SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has freed a South Korean worker it had detained for months for allegedly denouncing its political system — an apparent goodwill gesture toward Seoul and Washington amid the standoff over the regime’s nuclear weapons program.
Last week, the North released two jailed American journalists to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, helping ease months of tensions stoked by the country’s recent atomic and long-range rocket tests.
On Thursday, Pyongyang deported Yoo Seong-Jin, 44, a technician who worked at a joint industrial park in the North where about 110 South Korean-run factories employ about 40,000 North Korean workers. Yoo had been held for allegedly denouncing the North’s government and attempting to persuade a North Korean worker to defect.
Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jung-Eun has been in the North for the past few days, and she might have negotiated Yoo’s release.
