The inter-Korean talks that resumed on Sunday afternoon continued for 19 straight hours as of 10:30 a.m. Monday, as the two sides locked horns over North Korea’s Aug. 4 land mine attack and South Korea’s propaganda broadcasts.

The two sides met again at South Korea’s House of Peace in the border village of Panmunjeom on 3:30 p.m., hours after the first round of negotiations adjourned. 

The North Korean delegation reportedly continued to deny its responsibility over the Aug. 4 land mine blast on the South Korean side of the Demilitarized Zone, while demanding South Korea halt the propaganda broadcasts along the border.

Seoul has been maintaining that North Korea must acknowledge and apologize for the blast that seriously injured two South Korean soldiers in order to enter the next step of the negotiation.

Reports said that throughout the talks, the delegations took breaks and reported back to their authorities.

The North proposed the talks Friday apparently to stall for time after issuing a 48-hour ultimatum the previous day for Seoul to turn off its propaganda loudspeakers, which conservatives here called an “unacceptable, humiliating” demand.

Kim Kwan-jin, chief of Cheong Wa Dae’s National Security Office, and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo represented the South Korean side. Hwang Pyong-so, the director of the North Korean military’s General Political Bureau, and Kim Yang-gon, a secretary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party and top official in charge of inter-Korean issues, attended on behalf of the North.

The resumption of the dialogue on Sunday afternoon indicated that both sides were willing to defuse tension.

The North has been showing sensitive reactions to the South’s propaganda activities along the border aimed at informing North Korean troops and citizens living along the border of the dictatorial nature of the regime. Pyongyang has thus called the propaganda broadcasts a “threat to its (communist) system.”

Amid Pyongyang’s denial of responsibility, speculation grew that the two Koreas could form a compromise that would allow the communist regime to express regrets over the land mine incident without specifying its responsibility.

Observers say the North might have also demanded during the talks that South Korea and the U.S. stop the ongoing joint military drills, called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, which the North has long criticized as a rehearsal for a nuclear war against it.

The agenda was also expected to include Seoul’s demands to exchange the lists of family members separated across the border and hold their reunions.

During her Liberation Day speech on Aug. 15, President Park Geun-hye called for the exchange of the lists. Seoul’s Unification Ministry has been seeking to deliver to the North the list of some 60,000 South Korean family members who claim to have their loves ones in the North.

Seoul has long viewed the issue as an urgent humanitarian one, but Pyongyang put forward conditions for the family reunions, such as the lifting of the so-called May 24 economic sanctions against it.

Meanwhile, Pyongyang’s state media churned out reports to forge the warlike atmosphere on the peninsula, stressing that its troops were ready to fight while repeating their routine criticism of South Korea. Analysts said the reports appeared intended to boost the spirits of the North Korean delegation holding talks with the South.

“Eight million adolescents’ hearts are burning with the determination to take revenge (against the South),” a report on the Rodong Sinmun, the daily of the North’s Workers’ Party, said.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)