Beijing - North and South Korea yesterday failed to strike a deal on a package of fertiliser relief and family reunions, but agreed to meet again today, South Korea's chief negotiator said.
"Today's meeting has not made progress in narrowing the differences between the two sides," Mr Jeong Se-hyun of the South Korean Unification Ministry, said after the fourth round of talks in a Beijing hotel. He indicated the talks - the first high-level contact between the two rivals since the 1994 death of North Korea's "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung - could end inconclusively on famine aid and political issues.
The North proposed the negotiations with the narrow goal of seeking up to 200,000 tonnes of fertiliser for its farm sector, which has been crippled by three years of natural disasters and decades of Stalinist-style collectivism. But Pyongyang agreed to broaden the dialogue upon Seoul's insistence that large-scale aid depended on concessions on issues such as allowing reunions among families separated since the 1950-53 Korean War and reopening formal liaison channels.