hankyoreh

June 13. The elderly man is hoping to see his relatives who live in North Korea. Followed by the recent cancellation of inter-Korean talks

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter

North and South are blaming each other for the cancellation of inter-Korean talks and unleashing a barrage of harsh comments, darkening the prospects for future talks. Communication has not taken place via the North and South Korean communication liaisons at Panmunjom for two days since the line was restored.

On May 13, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) carried a statement from the spokesperson of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF), an organization affiliated with the Workers’ Party. In the statement, the CPRF said that North Korea “doesn’t have the slightest desire to hold government-level talks.”

“The puppet regime in South Korea is making a last-ditch effort to drag inter-Korean dialogue in the wrong direction,” the CPRF said, criticizing the South Korean government. “The North Korean people and army are asking us to stop dealing with the South Korean scoundrels. We will never tolerate the audacious provocations of the puppet regime in the South that sabotaged the government-level talks. The South must take full responsibility for the grave consequences that these developments will bring.”

In the statement by the CPRF spokesperson, the North’s perspective on the situation is clearly expressed. The North argued that the talks had fallen apart because South Korea had reneged on its promise to send Minister of Unification Ryoo Kihl-jae, replacing him as head of the delegation shortly before the talks with the lower-ranked Vice-Minister of Unification).

In regard to the disagreement about the rank of the delegation head, the North argued that South Korea had ignored established practice. “The secretary of the central committee of the Korean Workers’ Party (currently Kim Yang-gon) has never taken part in official government-level negotiations as the head of the delegation,” the North said.

Along with this, North Korea claimed that the South Korean government tried to specify Kim Yang-gon in the draft of the agreement reached during the working-level meeting and attempted to avoid including the terms “resuming” and “normalization” in the sections of the draft that addressed the Kaesong Industrial Complex and tourisms at Mt. Keumgang. The North also argued that the working-level meeting had dragged on for 16 hours - and had to be interrupted and resumed nine times at the request of South Korean negotiators who had to contact the Blue House for further instructions.

This revelation breaks with protocol, which dictates that generally speaking the detailed proceedings of a closed meeting should not be revealed even after the meeting has concluded.

North Korea also alleged that the South Korean government had shortened the schedule for the minister-level talks to two days even while acknowledging that there were a lot of problems to discuss and resolve. Because of this, North Korea complained, the delegation from the North would have had to stay in the meeting room for their entire visit and would not have been able to meet anyone. North Korea’s argument is that they called off the visit by the delegation after judging that it would be pointless to engage in talks with a partner who has this kind of attitude.

The South Korean government countered the North Korean arguments one by one. A senior official at the South Korean Ministry of Unification rebutted the claim that Kim Yang-gon, as director of the North Korean United Front Department, outranks the Minister of Unification. “We are not bandying words about the ceremonial title,” the official said. “It is necessary to make these determinations according to what areas of work the person is actually responsible for.”

The South Korean government also corrected North Korea’s assertion that its party secretary had never taken part in dialogue with the South. It pointed out that, during the preparatory conference for the summit meeting between Kim Young-sam and Kim Il-sung in 1994, North Korean party secretary Kim Yong-sun (Kim Yang-gon’s predecessor) had met with Lee Hong-gu, who was serving both as South Korean Vice-Prime Minister (as well as Unification Minister).

Previously, North Korea also revealed the details of secret talks between South and North that took place on June 1, 2011. South and North had held a private meeting in Beijing in May 2011 to settle the issues of the sinking of the Cheonan warship and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and to organize a summit meeting, but in the end the summit meeting did not come about.

At that point, North Korea released details of what had taken place during the secret meetings, saying that the South Korean government had begged for it to give in and had even offered an envelope stuffed with money. North Korea’s disclosure of the details of that meeting created a major controversy, as the action violated international principles that state that what is discussed in secret meetings must not be revealed.

While the information that was disclosed about the recent talks was not as sensitive as in the previous case, it is similar in the sense that North Korea has once again indicated its unwillingness to deal with the South Korean government.

The North Korean statement said, “It is only too obvious that it is impossible to resolve the issues affecting the relationship between North and South by sitting down with these people. The trust-building process for the Korean peninsula is no different from the policies of confrontation employed by the previous administration. If anything, it is even worse.” This appears to indicate that, if the South Korean government does not change its position that it has no altered proposal to make the North, strained inter-Korean relations will continue for the time being.

At Panmunjom, telephone communication between North and South Korea did not take place for the second day in a row since the government-level talks fell through. South Korean communication liaisons at Panmunjom tried calling North Korea at 9 am and 4 pm, but their North Korean counterparts did not answer the phone on either occasion, the South Korean Ministry of Unification said.

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