North Korea and South Korea have renewed the blame game following the collapse of talks in recent days and fresh negotiations over the Korean peninsula seem unlikely in the near future.
Pyongyang Thursday blamed Seoul for the breakdown saying South Korea's "sinister" moves torpedoed the negotiations scheduled for this week.
South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) last Monday agreed to hold the first high-level talks in six years but later the meeting was cancelled as a result of disagreement over the level of chief delegates for the talks.
"The south side insisted on ministerial-level talks from the beginning, but right before the start of the talks, it downgraded the level of its chief delegate. This is the height of discourtesy and disrespect unprecedented in the history of north-south dialogue," said a spokesman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) in a statement.
"This fully proves that the south side had no intent to hold dialogue from the beginning. It only sought to create an obstacle to the talks and to delay and torpedo them after reluctantly taking part in the talks, far from solving issues at the negotiating table," said the spokesman.
Signaling there won't be any dialogue in the near future, the North Korea spokesman added "we have nothing to expect from the talks between authorities of the two sides."
However, South Korea immediately hit back in a press release from the Ministry of Unification saying that the statement by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea that blamed Seoul for the halt in negotiations was untrue.
"It is highly regrettable that the CPRK unilaterally disclosed the contents of the working level talks held in Seoul, and distorted the facts," said the release.
South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae was initially designated to be the head of Seoul's delegation for the talks to be held on Wednesday and Thursday but South Korea later named its vice-minister as its chief negotiator following Pyongyang's refusal to send Kim Yang-gon, an adviser to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, as chief of North Korea's delegation for the talks.
The two sides have not held ministerial-level talks since 2007.
