(Yonhap Interview) Seoul seeking Chinese help for release of detainee in N.K.:minister

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, April 15 (Yonhap) -- South Korea is seeking China's help to secure the
release of a South Korean worker detained in North Korea despite rising regional
tensions, Seoul's unification minister said Wednesday.
The diplomatic efforts come at a particularly sensitive time, as Seoul will later
this week announce its full participation in a U.S.-led anti-proliferation drive,
the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a move fiercely opposed by the
communist North. Pyongyang has warned it will consider South Korea's joining in
the PSI as a "declaration of war" on the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea has been holding the South Korean worker in a joint industrial
complex in its territory for 17 days, accusing him of denouncing its political
system and trying to tempt a female North Korean worker to defect. No access or
interviews have been allowed for the detained employee of Hyundai Asan Corp., a
unit of Hyundai Group which developed the joint complex in the North's border
town of Kaesong along with other economic ventures north of the border.
"Our government is making diplomatic efforts (for his release), and will continue
to do so with concrete measures," Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said in an
interview with Yonhap News Agency.
Hyun said Seoul is working with China and other countries that have diplomatic
missions in Pyongyang so as to get its message out to the North.
"China is one of those countries, and also with other countries that have
missions in China, we are making diplomatic efforts in an indirect way," Hyun
said.
The North is also holding two female U.S. journalists who were arrested in its
border with China last month. U.S. officials said they were contacting the
Americans through the Swedish mission in Pyongyang. North Korea has said they
will be tried in the country on charges of illegal entry and unspecified "hostile
acts."
The two detention cases continued through major events that rattled the region,
from North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket on April 5 and a Tuesday
announcement on quitting nuclear disarmament talks in protest of the U.N.
condemnation against the launch.
North Korea said it was withdrawing from the six-party talks and restoring its
nearly disabled nuclear facility, calling the U.N. Security Council condemnation
"an intolerable mockery of the Korean people." Pyongyang says it has orbited a
satellite after the launch, a claim disputed by outside monitors who say they
found no such object in space.
Following the statement, North Korea told inspectors of the International Atomic
Energy Agency monitoring the Yongbyon nuclear facility to leave the country, the
nuclear watchdog said in a statement on Tuesday (Vienna time).
In a move likely to further raise tensions, South Korea plans to announce its
participation in the PSI drive. The announcement, initially expected on Wednesday
morning, has been delayed amid speculation that the South Korean government is
making a last-minute review of the timing in consideration of its relations with
North Korea.
"The government will not make the announcement today or tomorrow," foreign
ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young told reporters, expecting it to come by the end
of the week.
The PSI drive, initiated by the George W. Bush administration in 2003 and now
participated in by 94 member states, is aimed at interdicting and seizing ships
and plans suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction and related
materials. North Korea, known for exporting weapons and technology, is understood
to be one of the main targets.
Amid concerns that Seoul's move into the PSI may provoke North Korea to delay the
worker's release, Hyun said he does not expect the PSI will do any harm to
inter-Korean issues. Such concerns come from a "misunderstanding" of the PSI, as
Seoul is already entitled to such anti-proliferation efforts aimed against
suspected North Korean ships under an inter-Korean shipping accord in 2005, he
argued.
"It is a wrong idea to think there will be a big problem if we join the PSI,"
Hyun said. "Any country that opposes the spread of weapons of mass destruction
should show it's making efforts to prevent it, and we are making those efforts
and we are not doing this specifically targeting North Korea."
Turning to North Korea's announcement that it will consider building a
light-water reactor to produce energy, Hyun disputed its feasibility, saying
North Korea lacks the financial resources for the costly construction.
A light-water reactor can cost 10 times as much as the rocket it recently fired,
he said. A state-run think tank in Seoul has said the rocket launch may have cost
North Korea between US$3 million and $5 million.
"It is a tremendous amount of money, compared to North Korea's economic ability.
We believe North Korea at this time does not have the ability to do it in a
normal manner," Hyun said.
The North was promised two light-water reactors in exchange for freezing its
nuclear activities in a 1994 bilateral deal with the U.S. But the construction
project, which cost South Korea billions of dollars, collapsed in late 2002 when
Washington accused Pyongyang of running a secret uranium enrichment program. The
fresh nuclear standoff led the regional countries to start the six-party talks
that involve the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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