IF there is no last-minute hitch, South and North Korea may begin direct talks tomorrow after a break of two years. Since his inauguration in May 2017, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has been calling for dialogue with the North. Pyongyang severed all communications with Seoul in 2016 after Moon’s conservative predecessor shuttered an industrial complex in the North. Moon has also been pressing Pyongyang for months to send a delegation to the Winter Olympics his nation is hosting next month. Speculation that the Koreas would resume face-to-face contacts rose on New Year’s Day, when the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un said he was willing to discuss the possibility of his country’s participation in the Winter Games. The discussions, to be held at the Peace House on the South Korean side of Panmunjom, is likely to go beyond the Winter Olympics to cover measures to ease military tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Meanwhile, there have been two positive developments, giving rise to hopes of a breakthrough in inter-Korean ties. One is the reopening on Wednesday of a cross-border hotline which had been shut down since 2016. Second is the postponement by the US of joint military exercises with the South until after the Winter Games. North Korea regards the joint military exercises as a rehearsal for invasion and has often cited them as an obstacle to any thawing of inter-Korean ties. Postponement of military exercises does not mean the US wholeheartedly welcomes talks between the South and the North. In fact, Washington has been blowing hot and cold over the issue. One day President Donald Trump tweets that there would not have been any talks “if I wasn’t firm, strong and willing to commit our total ‘might’ against the North.” The next day, his envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley is critical of the talks, insisting that US preconditions be accepted. US feels Kim’s overture may be purely strategic, an attempt to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. There are also fears that as part of any dialogue, South Korea could make too many concessions, like agreeing to end military exercises with the United States or no longer participating in sanctions. This is why the State Department has come out openly against Tuesday’s talks touching on security issues. But security is at the top of South Korea’s concerns. In case of a war, the country that would suffer the most after the North is the South. South Koreans are fond of quoting the proverb, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets hurt.” The South also knows that only the presence of nearly 30,000 US troops on this side of the border stops Trump from doing anything that might engulf the peninsula in a second war. As such, it is the incendiary rhetoric from Trump rather than Kim’s nuclear weapons that continue to shatter South Korea’s morning calm. So the South’s ultimate goal would be to get more or less permanent diplomatic dialogue going with its adversary across the border. Tomorrow’s talks may pave the way for a resumption of negotiations that would include US participation. If Trump resists the temptation to indulge in reckless talk of “fire and fury”, this may even lead to the so-called six-party talks that also involved representatives from China, Japan and Russia. Those negotiations collapsed in 2009. But right now, the South’s concerns are more parochial than geopolitical. It has think of the divided families living on opposite sides of the North-South border. The North is yet to respond to the South’s request for a meeting to discuss potential reunions for such families. It would be in the interest of everybody including the US if Moon is allowed to follow the “Sunshine Policy” of his liberal predecessors. If he succeeds, it would let off some steam out of the current crisis.