S. Korea trying to read North's intention behind dialogue offer

(ATTN: UPDATES with analyst's view, details from 7th para; TRIMS lead; CHANGES
headline)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, April 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will send a delegation to North Korea
Tuesday for its first official cross-border talks in a year, a spokesperson here
said Sunday, as officials struggled 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
troubled joint venture on its soil.
Simultaneously with the dialogue offer, however, Pyongyang toughened its hostile
rhetoric against Seoul's move to participate in a U.S.-led campaign against the
spreading of weapons of mass destruction. One of the drive's primary targets is
North Korea.
A government delegation, headed by Kim Young-tak, director general of the Kaesong
Industrial Complex Project Bureau, a unit under Seoul's unification ministry
overseeing the joint venture, will travel to Kaesong on Tuesday for the crucial
talks, 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 joint
venture, 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 worker
to defect.
Concerns have mounted North Korea may try to link the worker's detention to
Seoul's move to fully join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).
After much hesitation, Seoul again postponed joining the PSI on Saturday, saying
it will finalize its stance after the inter-Korean talks are held Tuesday. On the
same day, North Korea renewed its warning that it will consider Seoul's
participation in the PSI a "declaration of a war."
"The Lee group of traitors should never forget that Seoul is just 50 km away from
the Military Demarcation Line" that divides the two Koreas, said a spokesman for
the General Staff of the North's Korean People's Army.
Experts said North Korea may try to stall Seoul's PSI plans, using the worker as
a bargaining chip.
"North Korea would probably have just given notice if it only wanted to threaten
the Kaesong complex, but it invited Seoul officials to talk," said Yoo Ho-yeol, a
North Korean studies professor at Korea University in Seoul.
"North Korea may be trying to warn Seoul over its full participation in the PSI,
while demonstrating it is open to dialogue and taking steps to keep inter-Korean
relations from worsening," he said.
The detention has posed another challenge to the Kaesong project, which has often
fallen victim to damaged political relations over the past year. North Korea
curtailed South Korean traffic to the joint venture in December and banned visits
several times last month in retaliation against the conservative Lee government.
The industrial complex, just an hour's drive from Seoul, is the last remaining
inter-Korean reconciliatory venture. More than 100 South Korean manufacturers of
garments, utensils and other small labor-intensive factories operate there,
employing about 39,000 North Koreans.
Other joint economic projects, including tour programs to scenic sites in North
Korea, were all suspended last year. Pyongyang had also cut off all
government-level talks with Seoul.
Speculation has mounted that the North may play its last card and try to shut
down the Kaesong complex.
The Seoul government and South Korean businesses have invested 730 billion won
(US$548 million) into the venture since its construction began in 2002. The North
Korean government received $26 million from South Korean firms last year,
according to ministry data.
North Korea is also holding two female American journalists who were detained
near its border with China on March 17. Washington has said dialogue is underway
to free them.
Pyongyang earlier said the female reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV,
started by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, will be tried in its territory on
charges of illegal entry and unspecified "hostile acts."
The two detention cases have added to the growing tensions resulting from North
Korea's recent rocket launch. Defying international warnings, Pyongyang fired a
long-range rocket on April 5 and said it has orbited a satellite as part of its
peaceful space program.
Outside monitors said no such object entered space.
The U.N. Security Council issued a condemnation saying the launch violated a U.N.
resolution banning the North from ballistic activity. South Korea, the U.S. and
Japan viewed the launch as a disguise for a test of the North's long-range
missile technology.
North Korea protested the U.N. response by withdrawing from six-way nuclear
disarmament talks and expelling inspectors from the International Atomic Energy
Agency who have been monitoring the country's main nuclear facility.
The Yongbyon reactor had been nearly disabled under a disarmament deal with South
Korea, the U.S., China, Japan and Russia, but the North now says it will restore
it.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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