North and South in rare talks
Rivals make fresh bid to improve relations
SEOUL: North and South Korean officials sat down yesterday for rare talks aimed at setting up a sustainable high-level dialogue that has constantly eluded the two rivals.
The meeting at the border truce village of Panmunjom began shortly before 1pm (11am Thai time) and marked the first inter-governmental interaction since August when the two sides met to defuse a crisis that had pushed them to the brink of an armed conflict. That meeting ended with a joint agreement that included a commitment to resume high-level talks, although no precise timeline was given.
Although any dialogue between the two Koreas is generally welcomed as a step in the right direction, precedent offers little hope of a successful outcome.
A similar effort back in June 2013 saw both sides agree to hold what would have been the first high-level dialogue for six years — only for Pyongyang to cancel a day before the scheduled meeting.
In the end, it was a matter of protocol — the North felt insulted by the South’s nomination of a vice-minister as its chief delegate — that smothered the initiative before it had even drawn breath.
The talks in Panmunjom, which were expected to continue into the night, were try to avoid a repetition of that failure by thrashing out an agenda, a venue and such protocol issues as who should attend the full-fledged dialogue.
“We will do our best,” Kim Ki-woong, the head of the South Korean Unification Ministry’s special office for inter-Korean dialogue, said before leaving Seoul for Panmunjom.
The start of the talks was delayed by several hours due to a problem with the communication links that allow senior officials in Seoul and Pyongyang to monitor proceedings. After an initial round lasting about 90 minutes, both sides took a break to confer with their respective capitals, a Unification Ministry official said.
“The mood was sincere, but there were differences,” he acknowledged.
Likely topics for the agenda included South Korea’s desire for regular reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War that cemented the division of the Korean peninsula.
North Korea, meanwhile, would’ve wanted to discuss the resumption of South Korean tour groups to its scenic Mt Kumgang resort. The tours, a source of badly needed hard currency for the cashstrapped North, were suspended by the South in 2008 after a female tourist was shot dead by a North Korean guard.
“The overall atmosphere for a successful conclusion of these talks is really not that favourable,” said Cheong Seongchang, an analyst with the Sejong Institute think tank in Seoul.
“The two sides always find it hard to agree on the ranks of chief delegates to high-level talks, and there are a number of issues causing friction in cross-border ties at the moment.”
He cited Pyongyang’s irritation with recent South Korean military exercises and Seoul’s participation in international moves to censure the North for human rights violations.