海角大神

North Korea refused to take calls from Seoul Wednesday, a day after proposed cabinet-level talks between the two Koreas fell apart over a dispute about the rank of officials who would lead their delegations.

Reuters reports that South Korea received no response from two calls, sent at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. local time, to the North via a Red Cross hotline reestablished just last week after Pyongyang shut it down earlier this year. The lack of response is most likely a result of this week's collapsed talks, reports the BBC.

Representatives for the two Koreas had met on Monday to arrange high-level discussions planned for today, in what would have been the first such meeting since 2007. But, reports The New York Times, the two sides broke off their preliminary discussions on Tuesday after the two sides split on what officials would attend.

Any hopes of the two Koreas soon reducing tension and getting back to business as usual were dashed.

In recent months, North Korea has been using particularly heated rhetoric toward the South and the US, and it staged several weapons tests this spring. It has also refused to return to the negotiating table over its nuclear weapons program -- despite UN sanctions supported even by its sole ally, China. Gi-Wook Shin, a professor at Stanford University, told 海角大神 that the North's willingness to entertain even preliminary talks with the South could be a result of pressure from China, whose president, Xi Jinping, recently met with President Barack Obama.

South Korean Prime Minister Chung Hong-won said in a parliamentary session today that it was a matter of "the pride of the South Korean people" that the North and South meet on equal terms, writes Yonhap News. "Dialogue can be accepted by each other when two sides are on the same level. Talks made by a unilateral push would not have sincerity," he said.

In an editorial, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo argued that "It is common courtesy and global protocol to match the ranks of participants in government talks," and that "North Korea has been spoiled" by the South's previous willingness to fudge the difference in ranks between diplomats.

But Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea scholar at Seoul鈥檚 Dongguk University, told the Associated Press that the dispute is in part due to disagreement over how officials within the two Koreas' different political systems match up. Regardless, he said, it will likely take some time before new discussions are held. 鈥淭he two sides are offended by each other now. The relations may again undergo a cooling-off period before negotiations for further talks resume,鈥� he said.