Seoul, South Korea (CNN)North Korea has accepted South Korea's proposal for official talks, South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman announced Friday.
Baik Tae-hyun told reporters that North Korea informed its southern neighbor by fax at 10:16 a.m. local time (8:16 p.m Thursday ET) that they have accepted the South's proposal for talks.
The person-to-person talks will be held January 9th at the Peace House, located on the South Korean side of the village of Panmunjom, located in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two nations, Baik said.
The announcement comes on the heels of other signs of nascent rapprochement between the two rivals.
In recent days a hotline between Seoul and Pyongyang, which had remained unused for two years, rang once again, in what has been widely regarded as a major diplomatic breakthrough. At least five calls have been placed through the cross-border channel since.
Contact between the two Koreas was initiated after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un expressed hope during his annual New Year's day address that a North Korean delegation might participate in next month's Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
During the annual address, Kim also expressed a desire for a peaceful resolution to the decades-old conflict with South Korea. The Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953, meaning that the two nations have technically been at war since.
South Korea's President Moon Jae-in told CNN that North Korean participation in Pyeongchang will "provide a very good opportunity for inter-Korean peace and reconciliation."