Two Koreas Halt Talks on Asian Games Team

Talks between South and North Korea on forming a single team for this year’s Asian Games in Beijing virtually broke down today when both sides openly refused to make further concessions.

The two sides agreed to meet again on Feb. 7, but officials publicly declared that the talks will fail unless both sides make concessions.

“Our position is crystal clear. We can make no further concessions. There would be no step backward,” chief North Korean delegate Kim Hyung Jin told reporters when the meeting ended after 2 hours and 20 minutes.

His South Korean counterpart, Chang Chung Shik, blasted North Korea, saying, “We suspect that they have (not) a genuine will to form a single team. They are more interested in political propaganda.”

The talks, which began early last year, made speedy progress, with both sides agreeing on a team name and song and the selection of athletes, raising hope that they would be able to form a joint team for an international event for the first time since the division of their land in 1945.

But the negotiations bogged down early this year after South Korea sought to conclude an auxiliary accord binding both sides to faithfully implement all agreements reached in the talks.

South Korean officials are concerned that North Korea would raise difficult technical or political issues at the last moment to block Seoul’s participation in the Beijing Games, scheduled for September.

The chief South Korean delegate, Chang, noted that North Korea blocked South Korea’s participation in a world table tennis championship in Pyongyang in 1979 after accusing Seoul of failing to form a single team for the event.

“At that time, our team waited in Lausanne, Switzerland, for one week, but North Korea did not issue visas, thus blocking our participation in the Pyongyang table tennis,” he said.

The auxiliary accord South Korea hopes to sign with North Korea includes a joint letter to be sent to the Asian Games Organizing Committee specifying that the two Koreas would attend the Beijing Games separately in case they fail to form a single team.

North Korean officials said such an auxiliary accord is unnecessary.