No agreement reached in fifth round of meetings over Kaesong complex

Posted on : 2013-07-23 15:46 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
South and North still reiterating standard positions on preventing another closure at Kaesong
 Kim Ki-woong head of the Ministry of Unification’s Inter-Korean Cooperation District Support Directorate (left) and Park Chol-su
Kim Ki-woong head of the Ministry of Unification’s Inter-Korean Cooperation District Support Directorate (left) and Park Chol-su

By Kang Tae-ho, senior staff writer

On July 22, South and North Korea held the fifth round of working-level talks between government officials to find a solution to the ongoing work stoppage at the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

The two sides traded revised versions of an agreement and engaged in heated negotiations. But once again, two weeks since the first round of the talks were held, North and South failed to reach an agreement on finding a way to prevent operations at Kaesong from being suspended again.

On the morning of July 22, South and North Korea held a general meeting in the total support center in the Kaesong Complex.

At the meeting, the South Korean delegation proposed a revised agreement in response to a proposal made by North Korea at the fourth round of talks, an official with the Ministry of Unification said on condition of anonymity. The official also said that the South Korean delegation urged North Korea to take a forward-looking stance on the issue of preventing this kind of incident from occurring again.

In response to this, North Korea offered yet another revision to the agreement in the second general meeting, which convened at 12 pm. Based on this revised agreement, the heads of the North and South Korean delegations made contact at 3 pm.

This is the first time during five rounds of working-level talks that North and South Korea have held morning and afternoon general meetings and deliberated on both revisions to the agreement.

However, tensions were also running high at the talks. Park Chol-su, head of the North Korean delegation, greeted his South Korean counterparts with the words, “Let’s do a good job at the talks and clear away the darkness.”

“Last time [during the fourth round of talks], I was glad to hear you say, ‘Normalization will be seen when the fog clears,’” the South Korean delegation head, Kim Ki-woong, said in response. “It is still raining, and the monsoon season isn’t letting up, but when the time is right, a season will come when the grain will ripen under a clear sky.”

Park is deputy chief of the North Korean central bureau in charge of developing special districts, while Kim is head of the South Korean Ministry of Unification’s Inter-Korean Cooperation District Support Directorate.

But Park had a retort ready. “South Korea, and in particular its media, misinterpreted what we said about ‘the peak of a high mountain’ being visible. They thought we were talking about the normalization of the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” he said. “What we actually meant by ‘the peak of a high mountain’, was that we wanted to know if the peak of Bugak Mountain [metaphor for Park Geun-hye] is as pure and clear as the peak of Daeseong Mountain [metaphor for Kim Jong-un].”

The North seemed to be making a roundabout criticism of the South Korean government for remaining ambiguous on its attitude toward normalization of Kaesong, in contrast to the clear stance taken by the North.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye presided over a meeting with senior secretaries at the Blue House on the same day.

“We must bear in mind that the process of reaching an agreement through the working-level talks is an important foundation for establishing the principles and framework for resetting relations between North and South,” Park said, reiterating her standard position.

 

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