5th LD) Koreas fail to make progress in talks over joint park, no date set for next

((ATTN: RECASTS headline, UPDATES with details)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, July 2 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea failed to make progress in the
latest round of talks on Thursday, Seoul's Unification Ministry said, with their
positions wide apart over a joint industrial park and the fate of a detained
worker.

"We believe the two sides could not narrow differences in their positions,"
Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said.
No date was set for the next round, Lee said.
The third round of inter-Korean talks, held at the joint park in the North's
border town of Kaesong, lasted only an hour and 10 minutes in the morning. North
Korea refused to meet again in the afternoon, officials said.
In the talks, South Korea demanded to know the health condition of the detained
worker and pressed for his release, ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said in a
briefing.
"North Korea did not show any particular response," Chun said.
The Hyundai Asan Corp. engineer who works at the joint park has been held
incommunicado since March on accusations of "slandering" the North's political
system. North Korea has said he must first be investigated before it decides on
his fate.
South Korea also called on the North to "immediately stop" the denunciations of
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak that it carries on state media almost daily.
Chun said. Some of their dispatches on Thursday described the conservative Lee
administration as "evil," "fascist" and traitors."
Pyongyang did not respond to this point, either, Chun said.
North Korea instead insisted the South respond to its demands on rent hikes, the
spokesman said.
In the previous two rounds on June 11 and 19, 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 under which South
Korean developers paid $16 million when the park opened in 2004.
Pyongyang insisted they first deal with the rent, according to the spokesman.
"North Korea only reiterated its position. It did not respond at all to the
agenda items our side raised," Chun said.
The two sides had no time to talk about non-cash, secondary issues they proposed
in the previous round when the atmosphere was softer. The North at the time had
offered to lift a border traffic curfew on South Korean workers and cargo trucks,
and the South proposed to build a dormitory and a nursery for North Korean
workers, mostly women in their 20s and 30s.
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.
hkim@yna.c