NEWS ANALYSIS : Korean Talks Appear Bound for Impasse : Politics: The North makes key demands about entry into U.N., U.S. troops and political prisoners. But the South seems unlikely to agree.

SEOUL —  An attempt to forge a new chapter in relations on the divided Korean peninsula appeared headed toward the same old impasse as the prime ministers of North and South Korea prepared to hold a second day of talks today.

The ball was arguably in the Seoul government’s court. Success of the talks may hinge on how well the South Korean side can respond to key demands by the North that it consider joint entry into the United Nations, cease military maneuvers with U.S. troops stationed here and release political prisoners detained for making unauthorized visits to North Korea.

The two prime ministers began their face-off Wednesday as the most senior officials from the two feuding Koreas ever to meet formally. But they were to enter the closed session scheduled for today constrained by the same rigid and intractable positions that have strangled the inter-Korean dialogue for decades.

North Korea is sticking to its traditional demand that the formula for U.N. membership center on a single, joint Korean seat even before formal reunification is realized. The South did not raise the U.N. question in its opening remarks Wednesday, but in the past it has favored separate seats under a cross-recognition plan.

The North reiterated demands that the South stop conducting annual war games with the 44,000 American troops based on its soil. Those exercises, commonly known as “Team Spirit,” have been scaled down somewhat in recent years, but U.S. and South Korean authorities insist that they are necessary so long as deployment of American forces continues--and that the deployment will continue as long as there is a “threat” from the North.

But North Korea wants the troops removed, along with the nuclear weapons it alleges are based in South Korea.

The other major sticking point is the issue of South Korean political prisoners jailed for making illicit visits to North Korea last year. Seoul has contended that their sentences under the National Security Law were justified because they knowingly violated the law in traveling to the North through third countries.

But North Korean Premier Yon Hyong Muk made an emphatic plea for leniency, arguing that the dissidents acted out of idealism, not malice.

“The reason we raise this question is not to interfere with your application of law, but because this concerns the unification issue and it concerns us too,” he said. “These people while they were in the North were warmly welcomed and did not praise or criticize any one political system. They visited the North only because they had an urgent desire to see a reunified fatherland.”

South Korean Prime Minister Kang Young Hoon did not touch directly on the issue, but he cited the principle of “nonintervention in each other’s internal affairs” as one of several basic steps to better relations. That was an apparent reference to North Korea’s repeated demands that the National Security Law be abolished and political prisoners be released.

Few observers had predicted any significant breakthrough in the “historic” meeting. South Korean officials privately expressed strong pessimism even before the Northern delegates arrived Tuesday.

It remained doubtful that the South would try to salvage the talks by making major concessions--such as showing flexibility on its U.N. formula, promising to curtail military maneuvers or granting amnesty to the dissident travelers.

At the very least, it had been hoped that the meeting would become a symbolic milestone because it represented a de facto recognition by North Korea of the legitimacy of the Seoul government. The Stalinist regime in the North has in the past dismissed the Republic of Korea as an undemocratic puppet government answering only to Washington.

But progress even on that basic level of diplomatic goodwill seemed in jeopardy.