North Korea has blamed South Korea for the collapse of the two Korea’s government-level talks which was going to take place in Seoul this week.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the North's Committee for Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland said that inter-Korean government-level talks collapsed due to the South’s obstruction and deliberate attempts to ruin the talks. The committee then said the South should assume full responsibility for the consequences that the latest cancellation of talks will bring to inter-Korean relations.

The committee also denounced the South for first proposing a ministerial meeting with pledges on various occasions to send its unification minister as the chief delegate but then lowering the level of the chief delegate right before the talks were set to open.

The committee said that a secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea Central Committee has never headed a North Korean delegation to government-level talks in the history of inter-Korean talks. The committee said that the North has "nothing to expect from the talks between authorities of the North and South."

The committee's statement is the first response from the North after the planned government-level talks set to open in Seoul on Wednesday were scrapped.