SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea refused Tuesday to release a seized South Korean worker during tense talks with Seoul officials, underlining the soured nature of relations between the rival countries.
The meeting had been billed as a major step — the first government-to-government dialogue since conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak took office in February 2008 with a vow to get tough on North Korea over its nuclear ambitions.
But the talks, which lasted just 22 minutes, only started after a full day of bickering over how it should be conducted. South Korean officials spent more than 11 hours in the North before the formal meeting started.
The North seized the South Korean worker last month for allegedly denouncing its political system. His detention came amid already fraying ties between the two Koreas, and as the North is also holding two U.S. journalists it seized last month and has vowed to put on trial.
Pyongyang rejected Seoul’s demand to free the worker during the brief talks held at the Kaesong Industrial Complex just across the border in North Korea, a statement from the South Korean president’s office said late Tuesday.
The meeting came amid rising tensions over Pyongyang’s moves to pull out of six- nation negotiations aimed at ridding it of atomic weapons and restart its nuclear program following U.N. Security Council condemnation of the North’s April 5 rocket launch.
Andrei Lankov, a Russian expert on North Korea at Kookmin University in Seoul, said that North Koreans were using what he called “their favorite tactics” in negotiations: raising tensions and simultaneously sending signals they are ready to talk.
“They hope that pressure will make the opposite side more ready to make concessions,” he said.
