South, North Korea end first talks in over a year without breakthrough

(ATTN: UPDATES with details)
SEOUL, April 21 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korean officials met on Tuesday for
the first time in more than a year but ended their dialogue in under half an
hour, Seoul's spokesman said.

The meeting at a joint industrial complex in the North lasted only 22 minutes,
said Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyoun.
Seoul's seven-member delegation crossed the military demarcation line at around
8:45 a.m., but the meeting started at 8:35 p.m., as the two sides wrangled over
procedural details, such as the agenda and the venue.
The spokesman said he did not yet know what the two sides discussed during the
brief meeting.
Seoul was seeking access to a South Korean worker being held by the North in the
joint complex in the North's border town of Kaesong on charges of criticizing its
political system.
Pyongyang made no mention of the detained worker, an employee of Hyundai Asan
Corp., when it proposed the meeting last week. The North's hand-delivered letter
only said it had an "important notice" to announce regarding the Kaesong
industrial park.
Inter-Korean relations have dipped to their lowest point in a decade since
conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in February last year.
The joint venture, just an hour's drive from Seoul, is the last remaining
inter-Korean reconciliatory project launched by the previous Roh Moo-hyun
administration. More than 100 small South Korean factories operate there,
employing about 39,000 North Koreans, who churn out garments, utensils and other
small, labor-intensive items.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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