The two Koreas ended the opening day of high-level military talks in bitter disagreement on Tuesday, as North Korea renewed its long-running demand that the western sea border with the South be redrawn, REPORTED AP. The sea border dispute has been widely considered a deal breaker in this week's talks set to run through Thursday. North Korea does not recognize the current sea border demarcated by the United Nations at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, and claims the border is too far north. South Korea has rejected the North's claim, saying the current border should be respected. «The South side is persistently evading the fundamental solution to the issue of preventing clashes in the waters» off the peninsula's west coast, the North's chief delegate, Lt. Gen. Kim Yong Chol, told his South Korean counterpart, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency. Kim was echoing the North's long-held position that redrawing the disputed boundary is the key to preventing skirmishes in the waters near the border _ the scene of deadly clashes in 1999 and 2002. The South Korean delegation said it rejected the North's demand for a new sea border. «We stressed again that our position ... is firm,» said Col. Moon Sung-mook, spokesman for the South's delegation. The talks began Tuesday morning at the truce village of Panmunjom in the middle of the Demilitarized Zone running between North and South, and ended for the day just three hours later.
