SEOUL, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- North Korea on Thursday night blamed the South for the breakdown of inter-Korean peace talks, touching off a new round of tensions on the divided Korean peninsula.
In a stridently worded statement, North Korea's state-run media attacked the South's negotiators, led by Unification Minister Hong Soon-young, for their "stubborn and mistaken attitude."
"The whole course of the talks clearly showed that the South is seeking confrontation in contravention of the basic spirit of the North-South joint (summit) declaration," the (North) Korean Central Broadcasting Station said.
"The talks broke down due to the South's flunkyist attitude that depends on foreign forces rather than the (Korean) nation," it said. The North uses the phase of foreign forces to refer mostly to the United States, the South's chief ally.
High-level reconciliation talks at the North's mountain resort collapsed Wednesday due to a dispute over an anti-terrorist security alert in the South, which the North claims was targeted at it. The North demanded the South lift its alert before discussing any exchange programs.
It was the first time that the high-level dialogue has ended without any agreements since the channel opened under the historic summit of their leaders in June 2000.
The collapse of the talks has embarrassed South Korean President Kim Dae-jung who has pushed for a reconciliatory policy toward the North, providing food and fertilizer in a series of aid packages.
Analysts said the breakdown of the talks was expected to put the inter-Korean reconciliation process on hold. "A cooling-down of inter-Korean relations seem inevitable for the time being," said Kim Sung-chol, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, the government-run think tank.
