Incentive for Korea talks remains despite failure

SEOUL, South Korea: South Korea dismantled the meeting table, pulled down the placards and rolled up the red carpet. Its intended guest, North Korea, has stopped answering the phone.
The rivals’ much-anticipated meeting, which was to be held yesterday, collapsed before it even began. But while the last-minute cancelation over a protocol dispute shows the Koreas’ deep mutual mistrust, they may have more reasons than not to eventually unpack the meeting gear and get back to negotiations.
New S. Korean President Park Geun-hye is under pressure to make good on her campaign promises to reverse a deterioration of ties under her hard-line predecessor. A high-level meeting would validate her attempt to combine a tough line against provocations with commitments to provide aid and steady calls for dialogue.
N. Korea is interested in reviving the two economic projects that were to be the main focus of the meetings, both as an emblem of reconciliation and as a source of foreign investment and hard cash. Pyongyang may also be feeling a pinch from its only major ally, China, which has clamped down on cross-border trade and financial dealings in a show of displeasure over a recent spike in tensions.
“Even though a cooling-off period at this point is inevitable, it is still possible for a different level of the South-North talks to take place as time passes,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a professor of N. Korea studies of Dongguk University in Seoul.
Yesterday, Pyongyang wouldn’t answer Seoul’s calls on a communications line at their border that was restored ahead of preliminary negotiations for the failed meeting. But Ryoo Kihl-jae, S. Korea’s unification minister and Park’s point man on N. Korea, likened the talks’ failure to “labor pains” in the creation of new relations.
N. Korea has not issued its own statement about the canceled talks. In an editorial yesterday, the North’s main newspaper called for a better mood for dialogue but made no reference to the scrapped meeting.
The talks were meant to focus on reviving S. Korean tours to a N. Korean mountain resort, and on restoring operations at a factory park in the N. Korean border city of Kaesong. The complex, run with N. Korean workers and S. Korean managers and capital, was responsible for nearly $ 2 billion a year in cross-border trade until it shut down this spring during high tensions.
The S. Korean businessmen who were forced to abandon their operations expressed dismay over the aborted talks.
“I feel miserable,” said Kang Chang-beom, who runs a women’s apparel company that has dormant assembly lines at Kaesong.
“The Kaesong complex is dying and our machines are getting rustier as they argue” over protocol, he said. He was not just speaking figuratively; the rainy season starts next week.
The hope had been that the narrowly defined economic talks would lead to the start of a new relationship. Inter-Korean relations have been marred in recent months by a rocket launch, a nuclear test and threats of nuclear war by the North, followed by S. Korean vows of counterstrikes.