SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has proposed a meeting on a joint industrial park amid mounting tension on the divided peninsula over the North’s defiant rocket launch, a South Korean official said today.
The joint complex in the North Korean border town of Kaesong is the last major joint project between the rival Koreas and a key source of currency for the impoverished North’s communist regime.
Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-Nyeon told reporters that the North proposed to meet with South Korean officials at the complex April 21, but it is not clear exactly what the country wants to discuss.
Earlier today, however, South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said the North proposed the meeting to discuss a South Korean man held in the complex since late last month for allegedly denouncing the North’s political system.
South Korea has called on North Korea to grant access to the South Korean man, but the North has refused to do so.
North Korea also has been holding two female American journalists since they allegedly crossed the border from China on March 17 while reporting on North Korean refugees. The U.S. State Department has said the North has assured U.S. officials the journalists would be treated well, but their exact status remains unknown.
Tension on the Korean Peninsula has heightened since the North conducted a long-range rocket test April 5 despite repeated international warnings.
On Friday, U.S. monitors of North Korea’s nuclear program left the communist nation after the regime ordered them out and vowed to restart its reactor over U.N. criticism of its recent rocket launch.
The four Americans arrived Friday in Beijing on a flight from Pyongyang but declined to speak to reporters. Their departure came a day after U.N. nuclear inspectors left the North. One U.S. official remains in Pyongyang and will leave today, the State Department said.
Earlier this week, North Korea said it would restart its nuclear program and quit international disarmament talks to protest the U.N. Security Council’s condemnation of the rocket launch, which some say tested long-range missile technology.
