S. Korea accepts North Korea`s offer to hold talks on Tuesday: official

SEOUL, April 18 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will accept North Korea's proposal for
inter-Korean talks next week, as Pyongyang detains a South Korean worker for
denouncing its political regime, a source at the presidential office said
Saturday.
"There is no reason for us to reject the proposal," the Cheong Wa Dae official
involved in North Korea affairs said on condition of anonymity.
North Korea sent a fax message to the South on Thursday, offering to meet over
the "issues of the Kaesong industrial complex," a joint venture in the North's
border town of Kaesong, Seoul's Unification Ministry said on Saturday. The
envisioned talks will be the first inter-Korean dialogue since March last year.
The ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said Seoul has yet to officially respond to
North Korea's proposal.
North Korea has been holding a South Korean worker of Hyundai Asan Corp., the
developer of the Kaesong industrial complex, since March 30, accusing him of
criticizing its political regime and trying to tempt a North Korean female worker
to defect. Pyongyang has refused Seoul's calls to allow access to the
unidentified employee.
More than 100 small garment and labor-intensive South Korean factories operate in
the Kaesong complex -- the last remaining symbol of cross-border reconciliation
efforts over the past decade -- employing 39,000 local workers
hkim@yna.co.kr
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