SEOUL, South Korea — Plans to hold what would have been the highest government dialogue between North and South Korea in years — and hopes for a rapprochement on the divided Korean Korean Peninsula — collapsed over what appeared to be a minor technical issue: who should lead their delegations to the planned talks.
But in the decades-old confrontation between the two Koreas, even a matter of protocol can escalate into a highly sensitive struggle over pride. Their latest tussle over the proper ranks of their chief delegates was in part an extension of a struggle that has persisted for decades.
“We must think of the pride of our people,” Prime Minister Chung Hong-won of South Korea told the National Assembly on Wednesday, explaining what was at stake in the dispute with North Korea.
During border talks decades ago, both sides took the competition over protocol and appearances to the extreme, with the North Korean military officers secretly adding inches to the legs of their chairs so they would look taller than their U.S. and South Korean counterparts across the table.
In those cold war-era meetings, the sides usually exchanged invective and retorts. But they also sometimes persisted in silence — once for 11 and a half hours in one session in 1969 — challenging the other side to speak first.
In the best-known contest of pride on the divided peninsula, North and South Korea once engaged in a race over which could raise their national flag higher on their heavily fortified border. That battle was eventually settled with the North beating the South; today, the North’s flagpole stands 500 feet tall, beating the rival South staff by roughly 200 feet.
The latest tussle of pride began when the two Koreas agreed this week to hold government-to-government dialogue in Seoul, starting on Wednesday, but could not agree on who should be their chief delegates.
South Korea said it would send its vice unification minister, Kim Nam-shik, to the meeting as its chief delegate. North Korea said that Mr. Kim was not senior enough and demanded that the South send Mr. Kim's supervisor, the Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae, as chief delegate. The South retorted that the proposed chief North Korean delegate — Kang Ji-yong, director of the secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea — was already below Mr. Kim "in status."
Last-minute negotiations for a compromise had failed, with both Koreas accusing each other of hurting their ego. Then, on the eve of the talks, North Korea pulled out of the planned Seoul meeting, accusing the South of “an insult,” South Korean officials said.
It appeared unlikely that the two Koreas would try to resume negotiations any time soon.
South Korean officials said they were still open to dialogue but had no plan to reach out to the North with a concession over its chief delegate. On Wednesday, Mr. Chung, the South Korean prime minister, said his government had no intention of succumbing to the North’s “humiliating” demand.
North Korea has not made any announcement on the matter since its withdrawal from the talks. On Wednesday, it did not respond when the South made routine maintenance calls on the cross-border communications hot lines.
Critics accused the South Korean government of ruining a chance to engage the North through dialogue, instead bickering over protocol matters. The planned talks had raised hopes of a thaw on the peninsula after months of bellicose rhetoric, including threats of nuclear war, from the North. But South Korean officials said that their firm stance reflected the new approach under President Park Geun-hye, who has stressed "principle" and "trust" in relations with the North and vowed to make the North respect "global standards."
South Korea’s frustration with the North deepened after North Korea unilaterally pulled out its workers from a jointly operated industrial park in April, blaming military tensions.
North Korea, which relies on foreign aid, has also made a point of belittling South Korea as an American “puppet,” often sending relatively low-ranking officials to sit as chief representatives at senior-level talks with the South — a practice Ms. Park’s government said it was determined to break.
“This is a growth pain as we search for a new relationship with the North,” Mr. Ryoo told South Korean reporters on Wednesday.
When North Koreans visited Seoul, the South Korean capital which has rapidly emerged from the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War to become an economic powerhouse, they used to accuse their South Korean counterparts of mobilizing cars to impress them. In a famous rejoinder, a South Korean official reportedly said, “Yes, we had a hard time mobilizing all those big buildings too.”
In more recent trips, North Korean delegates liked to point at ubiquitous signs in English throughout Seoul to support its claim that South Korea has turned into an American colony.
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