S. Korea to hold talks with North for first time in a year amid tension

SEOUL, April 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korea plans to send a government delegation to
North Korea Tuesday for its first official talks with the communist North in a
year, a Unification Ministry spokesperson here said Sunday, as officials are
striving to read Pyongyang's intentions in offering dialogue amid heightened
tensions.

North Korea proposed the government-level talks -- the first since Seoul's Lee
Myung-bak government took office in February last year -- last week, only saying
it wanted to discuss "issues related to the Kaesong industrial complex," a joint
venture on its soil.
Simultaneously with the dialog offer, however, Pyongyang toughened its hostile
rhetoric against Seoul's move to participate in a U.S.-led campaign against the
spread of weapons of mass destruction, whose targets include North Korea.
A South Korean delegation, headed by Kim Young-tak, director general of the
Kaesong Industrial Complex Project Bureau, a unit under the Unification Ministry
overseeing the joint venture, will travel to Kaesong on Tuesday for the crucial
talks, Unification Ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo said in a briefing.
"About 10 officials involved in the Kaesong complex are scheduled to visit
Kaesong," Lee said, "Our main concerns are centered on the safety of our citizens
in the Kaesong complex and its stable development."
A South Korean employee of Hyundai Asan Corp., the developer of the Kaesong
complex, has been detained by the North since March 30 for allegedly criticizing
North Korea's political system and trying to tempt a female North Korean employee
to defect.
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