However, talks came to an abrupt close Saturday evening after North Korea called for the session to end, leading to concerns that the first such meeting in eight years between the two sides would instead serve as a setback for relations. The countries were also unable to fix a date for a further meeting, South Korean officials said.
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“After the general election (in Seoul) next April, South Korean politics will embark on preparations for the presidential election, and North Korea’s interest on inter-Korean talks will decrease after the party congress in May”, Cheong Seong-chang, the chief of the Unification Strategy team of Sejong Institute said, last Tuesday. The official KCNA news agency said that the DPRK side has “made every possible honest effort” and offered “constructive proposals” to tackle some of the most urgent and realizable issues. Seoul claimed that North Korea was the first to open fire and the artillery shelling was aimed at South Korea’s propaganda loudspeakers installed nearby.
Pyongyang says South Korea should resume tours to its scenic Mount Kumgang resort, which Seoul suspended in 2008.
Now the reunions are being held less than once a year and with only a very limited number of participants – despite a huge waiting list of largely elderly South Koreans desperate to see their relatives in the North before they die. Analysts allege North Korea fears in that its citizens will grow to be influenced by the rather more prosperous South, which might loosen the authorities’s grip on power.
An eagerly anticipated meeting at the vice minister level proved to be fruitless, despite discussions dragging on from Friday to Saturday.
“We pointed out that the family reunions and the tours are separate issues, so the North Koreans unilaterally declared the talks over”, he added.
The standoff eased after marathon talks and an agreement on efforts to reduce animosity.
Both sides blamed each other for the deadlock, with Pyongyang accusing Seoul of refusing to discuss “core issues” and the South accusing the North of prioritising economic projects over humanitarian issues.
Millions of family members were separated by the war that sealed the division of the Korean peninsula.
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“It seems that the negotiators thought it was meaningless for them to continue talking when there was such as large gap between their views”, said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul.
