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| A table and chairs are set up in a conference room at the Grand Hilton Seoul, Tuesday, where inter-Korean government-level talks were supposed to take place today. The talks were called off due to a disagreement over the level of the respective chief delegates. . Yonhap |
2 Koreas call off inter-government talks over level of chief delegates
By Chung Min-uck
An inter-Korean meeting was called off Tuesday due to a disagreement over the level of their chief delegates, according to the Ministry of Unification.
The government-to-government talks, the first of their kind in six years, were scheduled to be held today in Seoul with high expectations that the dialogue could lead to easing tension on the Korean Peninsula.
"North Korea unilaterally informed us it would not be sending its delegates," Kim Hyung-suk, a ministry spokesman, told a press conference confirming that the meeting had been cancelled.
"After exchanging lists of five negotiators each planned to send, the North said the envisioned inter-government meeting could not be held if a minister-level official didn't attend the meeting," Kim added.
Seoul named Vice Unification Minister Kim Nam-Sik as the chief negotiator, while, the North proposed Kang Ji-yong, a director at the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK), the North's arm in charge of cross-border affairs.
North Korea immediately complained about what they believed was the low level of the chief South Korean negotiator and later called off the meeting, according to a ministry official.
Who should head each side at the negotiating table had been one of the major sticking points during the previous preparatory working-level talks that were held over the weekend at the truce village of Panmunjeom.
Seoul originally proposed a "ministerial-level" meeting between Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae and his North Korean counterpart Kim Yang-gon that Seoul said was rejected by the reclusive state, which alternatively suggested an "inter-government" meeting
Despite the cancellation, Seoul said it is still "open to talks" with Pyongyang.
A Cheong Wa Dae official, commenting on the incident, said Tuesday, "Inter-Korean relations that call for subservience and degradation are not desirable for the two Koreas. The same international standard of matching the level of officials in government-to-government meetings should be applied to inter-Korean relations as well."
The high-level talks were to have discussed a variety of pending issues, including reopening a suspended inter-Korean joint industrial complex, resuming cross-border tourism and the reunion of separated families from both sides.
With the failure to hold the talks, observers say President Park Geun-hye's "Korean Peninsula Trust-building Process" is again being put to the test.
The policy sticks to the principle of dealing sternly with North Korean threats and provocations while at the same time leaving the door open for dialogue depending on the North's behavior.
It also calls for a break from the previous practice of North Korea repetitively ratcheting up military tensions to gain economic and political gains.
Tension has run high in recent months on the peninsula following North Korea's February nuclear test which resulted in further U.N. sanctions on the reclusive country.
Angered by the move, the North threatened nuclear strikes against South Korea and the United States and launched a series of short-range missiles.
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