North and South Korea agreed Thursday to hold talks about reopening a jointly-run industrial estate which had shut down amid high military tensions. The agreement follows months of friction and threats of war by Pyongyang, after its February nuclear test attracted tougher UN sanctions. The announcement came a day after the North restored a cross-border hotline and said it would let the South's businessmen visit the Kaesong estate just north of the border to check on their closed factories.
The South's unification ministry had responded by suggesting a working-level meeting at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Saturday. After some dispute about the venue, the North accepted the South's proposal, a ministry spokesman told AFP.
Plans for high-level talks last month on the future of the estate, which has been shut since April, had collapsed at the last minute due to a protocol dispute. The Kaesong estate, where 53,000 North Koreans worked in 123 Seoul-owned factories, is the last remaining symbol of cross-border reconciliation and a valuable source of hard currency for the impoverished North.
It was the most high-profile casualty of the months of elevated tensions that followed the North's third nuclear test, the subsequent tightened UN sanctions and US-South Korean military exercises. After repeatedly threatening Seoul and Washington with conventional and nuclear attack, Pyongyang in recent weeks appears to want to shift to dialogue. Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the agreement boded well for better cross-border ties.
"This is a good sign. The two Koreas will be able to improve relations if they reach an agreement at the upcoming meeting," he said. Professor Kim Yong-Hyun of Seoul's Dongguk University had earlier said he expected a positive response from the North as it tries to improve its people's living standards and attract foreign investment to special economic zones elsewhere. Pyongyang is also mindful of a US demand that it improve ties with Seoul before any talks with Washington, said Professor Koh Yu-Hwan of the same university.
After last month's fence-mending meeting with Seoul failed to go ahead, Pyongyang proposed direct, high-level dialogue with Washington. In an apparent bid to press it to talk, the North this week allowed a pro-Pyongyang paper to release a video and interview with an American sentenced to hard labour for alleged subversion. Kenneth Bae called on the US to secure his early release, saying he has been in poor health since he was sent to prison in May to start a 15-year sentence.
"North Korea is seeking to exploit people's sympathetic feelings for Bae to compel the United States to have talks with it," Koh told AFP. "It wants to shift to dialogue from confrontation. However, unless the North takes concrete steps to meet its international obligations, it is hardly likely to nudge the United States toward the dialogue table."
North Korea has vowed never to give up its nuclear weapons, but says it is open to direct talks with the US. But the US and South Korea say the North must first take action to prove its commitment to abandoning its nuclear programme. Top Russian diplomats held several hours of talks Thursday with the North's visiting first vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan, and urged Pyongyang to ramp up efforts to revive the six-party nuclear negotiations, stalled since December 2008. "The Russian side stressed the need to unite efforts in the interests of easing tensions (and) creating conditions for the earliest resumption of the six-party talks," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
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