US should treasure Korean Peninsula progress

THE KOREAN PENINSULA, shrouded in clouds of war not long ago, is now bustling with heartening interactions between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea, as the remarkable inter-Korean detente continues to take root. Xinhua comments:

The United States is called upon to do more to push the troubled peninsula toward lasting peace. Pyongyang and Seoul are obviously making headway in improving ties as their high-level talks have expanded to include officials not only from the diplomatic and military agencies, but also from economic departments.

In a sign of their deepening ties, working-level officials of the two Koreas made on-site inspections of the railways in the DPRK with the aim of modernizing them and eventually connecting them across the border as agreed upon in the two sides' Panmunjom Declaration, issued at the end of the first inter-Korean summit in April.