Koreas end talks without agreement, to meet again next month

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By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, June 19 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea failed to agree on the future
operation of a joint industrial park and the fate of a detained worker in talks
on Friday, but left room for negotiation by scheduling the next meeting,
officials said.

Pyongyang refused to release the factory worker who has been held for months,
said Kim Young-tak, the chief of the South Korean delegation, after returning
from the joint park in the North's border town of Kaesong. However, the two sides
agreed to meet again on July 2 to continue negotiations, he said.
"We strongly urged the early release of our detained worker and demanded access
to him," Kim said. North Korea only responded there is "no problem" with him.
The inter-Korean talks came amid growing confrontation between North Korea and
the outside world. The U.N. Security Council punished North Korea for its May 25
nuclear test by sharpening financial sanctions and allowing searches of North
Korean vessels suspected of carrying missile and nuclear materials. In response,
Pyongyang vowed to bolster its nuclear deterrence and threatened military clashes
in case of search attempts.
Friday's talks were a follow-up to a June 11 meeting in which the North demanded
steep increases in rent and workers' wages.
Seoul officials said North Korea reiterated its demands that South Korean firms
quadruple monthly wages to US$300 from the current $70-$80. Pyongyang also wants
to raise the 50-year rental fee for land to $500 million. South Korean developers
already paid $16 million when the park opened in 2004.
"They insisted we accept them, and we made clear those demands are against common
sense and against the law," Kim said.
No progress was made on the case of the Hyundai Asan Corp. employee, identified
only by his family name of Yu, who was detained at the joint park on March 30 on
charges of "slandering" the North's political system. North Korea refused Seoul's
request to deliver letters from his family, Kim said.
Many feared the North would shut down the joint park in retaliation against Seoul
for its hard-line policy, but Pyongyang did not appear to be trying to do so in
the latest talks, analysts said.
In an unexpected gesture, North Korea offered to lift a traffic curfew on South
Korean businessmen traveling to the joint park. The restriction was imposed in
December to protest Seoul's conservative policy.
"North Korea won't give up the Kaesong industrial park, especially now that it
faces U.N. sanctions," said Cho Myung-cheol, a former economics professor at
Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung University who defected to the South in 1994 and is now a
think tank analyst.
The joint venture holds even greater economic value for the cash-strapped North
after the U.N. Security Council banned its weapons trade under Resolution 1874,
he said. South Korean businesses paid $26.8 million in wages last year to the
North Korean government.
South Korea proposed holding joint surveys with North Korea in foreign industrial
zones in China, Vietnam and even the United States to reach a reasonable
conclusion for both sides, officials said. North Korea did not respond to the
proposal, they said.
The joint park, just an hour's drive from Seoul, was born out of the first
historic inter-Korean summit in 2000 and continued to grow despite the North's
first nuclear test in 2006. More than 100 South Korean firms currently operate
there, making clothes, kitchenware, electronic equipment and other
labor-intensive goods with about 40,000 North Korean employees.
Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea studies professor at Korea University, said North
Korea appears to be dragging its feet in the face of strong international
sanctions. While inter-Korean talks continue, North Korea will not attempt a
military provocation, he said.
"It may continue to make threats, but will not put them into action, which will
then completely freeze any exchange with the outside," he said.
Political relations rapidly soured after President Lee Myung-bak took office in
South Korea last year, taking a tougher stance on the North's nuclear program and
ending the decade-long unconditional economic aid to the impoverished state. As a
sign of increased stress on businesses, a clothing manufacturer withdrew this
month in the first pullout by a South Korean firm from the industrial park.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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