hankyoreh

Kwon Kyung-sang (right) from the South and Son Gwang-ho from the North

By Kim Oi-hyun and Yi Yong-in, staff reporters

On July 18, North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) explained that the reason that the inter-Korean working-level talks about the Incheon Asian Games broke down the previous day was because of South Korea’s “unfair attitude” about the size of the cheering squad and the travel costs. The KCNA also said that, if South Korea did not adjust its attitude, North Korea would reconsider its decision to participate in the games.

In response, the South Korean government said that North Korea is making an absurd argument. The breakdown of the first round of working-level talks has made it considerably more difficult for North Korea to meet the Aug. 15 deadline of submitting its list of athletes for the games.

While North and South Korea continue to argue about why the talks broke down, the general view of experts is that the fundamental reason involves a “strategic clash” between the two sides. First of all, North Korea announced on July 7 in its statement from the “government of the republic” that it had decided to send the cheering squad and the athletes to the Incheon Asian games “in order to set the mood for improving inter-Korean relations and for bringing unity to the Korean people.” In essence, the North indicated that it meant to take advantage of the Asian Games to work on improving inter-Korean relations.

It was with this in mind that North Korea proposed sending 350 people on the cheering squad, which would be the largest ever, during the working-level talks. Added together, the cheering squad and the athletes would total 700 people, which would also be the largest number ever. The North appears to have intended to create good will toward the South Korean public, which would give it leverage for restoring inter-Korean relations.

North Korea’s proposal to use land, sea, and air to transport the team of athletes and the cheering squad can also be seen as showing its commitment to exchange and reconciliation between North and South. During the working-level talks, North Korea said that the 350 athletes would arrive in South Korea on a plane flying the direct route across the West (Yellow) Sea, while the 350 people on the cheering squad would enter Seoul on the land route, following the Gyeongui Line, which runs from Shinuiju in North Korea to Seoul. This would have been the first time that a large group of North Koreans passed through the Customs, Inspections and Quarantine Office, which was established for the Kaesong Industrial Complex in 2000. In addition, North Korea said that it planned to dock the passenger ferry Mangyeongbong 92 in Incheon Harbor and use it as accommodations for the cheering squad.

Since the “direct route across the West Sea” was first used at the time of the inter-Korean summit on June 15, 2000, it bears strong overtones of reconciliation between North and South Korea. Transporting the cheering squad over the land route, which passes through the DMZ, is also symbolic: it implies transcending the division of the peninsula.

In particular, if North Korea’s delegation to the games were to be brought to South Korea using all three routes - land, air, and sea - it would present a chance to at least temporarily suspend the May 24 measures, which ban in principle moving people or exchanging goods between North and South Korea. North Korea may have had this in mind when it made this proposal.

Indeed, if North Korea’s proposal is accepted, the Mangyeongbong 92, which is currently docked in Wonsan, would pass through the Jeju Strait, navigation that is currently banned by the May 24 measures. It would also be the first time for a North Korea passenger plane to visit South Korea, or for a large number of North Korean people to move across the DMZ.

In response to this, while South Korea is adopting a relatively flexible stance about the means of transportation, it is less accommodating on the issues of the size of the cheering team and the cost of their visit. Indeed, when officials from the relevant ministries met before the talks to draw up their strategy, most officials thought that the South Korean negotiators should put up a fight and not easily accept the North Korean proposal during the meeting, sources say. There were also concerns among the negotiators about the unprecedented size of the North Korean cheering team, which they thought could be used to spread propaganda about the North Korean system.

In light of these South Korean positions, it becomes a little easier to understand the suspicious attitude shown by the South Korean delegation during the working-level talks on Thursday. Beyond ignoring the fact that South Korea delayed the afternoon meeting for two hours, the stance adopted by the South Koreans during the afternoon meeting was completely different from the morning.

During the morning meeting, the South Korean negotiators listened quietly to North Korea’s proposal; during the afternoon meeting, they grilled North Korea about the composition of the squads of athletes and cheerleaders. An official at the talks acknowledged that the meeting method changed to some degree. “North Korea probably believed that the South Koreans’ attitude in the meeting had changed between the morning and afternoon,” the official said. Effectively, the mood was spoiled when the South Korean delegation tried to seize the initiative.

“It seems that North Korea wanted to use the games as an opportunity both to improve relations with the South and to aggressively use the meeting as propaganda for their system. The South Korean government chose a political and confrontational method of responding to this,” said Chang Yong-seok, senior researcher at Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies.

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