hankyoreh

heads of the North and South Korean delegations to working-level talks on the Kaesong Industrial Complex

By Kang Tae-ho, senior staff writer

Twenty days after the first round of working-level talks on normalizing operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, negotiations between South and North Korea have broken down. The breakdown was caused by the failure of both sides to give an inch of ground in their demands during the six rounds of talks.

South Korea insisted on the North admitting it was responsible for the complex shutting down, while North Korea wanted the complex to be reopened right away.

North and South Korea held a general meeting from 5:10 to 5:20 pm on July 25 to wrap up the sixth round of talks at the Total Support Center at the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea.

But once again, both sides failed to issue a joint agreement, and unlike the fifth round of talks, they also did not agree when the next meeting should be held.

The working-level talks, which are the first real negotiations since South Korean President Park Geun-hye took office, were viewed as a litmus test that could affect the future of inter-Korean relations. Now that the talks have hit a wall, a veil has been drawn over the future of relations between South and North.

As was made clear in the documents that the North Korean delegation distributed to South Korean reporters (an unusual move for the North), the talks were stymied by the difference of position on the North taking responsibility for the suspension of work at Kaesong and pledging to prevent such an incident from occurring again.

The problem is that the two sides were unable find a way to bridge their differences during the five rounds of working-level talks.

With cabinet-level talks called off after disagreement over the rank of the delegation head and the working-level talks no longer functioning, it seems unlikely, at least for now, that South and North will find a way out of this bind.

As for the Kaesong Complex, it is looking more likely that the idling that began when North Korea withdrew its workers and declared a temporary shutdown on April 8, will become an permanent shutdown of the complex.

In the statement it provided to reporters, the North said it greatly values the Kaesong Complex, which is a product of the June 15 joint declaration (2000), and wants it operations there to be normalized. But if South Korea keeps the factories idle and keeps driving the complex toward ruin, the North threatened that it could close the overland route to Kaesong completely and position military troops there again.

The South Korean Ministry of Unification issued a statement in response, saying that the Kaesong Complex is at a critical juncture between staying open and being permanently shut down. The Ministry indicated it would be making a grave decision.

The two sides are moving toward a confrontation without an exit.

Throughout the talks, the two sides failed to bridge the divide between them. South Korea asked the North to clearly express its position, arguing that the Kaesong crisis had been caused by “inappropriate measures”, including North Korea’s unilateral decision to block traffic into the complex.

While the South did not ask for an apology per se, it said that the North must offer a responsible expression of its position that would be acceptable to the South Korean people. Effectively, it was requesting an apology or an expression of regret.

North Korea did not accept this request. North Korea contended that it had withdrawn its workers from Kaesong because it took issue with reports by South Korean media that Kaesong was North Korea’s “dollar box” and with South Korean Defense Minister Kim Gwan-jin’s remarks about “an emergency at Kaesong.” The North argued that the fundamental cause of this situation was that South Korea had “belittled the complex on a political level and threatened it on a military one,” sources say.

Despite this, the North said that it submitted a draft of an agreement on five issues in which it accepted some of the proposals made by South Korea, including a guarantee for the personal safety of South Korean workers, a guarantee for transportation, communication, and customs clearance, and the internationalization of the complex.

But South Korea ignored all of this and stubbornly refused to accept anything but a guarantee to prevent a similar situation from occurring, North Korea said.

In this sense, North Korea appears to have distributed the documents to reporters to draw a line in the sand and say that it will not give up any more ground.

There was a section in their proposed draft agreement that North Korea that appeared to be dealing with the issue of preventing another crisis at Kaesong. “We will continue regular operation of the complex without any influence from the political situation no matter the circumstances and we will not do anything that would interfere with such operation,” the North Korean draft said.

But South Korea did not accept this as a responsible expression of North Korea’s position, as was illustrated by remarks made by Kim Ki-woong, head of the South’s delegation. “It is not even clear whether this can be called a proposal to prevent another crisis from occurring at Kaesong,” Kim said.

In the end, North Korea’s position is that both sides are to blame for the suspension of work at Kaesong, while South Korea’s position is that only the North is responsible.

In the end, the two sides were unable to bridge the gaps in their positions during the sixth round of the talks.

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