North Says Seoul Set 'Bad Atmosphere' For Talks, Reunions

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North Says Seoul Set 'Bad Atmosphere' For Talks, Reunions

North Korea has again demanded that the next ministerial talks be held at Mount Geumgang in North Korea. It also held Seoul responsible for the cancellation of the fourth separated family reunion scheduled last week.

Seoul plans to reply by phone to the North on Monday. Government officials said Seoul will express its regret at the cancellations and press for the early resumption of inter-Korean government talks. The latest shouting match between the two governments, triggered by Pyeongyang's Oct. 12 postponement of the fourth separated family reunion and official talks, is growing in intensity, several analysts said. Pyeongyang said it would not send its citizens to the South while Seoul's armed forces were on alert in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

Radio Pyeongyang on Sunday quoted its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland as saying, "The South is responsible for having called the alert and for having thus formed an antagonistic atmosphere between the Korean peoples." It criticized "the South's wrongful handling that contradicts the basic spirit of the June 15 Joint Declaration has and treats us as the main enemy." The declaration Pyeongyang referred to was adopted during the meeting between President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyeongyang last year.

Pyeongyang's government newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, also called the South to "take off its fake humanitarian hat." It said in an editorial, "The South recently intentionally set up obstacles to the exchange of separated families and relatives by forming warlike conditions, and yet it is publicly portraying itself as being interested in humanitarian affairs."

"This is the first time that the North has attacked the South Korean government since the adoption of the June 15 Joint Declaration," a senior government official said. Although he said it would be .difficult. to hold the ministerial talks in the North unless Pyeongyang reschedules the family reunions, he did not entirely rule out an agreement to meet there to keep dialogue alive.

Relations between the two Koreas were frozen after Pyeongyang unilaterally the fifth ministerial talks in May, but recovered somewhat when the talks were finally held in September. The family reunion was to have been the first major North-South event since the talks.



by Lee Young-jong

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