Koreas end talks without agreement, to meet again next month

(ATTN: UPDATES with details throughout)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea failed to agree on wage and rent
hikes demanded by Pyongyang at a joint industrial park on Friday, but left room
for negotiation by scheduling the next meeting, a spokesman said.
The two sides will meet again on July 2, Unification Ministry spokesman Chun
Hae-sung said in a briefing.
South Korea's delegation pressed for the release of a worker who has been
detained since March for "slandering" the North's political system, while North
Korea made demands for wage and rent hikes at the joint park in the North's
border town of Kaesong.
A senior ministry official said North Korea refused to give word about the
Hyundai Asan Corp. employee. Seoul rejected Pyongyang's demands as
"unacceptable," the official said, requesting anonymity until the results are
officially announced by the chief of the South Korean delegation, Kim Young-tak.
The inter-Korean talks came amid growing confrontation between North Korea and
the outside world. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed strict sanctions
against the North for its missile and nuclear tests and called for a stronger
alliance between Seoul and Washington in a summit with U.S. President Barack
Obama earlier this week.
Many feared the North may try to shut down the joint park, but it left room for
further negotiations. In an unexpected gesture, North Korea offered to lift a
traffic curfew, which has been imposed since December in protest of Seoul's
conservative policy, on South Korean businessmen traveling to the joint park, the
spokesman said.
Chun could not say whether the offer came with any strings attached.
South Korea proposed holding joint surveys in foreign industrial zones in China,
Vietnam and eventually in the United States, the spokesman said, to seek ways to
improve Kaesong park's competitiveness.
North Korea wants South Korean firms to quadruple monthly wages for its workers
to US$300 from the current $70-80 and raise collective land rent to $500 million,
a 31-fold increase from the $16 million paid when the park opened in 2004.
North Korea complained about Lee's stern remarks in the Washington summit, the
senior official said.
With Obama at his side at the White House, Lee pushed for "peaceful reunification
on the principles of a free democracy and a market economy." Watchers said that
call is certain to provoke North Korea, sending a signal that the affluent South
intends to absorb the impoverished communist state.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)