By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
North and South Korea held talks just north of their border Thursday, marking the first supposedly quarterly meeting on the management of their joint industrial complex in half a year.
The meeting ended a freeze that had been punctuated by a series of tense standoffs and displays of aggression -- notably two separate exchanges of artillery fire along the western sea border between the Koreas in March and May.
The North has also threatened a fourth ever nuclear test and launched around 90 short-range missiles since late February in an apparent reply to joint military drills involving the South and the United States.
According to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, the North test-fired a further three short-range projectiles into the Sea of Japan Thursday afternoon.
On Wednesday, South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won called on the North to "clearly recognize it is cooperation with us, not nuclear weapons, that can guarantee its future."
Chung was speaking at a ceremony in honor of the 64th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.
North Korea also marked the occasion by renewing its claim that the U.S. started the 1950-53 war in an effort to "dominate the world," as stated in the country's official Rodong Sinmun newspaper.
The North went even further by describing a forthcoming Hollywood comedy as an "act of war" via its state-run news agency Wednesday.
'The Interview,' to be released in October and featuring James Franco and Seth Rogen, centers on a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Hopes were raised then, when officials from the two Koreas met Thursday to renew their joint committee negotiations on outstanding management issues concerning the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
The talks in the North Korean city of Kaesong were the fifth of their kind -- aimed at preventing a repeat of last year's five-month suspension of operations at the complex -- and had not taken place since last December despite being set up as quarterly discussions.
The closure of the complex last year was viewed by many analysts as being particularly ominous because of the North's apparent reliance on revenue from Kaesong.
Among the items understood to be on the agenda was South Korea's push to install Internet access at the joint facility, which many view as the only shred of inter-Korean unity.
More than 120 South Korean companies provide employment for more than 50,000 North Koreans at the complex, which opened in 2004.
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