South and North Korea have managed to keep the dialogue mood afloat but a significant deal on major pending issues will likely remain elusive, experts here said Friday.
After marathon working-level talks at the truce village of Panmunjom, the two sides agreed to hold a vice ministerial meeting on Dec. 11 at the Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North’s border town.
They announced that inter-Korean issues related to the improvement of bilateral ties will be discussed.
“The two sides seem to have made the choice in order to continue dialogue on the working level,” Kim Yong-hyun, a professor at Dongguk University, said.
Main agenda items could include regular reunions of separated families and the resumption of the joint tour program to the North’s scenic Mount Kumgang, he added.
But few expect any “big agreements” from the vice ministerial dialogue.
“There are big differences in issues that can be agreed upon at the minister-level and vice ministerial talks (between the two Koreas),” Cheong Seong-chang, senior fellow at the Sejong Institute pointed out.
If the North has the “strong will” for improved ties with the South, Kim Yang-gon, the top communist party official in charge of daily inter-Korean affairs, should come to the bargaining table himself, Cheong stressed.
Kim joined the so-called two-plus-two negotiations on Aug. 25 which also involved Hwang Pyong-so, the North’s chief military official on political affairs. Their southern counterparts were President Park Geun-hye’s top security advisor Kim Kwan-jin and Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo.
They produced a set of landmark deals on ending a military crisis and paving the way for additional dialogue.
Analysts also took issue with the venue for the upcoming meeting.
South Korea hoped to hold it in either Seoul or Pyongyang as agreed in the Aug. 25 accord.
The North, however, apparently refused to do so.
“The results of the working-level contact this time is no more or less than maintaining the momentum of implementing the Aug. 25 agreement,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies. “The choice of the venue indicates the North’s intent not to hold government-level talks in Seoul and Pyongyang on a regular basis.”
The experts shared the view that in the Dec. 11 meeting the two Koreas would just exchange their opinions on thorny issues and that full-scale negotiations would be possible in ministerial talks later on, if at all. (Yonhap)
