Defence ministers from South and North Korea will meet for the first time this month, the south's government announced on Monday in the biggest advance since the June summit between leaders of the rival states.
South Korea's Defence Minister Cho Song-Tae and his North Korean counterpart Kim Il-Chol will discuss measures to ease military tensions during talks on September 25 and 26 on the South Korean resort island of Cheju, a defence ministry official said.
The two ministers are also expected to discuss setting up a military hotline and the logistics concerning the construction of a new railway line through the Korean border, the most heavily fortified in the world.
The two sides fought a three-year war that ended with a truce but no permanent peace treaty in 1953. Lt Gen Kim Chong-Hwan, a policy adviser to the defence ministry, told a press conference that North Korea had sent its agreement for the meeting in a letter passed through the border truce village of Panmunjom.
South Korea's President Kim Dae-Jung and the north's supreme leader Kim Jong-Il held a historic summit in Pyongyang in June and vowed to move toward peace and eventual re-unification. The south considers measures to ease frontier tensions as the key issue in the reconciliation process.

Bureau Report