezed by UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons programme.

There are also suggestions that Pyongyang was seeking to send a message by proposing talks just before US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down for their crucial summit in California.

"The offer was transparently timed to coincide with the Obama-Xi summit, suggesting -- probably wrongly -- that the North is willing to do something substantive to unfreeze relations on the peninsula," said Haggard.

China, the North's sole major ally and economic benefactor, has been under pressure from the United States to restrain its neighbour and has pushed Pyongyang to drop its destabilising strategy of confrontation.

Analysts say South Korea will approach the talks with a caution born of long experience.

President Park Geun-Hye, who took office in February with a promise of greater engagement with Pyongyang, has welcomed the talks initiative.

But she remains adamant that any substantive dialogue on wider issues can only take place if the North shows some tangible commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea has been equally emphatic in declaring its nuclear deterrent is not up for negotiation.

It was the North's nuclear test in February -- and subsequent UN sanctions -- that triggered the recent crisis that saw Pyongyang threaten both the South and the United States with pre-emptive nuclear strikes.

[Image via Agence France-Presse]