South, North Korea to meet again over joint park

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, July 2 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea were set to hold a third round of
talks over a joint venture later Thursday in a bid to narrow differences over
rent and wages and the fate of a detained worker.
The economic talks are being held as North Korea faces tightening financial U.N.
sanctions for its May nuclear test. The inter-Korean industrial park has given
the North a steady cash flow.
Seoul's five-member delegation will sit across the table with their five North
Korean counterparts at 10 a.m. at the joint park in the North's border town of
Kaesong, about an hour after crossing the demarcation line, said Unification
Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo.
"The matter of the detained worker will be our first priority in trying to
resolve a variety of issues," Lee said in a briefing on Wednesday.
The Hyundai Asan Corp. engineer who works at the joint park was detained late
March on charges of "slandering" the North's political system and trying to
persuade a local female employee to defect to South Korea. North Korea has
refused access to him, saying an investigation is underway. Amnesty International
has called for his immediate release in the first international message over the
worker, only identified by his family name Yu.
Over the first two rounds in June 11 and June 19, the two sides exchanged their
demands and proposals, and Thursday's talks are expected to be a litmus test for
the possibility of narrowing differences.
In the first round, North Korea demanded South Korean firms raise monthly wages
four-fold to US$300. It also sought $500 million for a 50-year lease on the park,
overriding inter-Korean contracts that had South Korean developers pay $16
million when the park opened in 2004.
In the second round, North Korea insisted on its initial offer, but eased up on
non-cash issues. The North offered to lift a border traffic curfew it imposed on
South Korean workers and cargo trucks in December to protest Seoul's conservative
policy.
South Korea offered to build a dormitory and a nursery for North Korean workers,
mostly women in their 20s and 30s. It also proposed a joint survey on foreign
investment zones in China, Vietnam and the United States to improve the business
viability of the inter-Korean venture.
"After the two rounds, the agenda items are now out on the table," a ministry
official said, requesting anonymity. "The issue here is whether both sides have
room for negotiation."
President Lee Myung-bak has rejected the wage and rent demands as "unacceptable."
The industrial park is the last surviving cross-border venture born out of the
first summit between South and North Korean leaders in 2000. Tourism projects
that took South Koreans to the North's historic and scenic spots were all
suspended last year as political relations unraveled after Lee took office.
The joint park hosts more than 100 South Korean firms making clothing,
kitchenware, electronic equipment and other labor-intensive goods with about
40,000 North Korean workers. The firms paid more than $26 million in wages to the
North Korean government last year.
North Korea's hard-line military has been reluctant to continue the joint park
where capitalist culture has filtered through, analysts say, but Pyongyang
appears to intend to keep the cash cow in the face of U.N. financial and other
sanctions.
In the latest punitive move over the North's nuclear test, Washington earlier
froze the U.S. assets of a company in Iran for alleged involvement in North
Korea's missile trade.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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