North, South Korea high - level officials meet at border

North, South Korean high-level officials meet at border 22 Aug 2015 8:23 AM High level officials from the two Koreas are expected to meet in an apparent bid to ease tensions in the face of a North Korean-imposed deadline for the South to halt loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts across the border. South Korean troops were on maximum alert on Saturday, with North Korea threatening to go to war unless the deadline was met. The situation is being closely watched, with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, calling for restraint from both sides and the US urging North Korea to avoid further escalation. Al Jazeera’s Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said Pyongyang had set a 5pm (08:30 GMT) deadline on Saturday for the loud speakers to cease broadcasts and be dismantled, but South Korea had so far refused to relent. “We’ve had a statement from the [South Korean] defence minister, who said that while he places the highest priority on civilian lives, he also wants to sever what he calls the ‘vicious cycle of North Korean provocations'”, our correspondent said. In the face of the imminent deadline, however, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that high level security officials from the two countries would meet at the border town of Panmunjon at 6pm on Saturday, in an apparent bid to prevent further conflict. “South Korea’s National Security Adviser Kim Kwan-jin and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo will meet with Kim Yang-gon, the top official in charge of South Korea affairs, and Hwang Pyong-so, director of the general political department of North Korea’s military,” Yonhap reported. Military tensions have surged on the divided peninsula since an exchange of artillery fire on Thursday, which the South says was begun by the North. The North Korean foreign ministry gave warning in a statement early on Saturday that “the situation which has reached the brink of war is now hardly controllable”. Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, put frontline troops on alert on Friday.