S. Korea says North should not use detention of worker to protest PSI

(ATTN: RECASTS headline, UPDATES throughout with Seoul position, official's visit to
Kaesong on Saturday)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, April 17 (Yonhap) -- South Korea on Friday called on the North to refrain
from using its detention of a South Korean worker as a means to retaliate against
Seoul's move to join a U.S.-led anti-proliferation drive.
As the South plans to announce its full participation in the Proliferation
Security Drive (PSI), whose main targets include North Korea, as early as this
weekend, concerns promptly mounted that Pyongyang may respond by further delaying
the worker's release.
North Korea has been holding an employee of Hyundai Asan Corp., the developer of
the industrial complex in the North's border town of Kaesong, since March 30,
accusing him of criticizing its political system and trying to tempt a North
Korean female employee to defect.
Seoul's efforts to gain access to the worker, identified only as an engineer in
his 40s, have made little headway, as tensions with the North remain high after
its firing of a long-range rocket and subsequent condemnation by the U.N.
Security Council this month.
"North Korea should not connect (these two issues)", Unification Ministry
spokesman Kim Ho-nyoun said, when asked by a reporter whether the PSI move would
affect the detention case.
"A humanitarian issue should not be connected to a political issue," he said.
"This is a basic tenet of the international community."
With no word from North Korea yet, Cho Kun-shik, president of Hyundai Asan,
traveled to the Kaesong venture to try to negotiate the worker's release after a
major holiday marking late North Korean founder Kim Il-sung's birthday in the
communist state. Cho plans to stay in Kaesong until there is progress, said
Hyundai Asan's spokesman, Kim Ha-young.
Moon Moo-hong, chairman of Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee, a
state-run body overseeing the joint complex, also plans to visit the Kaesong
complex on Saturday.
After several delays, South Korea was expected to announce its participation in
the PSI as early as Sunday. Sources said the government was making a last-minute
review of the timing in consideration of its relations with North Korea.
The PSI, 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 planes 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.
Unification Minister Hyun In-taek recently said Seoul is not specifically
targeting North Korea by joining the PSI.
"Any country that opposes the spread of weapons of mass destruction should show
it's making efforts to prevent it (proliferation), we are making those efforts
and we are not doing this specifically targeting North Korea," Hyun said in an
interview with Yonhap News Agency on Wednesday.
Hyun also said Seoul is working through China and other diplomatic channels that
have relations with Pyongyang to secure the worker's release.
The North is also holding two female U.S. journalists who were arrested near its
border with China last month. Pyongyang said they will be tried in North Korea on
charges of illegal entry and "hostile acts." Washington officials said the U.S.
government is dealing with the issue through the Swedish mission in Pyongyang, as
the two countries have no diplomatic relations.
North Korea upped the ante by expelling inspectors from the International Atomic
Energy Agency who have been monitoring the country's main nuclear facility,
declaring its withdrawal from six-nation denuclearization talks and claiming it
will begin restoration of a nuclear reactor that was being disabled. The
inspectors left Pyongyang on Thursday.
North Korea said it will "never" return to the six-party negotiations in a
statement this week, after the U.N. Security Council condemned its April 5 rocket
launch, which Pyongyang says was part of its peaceful space development program.
The Kaesong complex, just an hour's drive from Seoul, is one of the major
projects to result from the first inter-Korean talks in 2000 that opened the door
for economic, political and cultural cooperation, despite the two countries being
technically still at war, having only signed an armistice at the end of the
1950-1953 Korean War.
More than 100 South Korean garments, utensils and other labor-intensive firms are
operating in Kaesong with about 39,000 North Korean workers.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)