South Korea cautious ahead of talks on joint park with North

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, June 8 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is preparing for upcoming talks with the
North with a "cool-headed and cautious" approach, a spokesman said Monday,
focusing on a detained worker and the future of a joint industrial park amid
military tensions.
The meeting set for Thursday at the joint park in the North's border town of
Kaesong follows Pyongyang's proposal last week to discuss issues "regarding the
Kaesong Industrial Zone."
The talks would be a follow-up to a meeting in April, which ended bitterly in a
tussle over the agenda. North Korea demanded wage hikes and payments for land use
but refused to discuss South Korea's major concern, a Hyundai Asan Corp. employee
who has been held by the North since March for "slandering" its political system.
"Our government, without being optimistic or pessimistic, is preparing for these
working-level talks in a cool-headed and cautious way," Unification Ministry
spokesman Chun Hae-sung said in a briefing.
The talks come amid heightened military tensions along the inter-Korean border.
South Korea's military was on a heightened alert after Pyongyang warned of naval
clashes in the Yellow Sea, protesting Seoul's participation in a U.S.-led
security campaign, the Proliferation Security Initiative. The western sea border,
unilaterally drawn by the U.S.-led U.N. Command after the 1953-55 Korean War, was
a site of bloody skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.
North Korea also appears to be preparing for an intercontinental ballistic
missile test, Seoul's military officials say, as the U.N. Security Council is
negotiating financial and diplomatic sanctions to Pyongyang for its second
nuclear test on May 25.
Seoul officials say the expected U.N. resolution would not affect the joint park
in Kaesong. North Korea receives tens of millions of dollars in wages from South
Korean firms at the venture, but the income should be considered as part of
ordinary trade activities, they say.
The Seoul government is focused on winning the release of the detained worker and
working out Pyongyang's unilateral demands on the joint park.
"We are working to make these talks become an opportunity to stably develop the
Kaesong industrial park and resolve the issue of our worker," Chun said.
The joint venture, about an hour's drive from Seoul, is the last remaining
inter-Korean economic project from the historic summit between then South Korean
President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000. With low
wages -- approximately between US$70-$80 a month -- and free land use guaranteed
until 2014, the park has drawn more than 100 South Korean firms producing
clothes, kitchenware, electronic equipment and other labor-intensive goods. Some
40,000 North Koreans work there.
In the previous talks, North Korea complained that the wages are too low and
demanded land fees be charged from next year, four years ahead of schedule.
In a follow-up statement in May, the North declared all contracts regarding the
joint park "null and void," and said it will unilaterally revise them. It told
South Korean firms to leave if they can't accept the new terms.
Seoul sent the list of names of its 10-member delegation, headed by Kim
Young-tak, director general of the Kaesong Industrial Complex Project Bureau
under the Unification Ministry, over the weekend, and called on North Korea to
reciprocate, Chun said.
Meanwhile, North Korea sentenced two U.S. journalists to 12 years in labor camps
on Monday on charges of illegally entering the country.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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