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South Korea regrets North’s claim on who aborted talks

A South Korean soldier stands guard at the customs, immigration and quarantine office of South Korea in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. (Yonhap News)

South Korea on Thursday expressed regrets over Pyongyang’s attempt to distort the true reason for the breakdown of planned inter-Korean talks, urging the North to come to the bargaining table to resolve outstanding issues.

The South’s call came hours after North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea blamed Seoul for the eleventh-hour cancellation of inter-Korean talks that had been scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday in Seoul.

“It is highly regrettable that the CPRK unilaterally disclosed the contents of the working level talks (held in Seoul on Sunday and Monday), and distorted the facts,” the Ministry of Unification said in a spokesman’s press release.

It was the North that took issue with Seoul’s selection of a chief delegate, it said, adding the communist country informed Seoul that it would not come to the high-level official meeting.

The South, on the other hand, did not comment of whom Pyongyang wanted to send and effectively accepted the North’s chief delegate.

“The attitude of the North caused the talks to fall through,” the ministry said.

The two Koreas agreed to hold their first high-level dialogue in six years, but the meeting was called off at the last minute because Pyongyang demanded Seoul send its unification minister in charge of inter-Korean relations as was the case in the past.

The South wanted Kim Yang-gon, the head of the United Front Department and Workers’ Party Korea secretary, to represent the North. Kim is in charge of all Pyongyang’s policies toward South Korea, which in Seoul’s eyes makes him the counterpart of the unification minister.

The ministry made clear that it did not insist on Kim per se and would have accepted another, as long as that person was an influential figure with the power to make deals.

“The need to reach parity on who is the chief delegate aims to make it possible for substantive progress to be made in cross-border issues as well as laying the foundation for new relations between the two sides,” the ministry said. It stressed that meaningful dialogue is based on mutual respect.

Earlier in the day, North Korea blamed South Korean arrogance and deceit for the collapse of the talks.

“The South side had no intent to hold dialogue from the beginning,” said a spokesman for the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea ― the state body that handles inter-Korean issues.

“It only sought to create an obstacle to the talks, delay and then torpedo them,” he said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, accusing the South of “arrogant obstructions and deliberate disturbance.”

“This impolite and immoral provocative behavior made us think once again whether it will be possible to properly discuss matters or improve relations even if official talks are opened in the future,” the spokesman said.

The agreement to meet in Seoul this week had looked vulnerable from the outset ― requiring 17 hours of negotiation on Sunday that ended with no real consensus on the agenda and other issues.

From news reports