Negotiations between a US museum and the Korean government are dragging out over the terms on which the museum will lend a 14th-century Buddhist reliquary to Korea, as the two sides follow up on their February agreement to push for a temporary loan.

According to Rep. Lee Ki-heon of the Democratic Party of Korea on Thursday, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has yet to say what it thinks of a June proposal by the Korea Heritage Service that it would immediately return the Buddhist reliquary to the Boston museum once the loan period expires. The museum had requested that Korea guarantee that in writing.

The US museum donated the “sarira,” or bead-shaped objects found among the cremated remains of Buddhist spiritual masters, to Korea in April, citing their religious significance. As for the reliquary which once contained the sarira, the museum and Korean authorities agreed to push for a loan.

Korea has sought to repatriate the sarira and the container as a set, but the museum has essentially ruled that out, maintaining that there is no record indicating theft, looting or coercive transfer of the container itself, which it said was legitimately acquired from a dealer in 1939.

Rep. Lee suggested that the Korean government should continue efforts to fully repatriate the container, and that it should update the public if it does not believe the loan should be permanent.

Talks over the repatriation first took place in 2009. Speculation over a repatriation deal resurfaced in April last year, when first lady Kim Keon Hee floated the idea during a visit to the museum on the sidelines of President Yoon Suk Yeol’s state visit to the US. Choi Eung-chon, head of the KHS, acknowledged that this served as a turning point for the Korean government to revisit the issue.

The silver-gilt Lamaistic pagoda-shaped reliquary, representative of Goryeo-era Buddhist culture in the 14th century, is believed to have been once housed at Hoeamsa, a temple in South Korea, or Hwajangsa, a temple in today’s North Korea, according to the US museum.