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Prospect of cross-border reconciliation remains bleak

By Shin Hyon-hee

The burgeoning hopes for cross-border reconciliation are quickly fading since the two Koreas scrapped their much-anticipated talks over lead negotiators in another sign of deep-rooted mistrust.

The two-day meeting was called off late Tuesday by Pyongyang after insisting that Seoul send as the head of the delegation its unification minister, not vice unification minister as suggested.

No statement has yet been released by North Korea since. But in a cancellation notice it berated the South for the collapse of the gathering, ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said.

The North called the South’s choice of vice minister a “mockery of the governmental talks, distortion of the agreement between working-level officials (on Sunday) and a grave provocation,” he told a news conference.

Seoul dismissed the claim as an “abnormal custom,” saying Pyongyang’s own chief negotiator, who is a senior official from its agency in charge of South Korean affairs, could not be on the same level as minister.

“It doesn’t make sense at all to reject dialogue by taking issue with the level of vice unification minister who can take care of, discuss and resolve inter-Korean issues,” Kim said.

Prime Minister Chung Hong-won criticized Pyongyang’s lack of sincerity. “Dialogue should be accepting each other on the same level. Dialogue in which one side is unilaterally humiliated has no authenticity,” he told lawmakers.

The cancellation of the meeting, which would have otherwise been the first high-level government dialogue since 2007, crushed the resurgent mood for a thaw in cross-border ties frayed by both sides’ hard-line policies, missile and atomic tests and threats of nuclear war.

Analysts caution that any protraction of the blame game may blow the hard-won chance for dialogue for good.

The North said it was “postponing” its plan to send a delegation, while the South called for a return to dialogue.

While critics questioned Seoul’s negotiation strategy and tactics, others pointed to years of distrust and animosity, differences in their political systems and the absence of regular communication channels as the underlying reasons for failure.

“A flexible approach was necessary toward the level of the lead delegate because there were no exact counterparts between the two Koreas due to differences in their systems,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow of the private Sejong Institute, in his commentary.

“But the talks foundered eventually because of the two governments’ lack of bargaining power and rigidity.”

Observers are now deflecting their attention to the annual ASEAN Regional Forum that will be hosted by Brunei at the end of this month.

The region’s largest security conference brings together Pyongyang, Seoul, Washington and other key players. Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se is scheduled to attend and may have a chance to meet with his North Korean counterpart Pak Ui-chun as other top diplomats have done in the past.

(heeshin@heraldcorp.com)