Two Koreas to hold first talks in year amid tension

(ATTN: RECASTS headline, ADDS more expert views, Seoul's regret over warning in
paras 10-15)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, April 19 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will send a delegation to North Korea
Tuesday for their first official talks in a year, a spokesperson 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, currently an observer, again postponed fully
joining the PSI on Saturday, saying it will finalize its stance after the
inter-Korean talks are held. 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," along which North Korean artillery is dispatched,
said a spokesman for the General Staff of the North's Korean People's Army.
South Korea expressed regret over the North's warning and reasserted that its
planned participation is not specifically targeting Pyongyang.
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 trying to show it is open to dialogue," he said.
Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies gave a tougher forecast,
saying Pyongyang will force Seoul to choose between the PSI and the Kaesong
complex. He recounted that Pyongyang offered military dialogue before curtailing
traffic to the joint venture in December, -- its first retaliatory measure
against the Kaesong park to protest the conservative Lee Myung-bak government.
"The North used the military dialogue to notify its sanctions. The pattern now is
the same," Yang said, "It will put South Korea at a crossroads -- whether to join
the PSI or let North Korea completely severe relations with it."
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. 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.
Other joint economic projects, including tour programs to scenic sites in North
Korea, were all suspended last year. Pyongyang also cut off all government-level
talks with Seoul.
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
(END)