Two Koreas to meet again after a year

SEOUL – South and North Korea will hold talks this week about a Seoul-funded joint industrial estate – their first face-to-face government contact after a hiatus of over a year, officials said yesterday.

The meeting, due in the North’s border city of Kaesong tomorrow, comes amid Pyongyang’s repeated threats since its defiant April 5 rocket launch.
Pyongyang, which cut all direct contact with the South’s conservative government early last year, offered to hold talks ‘concerning the Kaesong industrial zone,’ Seoul’s unification ministry said Saturday.
The ministry yesterday accepted the North’s offer.
It was not clear precisely what the North wanted to discuss about the industrial estate, which lies just over the border in the North.
A 10-strong South Korean delegation will leave for Kaesong tomorrow for talks that day, ministry spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo told a briefing Sunday after officials met to discuss a response.
‘Our main interest concerns the safety of our citizens and the stable development of the Kaesong industrial complex,’ Lee said.
The estate opened in 2005 as a symbol of reconciliation but has been hit by souring inter-Korean ties since President Lee Myung-Bak took office in Seoul in February 2008 promising a firmer line with Pyongyang.
In December, the North restricted border crossings and expelled hundreds of South Korean managers from the zone.
– Nampa-AFP