North Korea yesterday accused South Korea of deliberately sabotaging planned high-level talks with “arrogant obstructions” and warned that prospects for any future dialogue had been severely damaged.
The two Koreas had initially agreed to hold their first high-level talks in six years in Seoul on Wednesday and yesterday, but they were called off at the last minute following a dispute over protocol.
The talks initiative had been seen as a step forward after months of soaring military tensions, but its collapse has instead resulted in a sizeable backwards stride.
Even the one positive development — the restoration of an inter-government hotline — seemed in doubt, with the North refusing to answer calls from the South since Wednesday morning.
“The South side had no intent to hold dialogue from the beginning,” said a spokesman for the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) — the state body that handles inter-Korean issues.
“It only sought to create an obstacle to the talks, delay and then torpedo them,” he said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, accusing the South of “arrogant obstructions and deliberate disturbance.”
“This impolite and immoral provocative behavior made us think once again whether it will be possible to properly discuss matters or improve relations even if official talks are opened in the future,” the spokesman said.
The agreement to meet in Seoul this week had looked vulnerable from the outset — requiring 17 hours of negotiation on Sunday that ended with no real consensus on the agenda and other issues.
The final nail in the coffin was a dispute over who would represent each side, with the North arguing that the South’s nomination of a vice minister as its chief delegate was an insult.
When Seoul refused to upgrade to a Cabinet minister, the North canceled the dispatch of its delegation.
The South Korean Unification Ministry, which insisted its vice minister was commensurate in rank to the North’s chief delegate, said the CPRK spokesman’s take on the collapse of the talks was “distorted.”
Past talks may have seen the South field a chief delegate of higher rank than the North, but the time had come for “such practices to be normalized” in line with international diplomatic norms, the statement said.
“The government will keep the door for dialogue open, and hopes the North will come to the table with sincerity and responsibility,” it added.
South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said the whole protocol rift was an inevitable “growing pain” as the new administration of South Korean President Park Geun-hye seeks to define a new relationship with Pyongyang.
Park, who took office in February, has pushed a “trust-building” policy with the North, which offers engagement, but no concessions without reciprocity.
The talks in Seoul were to have focused on reopening two suspended commercial projects — the Kaesong joint industrial zone and South Korean tours to the North’s Mount Kumgang resort.
Both were important hard currency earners for North Korea, which has been squeezed by successive UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons program.
North Korea effectively closed Kaesong by withdrawing its 53,000 workers from the complex in early April as military tensions peaked.
Representatives of the 123 South Korean firms based in Kaesong voiced their bitter disappointment at the cancelation of the talks and complained that their businesses were being held hostage to the vagaries of North-South politics.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the