Seoul, December 21: The two Koreas held talks earlier this year about a possible summit following months of hostility, but talks broke down due to a dispute over South Koreans held in the North, a report said Monday.
Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, citing sources, said secret talks were held in Seoul in August and in Singapore in October.
Other local media also reported that the two sides tried and failed to set up their third summit talks, following meetings in 2000 and 2007.
Yonhap news agency said the failure was partly due to Seoul’s rejection of a demand for 100,000 tonnes of food as a precondition.
There have been previous media reports about secret talks on a summit, but not on the outcome of such talks. The government has refused to comment.
After a decade-long “sunshine” engagement policy by liberal Seoul governments, cross-border relations worsened after a conservative administration came to power in February 2008.
But the North began putting out peace feelers in August. Dong-A said the North’s leader Kim Jong-Il had proposed that a summit by held by the end of the year.
It said ruling party legislator Yim Tae-Hee, who is now labour minister, meet Kim Yang-Gon, head of the North?s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, in Seoul and again in Singapore in October.
They neared an agreement, it said, but negotiations failed because the North at the last minute rejected Seoul’s demand for the return of hundreds of South Koreans held in the North.
Seoul says Pyongyang still holds 560 prisoners of war from the 1950-53 conflict and 504 South Korean civilians, mostly fishermen whose boats were seized following the war.
Pyongyang denies holding any South Koreans against their will.
Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Monday that the two sides met secretly in the North’s border city of Kaesong last month to try to organise a summit but failed.
Seoul’s unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations, refused to comment on the reports.
–Agencies