North and South Korea have arranged a meeting next week to discuss operations
at a troubled joint industrial zone. South Korea is expected to use the meeting
to press for the release of a South Korean manager of the zone who has been
detained by the North since March.
South Korean Unification Ministry
spokesman Chun Hae-sung says North Korea is ready to talk about the Kaesong
Industrial Complex.
He says North Korea offered to hold working-level
discussions next Thursday. That appointment is in response to offers the South
has made for talks since last month.
The Kaesong complex is an experiment in
North-South cooperation which opened for business in 2004 just inside North
Korea's border with the South. South Korean businesses hire nearly 40,000
inexpensive North Korean workers to manufacture simple items like clothing and
cosmetics.
However, the zone has run into a series of serious
complications amid worsening relations between North and South. Since last
year's inauguration of conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak - who
North Korea calls a "traitor" - North Korea has restricted access to the zone,
detained a South Korean executive for more than two months without trial, and
cancelled all of the contracts governing rent and wages.
The detained
executive, known by his surname Yu, is believed to have made inflammatory
comments about North Korea's political leaders. He may also have encouraged a
North Korean female worker to defect to the South.
For South Korean
officials, his detention without visiting rights or legal counsel is a key
concern, because it reflects upon the overall safety of several hundred
corporate managers in the zone.
Unification Ministry deputy spokeswoman
Lee Jong-joo says North Korea has not yet insisted that Yu will be treated
according to North Korea's domestic laws. She says South Korea is insisting his
case be handled according to previous North-South agreements - not North Korean
law
Yu's case is drawing inevitable comparisons to North Korea's
detention of two American female journalists who were captured in March. A trial
was scheduled for the two women Thursday in Pyongyang, but the North has kept
completely silent so far about the outcome.