Seoul on Sunday upbraided Pyongyang for trying to divide the South Korean public and shift the blame onto it for the suspended industrial park in Gaeseong, saying that North Korea warped the facts by claiming it earlier proposed dialogue on its own.

Rebuffing Seoul’s third overture on Wednesday for working-level talks about South Korean firms’ raw materials and finished products left behind in the park, Pyongyang claimed it made the offer on May 3.

On Friday and Saturday, the North faxed a document containing such a claim to the South Korean firms in a move that Seoul believes was intended to stir up conflicts in the ideologically divided public in the South.

“It is very regrettable for the North to disparage our overtures of dialogue, distort the facts and shift the blame for the suspension of the park onto us,” Unification Ministry spokesperson Kim Hyung-seok told reporters.

“North Korea is responsible for the suspension and failure to hold inter-Korean consultations over it.”

Kim argued that a half-hearted offer of dialogue was extended to a South Korean official in charge of managing the complex on May 3 when any serious consultations were impossible with all inter-Korean dialogue channels severed.

“It is an act to cause unnecessary controversies in the South through claims diametrically different from the facts,” said Kim. “We express very grave regrets over this and call on it to immediately stop (making such a claim).”

All of the 123 South Korean firms were forced to stop their operations at the complex on April 9 when some 53,000 North Korean workers did not come to work under the directive of Pyongyang, which was angry over the stepped-up international sanctions against it and South Korea-U.S. annual military drills.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)