North Korea’s last-minute cancellation of high-level inter-Korean talks scheduled to open in Seoul on Wednesday has cast doubts on its sincerity toward dialogue with South Korea, raising the need to be more strategic and persistent in having the regime change course.

The North called off the meeting Tuesday, taking issue with the level of the South’s chief delegate. Seoul earlier lowered the level of its chief delegate to a vice minister from a Cabinet member after Pyongyang refused to send Kim Yang-gon, a top official handling inter-Korean affairs, to what would have been the first high-level talks between the two sides in six years. Protesting the decision, the North called off the meeting at the 11th hour.

Pyongyang’s complaint makes no sense, because its chief delegate, a director at the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, is of a lower level than Seoul’s chief representative, Vice Unification Minister Kim Nam-shik. South Korea’s decision not to send its unification minister appeared to reflect President Park Geun-hye’s will to conduct inter-Korean talks according to what she believes to be the “right format.” After the talks were called off, her aides accused the North of trying to “impose submission and humiliation” on the dialogue partner, stressing that matching the grades of negotiators is an international standard.

Certainly, efforts need to be maintained to build momentum toward inter-Korean talks. But setting up the right basic framework for dialogue will serve to enhance the practicability of relations between the two Koreas in the long term.

Pyongyang’s refusal to sit down with Seoul on such an insensible basis has led many observers here to believe its dialogue proposal had been made to ease the pressure against it ahead of last weekend’s summit between U.S. President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. As the two leaders took a concerted stance on denuclearizing the impoverished regime, the North may have felt less inclined to talk with the South.

Pyongyang may also have wanted to keep the upper hand over Park’s administration, which it will deal with over the next five years.

It will take some time to know what course of action the North is to take in the coming period. It may return to the negotiating table or raise tensions again.

The abortion of what would have been their first serious talks with the North is certain to have made Park and her aides realize that it will be far more difficult than thought by them to push for the process of building trust between the two Koreas. A strategic mind and perseverance with flexibility shown in a proper way are what they need now.