In this photo released by the South Korean Unification Ministry, the head of North Korea's delegation Kim Song Hye, center, shakes hands with South Korean delegate Kwon Young-yang, right, as South Korea's Unification Policy Officer Chun Hae-sung, second from right, shakes hands with an unidentified North Korean officer, left, upon their arrival for a meeting at the southern side of Panmunjom, which has separated the two Koreas since the Korean War, in Paju, north of Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 9, 2013 (Photo: AP)
Just hours before North and South Korea are scheduled to hold their first high-level talks for six years, it was still unclear Tuesday exactly who would be doing the talking.
A five-member North Korean negotiating team is supposed to cross the land border early Wednesday morning and drive down to the South Korean capital where the talks are to be held in the Grand Hilton hotel in Seoul.
After a lengthy delay, the two sides finally exchanged lists identifying the proposed members of their respective delegations on Tuesday afternoon.
"But the North said it had an issue with the chief delegate from our side," a South Korean government official said without elaborating.
"Since then, exchanges between the two sides have been continuing," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Neither list was made public.
After months of elevated military tensions that triggered dramatic threats of nuclear war, it is enough for many on the Korean peninsula and beyond that the two Koreas are holding any sort of dialogue at all.
But if both sides are sincere about making tangible progress, then their delegations need to be headed by someone with the authority to negotiate and make decisions.
South Korea had wanted the two-day talks to be between its pointman on North Korea, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-Jae, and his counterpart in Pyongyang, Kim Yang-Gon.
A dialogue at that ministerial level has not been held since 2007.
But North Korea refused, and the two sides ended up agreeing to field government officials with some ill-defined responsibility for inter-Korean affairs.
The lack of clarity was clearly behind Tuesday's continued haggling over the chief delegates, and demonstrated the deep level of mistrust that still dominates inter-Korean relations.
The talks in Seoul are supposed to focus on a pair of suspended joint commercial projects, including the Kaesong industrial complex that North Korea effectively closed in April at the height of the recent tensions.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye said Tuesday she hoped the talks would mark a "first step" in a trust-building process to bring some permanent level of peace and stability to the Korean peninsula.
Park insists substantive dialogue on wider issues can only take place if the North shows some tangible commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.
Short link: