Koreas Exchange Gunfire in DMZ

South and North Korea briefly exchanged machine-gun fire in the demilitarized zone that divides their peninsula, the South announced, hours after a U.S. State Department official said that Pyongyang appeared ready to resume three-way talks with China and the United States about ending its suspected nuclear arms program.

No South Koreans were injured when North Koreans fired four shots at a South Korean army position in the DMZ, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

The South answered with a broadcast warning and then returned fire with 17 salvos, the statement said.

There was no immediate report on the exchange in North Korea’s official media, and the United States military in Seoul declined to comment.

The rare shooting took place as the United States and China are searching for a way to persuade North Korea to enter talks on abandoning Pyongyang’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The State Department official said a senior Chinese official would visit Washington this week to discuss the issue. Washington still wants to include Japan and South Korea in the talks but has not ruled out the possibility of more three-way negotiations, the official said.

Washington learned of North Korea’s willingness to resume three-way talks from China, which played host to an initial round in Beijing in April, said the U.S. official, who asked not to be identified.

In Tokyo, Japan and the United States agreed Wednesday to cooperate on policing illegal North Korean activities that the allies say underpin the Pyongyang government and its push to build nuclear weapons.

Delegates from both nations compared notes on North Korea’s alleged narcotics and amphetamines trafficking, money laundering rings and currency counterfeiting operations, and then discussed ways to curtail them, Foreign Ministry official Shingo Miyamoto said.

Heading the U.S. delegation was Donald Keyser, deputy assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Keyser’s team met with counterparts from several different Japanese ministries, Miyamoto said.

North Korea denies peddling drugs, distributing phony money or illicitly importing weapons technology. It says it has the right to pursue nuclear weapons to deter attack.

The nuclear crisis erupted last year when American officials said North Korea had acknowledged pursuing a secret program to develop nuclear arms, which the United States fears could threaten its allies in the region.

The last shooting incident along the DMZ took place in November 2001 at a point on the frontier north of Seoul.