By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter

North Korean officials returned home yesterday after their four-day ministerial talks here with their Southern counterparts, leaving their hosts content and, more importantly, hopeful for future talks after a change in negotiation tactics.

The latest Cabinet-level talks, which came after a one-year hiatus, produced a 12-point joint press statement, which experts expected would accelerate inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation.

From the North’s nuclear problem to the thorny issue of South Korean prisoners of war (POWs), the statement included almost all matters needing to be addressed in the coming months, though it fell short of fixing a date for a new round of six-party nuclear talks.

But what excited South Koreans more in addition to the variety of items in the statement was the time it came out: the previous cross-border talks used to turn into a tedious tug-of-war, in which the two sides engaged in overnight marathon negotiations over every single word.

Some attributed the earlier-than-expected agreement to last week’s meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the South’s Unification Minister Chung Dong-young who reached a general agreement on many points in their five-hour talks in Pyongyang.

Chung, who led the South Korean delegation to the ministerial meeting in Seoul, visited the North’s capital to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the June 2000 inter-Korean summit. Kim replied positively to such calls from Chung for the resumption of general-level military talks.

However, some other North Korea experts, while generally agreeing to the analysis, found a more fundamental change in the behaviors the North Korean officials have shown in the course of negotiations.

``Kim stressed once again that there shouldn’t be an unnecessary war of nerves in the inter-Korean relations when he met Chung last week,’’ Professor Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University told The Korea Times. ``And, as you know, Kim’s words are equivalent to the law in North Korea.’’

Senior Cabinet Councilor Kwon Ho-ung, the North’s chief delegate to the Seoul meeting, also repeated the words of his ``Dear Leader’’ as South Korea’s President Roh Moo-hyun expressed gratitude for the early conclusion at Chong Wa Dae just prior to the release of the statement.

``Chairman Kim instructed us to avoid needless confrontation to save face,’’ Kwon said. ``Things went well this time as Minister Chung and I held negotiations in that spirit.’’

Professor Yang Moo-jin at the Graduate School of North Korean Studies of Kyungnam University also noted the changed format in the 15th ministerial talks, right from the delivery style of keynote speeches to the shape of the table in the main session room.

Omitting the turn-taking delivery of lengthy opening speeches, which often resulted in angry retorts by the North, Chung and Kwon delivered their remarks in a conversational manner. Instead of the rectangular table, the South this time prepared a roundtable where the chief delegates from the two sides sat side by side.

The recent amiable atmosphere created since last month’s vice ministerial talks that reopened the direct dialogue channel between the two sides that had been shut down for about a year has also helped smooth out negotiations this week, according to South Korean delegates.

Vice Unification Minister Rhee Bong-jo, who led the Southern delegation to last month’s talks, told reporters about the changes he saw. ``Now I don’t think we can expect the North Koreans to wake us up in the middle of the night, known as their notorious `owl tactics,’’’ he said jokingly.

Some analysts wary of the communist behaviors in negotiations warned that the North might be just trying a tactic of driving a wedge between the United States and its Asian allies by drawing nearer to South Korea. But the true intention would be proved in future negotiations.

``North Korea seems to have recognized by previous trial and error that there is nothing to be gained by an unnecessary tug-of-war over Korean relations,’’ Koh said. ``We may expect the positive changes to continue in future negotiations.’’

jinryu@koreatimes.co.kr