SEOUL (Reuters) -- Military officers from South and North Korea began talks on Friday to lay the foundation for more confidence-building measures, the South's Defense Ministry said.

Efforts to reduce military tensions between the North and South, which remain technically at war, have lagged behind improving political and economic ties in recent years.

South Korea's delegation, led by Army Colonel Moon Sung-mook, traveled to the Panmunjom truce village to meet with the North Koreans, a Defense Ministry official said by telephone.

Panmunjom is at the heart of the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone frontier and has conference buildings that straddle the border.

The main item on the agenda is setting up a meeting of generals from the two Koreas. There were two rare rounds of general-level talks in 2004 that resulted in an agreement on measures to prevent deadly naval clashes, but generals have not met formally since.

Naval clashes in fishing grounds of the Yellow Sea in past years have killed or wounded scores of sailors on both sides.

South Korean government officials have said more confidence-building measures are needed to ensure military tension does not get in the way of growing commercial ties across the border.

One example of this is what South Korean analysts say is lagging support from the North's military for linking railways through the border and making road travel less cumbersome.

To help the effort to join transport lines, the president of South Korea's Railroad Corp., Lee Chul, will visit the North at the weekend and hold discussions with Pyongyang's rail officials, the state-run corporation said.

Lee will fly to Beijing on Friday and enter Pyongyang on Saturday, the corporation said in a statement.

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung is seeking to visit the North by train some time in April, an aide has said.

Kim won a Nobel Peace prize for orchestrating an unprecedented, and so far unrepeated, meeting of the leaders of the two Koreas when he met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000.

North Korea's military plays a powerful role in how the country is run, and much of its creaking economic activity is geared to supporting the more than one-million-strong armed forces.

Last year, North Korea agreed in principle to resume the generals' meeting but it has not materialized.