North, South Korea to hold military talks

SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea will hold military talks on Thursday in the first official meeting between the two states since South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in February, an official said on Wednesday.

Security risks have heightened in recent weeks on the Korean peninsula after North Korea declared it was stepping away from a nuclear disarmament deal and restoring a Soviet-era nuclear reactor that can make bomb-grade plutonium.

A South Korean Defense Ministry official said colonels from the two sides will meet at the Panmunjom truce village on the military border. The two Koreas have been technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean conflict ended in a truce and not a peace pact.

In a surprise move last week, the North proposed the talks and sought a meeting for Tuesday. It later accepted the South's counterproposal for Thursday, the ministry official said.

Ties between the two states chilled after Lee took office vowing to end what once had been a free flow of aid to the impoverished North and would instead tie Seoul's handouts to progress Pyongyang makes in ending its nuclear arms program.

North Korea's official news agency said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill arrived in Pyongyang on Wednesday.

Hill's visit, at the invitation of the North Koreans, comes days after the North threatened to break away from the disarmament-for-aid package and try to start separating plutonium at its nuclear plant that was being taken apart under the deal.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Bill Tarrant)