SKorea: Talks with North scrapped over negotiators

           
The Koreas' first high-level talks in years have been scrapped because of a stalemate over who will lead each delegation, South Korea said Tuesday, a day before they were to begin. The cancellation is a blow to tentative hopes that the rivals were about to improve ties following years of rising hostility.                       

North Korea said it wasn't sending its officials to Seoul for the two-day meeting that was to begin Wednesday because the South had changed the head of its delegation, Kim Hyung-suk, a spokesman for Seoul's Unification Ministry, told reporters in a briefing. The ministry is in charge of North Korea matters.                                

When Seoul told Pyongyang on Tuesday that it was sending a lower-level official than it had initially proposed in preparatory talks, North Korea said it would consider that a "provocation," Kim said.                           

The cancellation of talks arises partly from misunderstandings that the sides have about who is equivalent to whom in power between their largely different political systems, Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea scholar at Seoul's Dongguk University, said.                        

North Korea did not immediately issue its own statement about the canceled talks.                           

The talks were set up in a painstaking 17-hour negotiating session Sunday, but the rivals had set aside the issue of who would lead North Korea's delegation. Kim said that on Tuesday, North Korea offered to send a senior official of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea as chief delegate, and Seoul said it would send its vice unification minister as chief delegate.                                

South Korea had previously proposed sending its unification minister. After it announced the vice minister would go instead, North Korea said it wouldn't send anyone and that "all responsibility is entirely on South Korea," Kim said. He added that Seoul is still open to talks if North Korea reconsiders.                          

After UN sanctions were strengthened following North Korea's third nuclear test in February, the country, which is estimated to have a handful of crude nuclear devices, threatened nuclear war and missile strikes against Seoul and Washington. North Korea has also conducted recent nuclear tests and long-range rocket launches.                                       

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has made trust-building with Pyongyang a hallmark of her nascent rule, even as she vows strong counter strikes to any North Korean attacks.   


AP