Koreas wrestle with agenda for 2nd talks on industrial zone

(ATTN: RECASTS headline, UPDATES throughout with minister's speech, details)
By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, May 13 (Yonhap) -- South and North Korea have not yet made a breakthrough
in setting up the second round of talks on their joint industrial venture,
Seoul's unification minister said Wednesday, amid Pyongyang's refusal to include
the detention of a South Korean worker in discussions.
The deadlock over the agenda may dash Seoul's hopes of holding the talks this
week to help ease regional tension, ministry officials said.
"Our government tries to focus on resolving the detention ... but inter-Korean
relations are now rigid, and there is a wide gap between the two sides'
positions, so setting up talks is not easy," Unification Minister Hyun In-taek
said in the opening speech of a forum on cross-border relations.
Working-level officials of the two Koreas met at the joint complex in the North's
border town of Kaesong to arrange government-level talks to discuss changes in
the operation of the complex. The dialogue would be a follow-up to the April 21
meeting, the first official talks in more than a year.
In the previous meeting that lasted only 22 minutes, North Korea complained that
wages South Korean firms pay North Korean employees are too low and that Seoul
should also start paying for land use next year, four years ahead of schedule.
Seoul's major concern is a South Korean worker who has been detained in Kaesong
since March 30 with no chance of seeing his colleagues or Seoul officials. North
Korea accuses the Hyundai Asan Corp. employee in his 40s, who is known only by
his family name, Yu, of criticizing its political system.
North Korean officials who attended the first talks said they are not authorized
to discuss the detention issue.
Seoul officials have maintained North Korea should provide information about the
detained worker in return for presenting its demands on the joint park. In the
forum, Hyun called the prolonged detention an "unwarranted violation of human
rights."
North Korea said May 1 that the South is raising the rights issue "without
knowing about the essence of the case." Yu "malignantly slandered the dignified
system," the North's official Korean Central News Agency said, without specifying
charges.
"The two sides are not moving forward to reach agreement" on the agenda, a
ministry official well-informed on the negotiations said, requesting anonymity
due to the fragile nature of inter-Korean contact.
Pyongyang is also holding two American female journalists for illegally entering
the country and committing unspecified "hostile acts." North Korea has said they
will be tried on its soil.
North Korea has given no word yet about whether it intends to try the South
Korean worker or expel him.
More than 100 South Korean firms now operate at the Kaesong venture, producing
clothes, utensils, electronic equipment and other labor-intensive products with
nearly 40,000 North Korean workers.
South Korean firms pay about $70-$80 in monthly wages for each North Korean
employee, but the payment is directly wired to North Korean government accounts.
Taxes and transportation costs are also far lower in Kaesong than in foreign
investment zones in China and Vietnam, the world's cheapest places for business,
watchers say.
The Kaesong park, just an hour's drive from Seoul, opened in late 2004 as an
outcome of the first inter-Korean summit four years earlier between then South
Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Pyongyang suspended dialogue with Seoul after President Lee Myung-bak took office
in February last year, taking a tougher stance on North Korea's nuclear program
and ending the unconditional flow of economic aid to the North.
hkim@yna.co.kr
(END)