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NORTH KOREA’S GOVERNMENT has pulled out of talks with South Korea – the first of their kind in six years – in a disagreement about the status of the delegates attending the talks
Representatives from the two governments were due to meet tomorrow, to hold talks which outsiders had hoped could help to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula, have have been simmering for some months.
Yesterday the governments exchanged the names of the five delegates they were due to send to the talks, at the village of Panmunjom inside the demilitarised zone.
However, South Korea’s state news agency Yonhap now reports that the North has pulled out of the talks – reportedly because North Korea has objected to the status of the figures being sent by the South.
It cites South Korean officials as saying the North believed the southern negotiators were too low-level within the Southern administration.
“The North threatened to call off the meeting unless the South sends a minister-official as its chief delegate,” said Kim Hyung-suk, a spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
Yonhap said the South originally wanted to send its unification minister, Ryoo Kihl-jae, on the condition that the North send its counterpart, the head of the reunification division of the Worker’s Party.
The North then proposed to send a delegation led by a director from the Committee of the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, the arm of the North Korean government devoted to cross-border relations.
As a result, the South sent its deputy unification minister Kim Nam-Shik, who is still a member of cabinet – but complained that North Korea’s leading delegate was of a status a level or two lower than its own.
The dispute reflects the ongoing difficulties in getting both sides to the negotiating table to discuss matters of common concern.
The talks had been due to discuss the reopening of the Kaesong industrial complex, which has been shut since a threatened war between the two countries in April, but were likely to touch upon the North’s nuclear programme which has been at the centre of the tensions.
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You can turn them off?
I have heard it all now. There is a disorder for everything
Pretty dependent on mine, but it’s pretty sad when you look at a group of people in a pub / restaurant and they’re all tapping away in silence together. I’m good at putting it away when I’m with friends / family
Yep, I am totally addicted to mine…it’s always by my side. If I leave the house without it I go straight back home to pick it up… Bit of a worry really!
Yup that’s me !! I panic tbh thought it was unhealthy alright ! Since I was 16 I have slept with my phone next to me !! Lol it sounds crazy when I think about it! I’m more afraid of misplacing my phone than misplacing my friend lol
So have this.
Yeah i know someone like that.. wakes up in the morning and checks email twitter and FB. dont think she checks for texts of phone calls tho.
Shouldn’t it be called iPhobia?
It was inevitable really. We live in the information age where everything and anything can be done ‘via web’.. I’m addicted to mine, but tbh I think that’s an acceptable lifestyle in this day and age.
don’t give a monkeys about my phone, can easily go a day or two without checking it and i use a 5 year old 2g iphone
Well, it’ll probably be starting school in September so at least you’ll have the day to yourself.
Hahaha @David
This disease was rampant up until the end of the last century. Lead people to vandalise public phones (a phone in a glass box at the side of the street) by ripping off the hand set ( the part of the glass box you had to speak into)
You talking about me?
Haha does NOT apply to me at all! I have the most wonderful phone HTC RHYME and I never Ever know where it is and so never hear it ringing and so do not know who called or texted me. I am so bad that sometimes I see Txts only days later lol
Ah jaysus, couldn’t you have put up a picture of an iPhone. What the hell is that yolk
my worse case was the other night my friend got a tx and straight away all I could think was where is my phone, couldnt c it in my sight so spent ages looking for it for no reason…….is there a helpline for us yet???
duh of course its ok unless you’re from the 1920′s
have your say