The Winter Olympics helped produce the thaw as the North promised to send a delegation to next month’s spectacle in South Korea which will include athletes, cheerleaders and officials.
Teams from North and South may march together at the opening ceremony in a display of reconciliation. An emergency hotline shut in February 2016 is to be reopened today and both sides have agreed to further talks.
South Korea said it is ready to lift some sanctions temporarily so North Koreans can visit the Olympics at Pyeongchang, about 60 miles from the border.
But after 11 hours of talks between officials, North Korea, which detonated its sixth and largest nuclear bomb in September, lodged “a strong complaint” because Seoul proposed talks to de-nuclearise the Korean peninsula.
Pyongyang’s chief negotiator Ri Son Gwon said: “All our weapons including atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs and ballistic missiles are aimed only at the United States, not our brethren, nor China and Russia.
“This is not a matter between North and South Korea, and to bring up this issue would cause negative consequences and risks turning all of today’s good achievement into nothing.”
There have been fears that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is trying to drive a wedge between the US and South Korea.
But yesterday a US spokesman said North Korean participation in the Olympics would be “an opportunity for the regime to see the value of ending its international isolation by de-nuclearising”.