Media officials from North and South Korea have reached an agreement to stop slandering each other and to help promote inter-Korean reconciliation, reports said Saturday.
The five-point agreement was signed in Pyongyang on Friday by Choe Hak-Rae, president of South Korea's Korea Newspaper Association and Choe Chil-Nam, editor-in-chief of the North's ruling Workers' Party organ, Rodong Sinmun.
The agreement said the media organizations of the two Koreas will "conduct positive activities helpful to achieving national unity and realizing reunification," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said.
"Secondly, the media organizations of the north and the south will avoid confrontation ... and stop slanders and calumnies, which hurt national reconciliation and unity," it said.
They will cooperate in news and other activities and deepen mutual understanding and trust through contacts, visits and exchange, it said.
The agreement came as the two Koreas strive to keep alive the reconciliatory momentum brought on by a landmark inter-Korean summit in June in Pyongyang.
South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said the North readily accepted the invitation to make a return visit to Seoul, possibly within this year.
Each side is expected to allow journalists to visit, or be based in, the other's side, it said.
Media of the two Cold War enemies have often in the past traded tirades, fueling an inter-Korean confrontation -- SEOUL (AFP)
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