North Korea has proposed a meeting on a key joint industrial park, a South Korean official said yesterday amid mounting tension on the divided peninsula over the North’s defiant rocket launch.
The 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 communist regime.
South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon told reporters that the North proposed to meet with South Korean officials at the complex on Tuesday, but it is not clear exactly what the country wants to discuss.
Earlier yesterday, however, South Korea’s Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said that the North proposed the meeting to discuss a South Korean man who has been held in the complex since late last month for allegedly denouncing the North’s political system.
Kim said Seoul officials were reviewing the North’s proposal.
Seoul has repeatedly called on North Korea to grant access to the South Korean man, but the North has refused to do so, without providing any specific reason.
North Korea has also been holding two female US journalists since they allegedly crossed the border from China on March 17 while reporting on North Korean refugees. North Korea has said it would indict and try the journalists — Laura Ling and Euna Lee of former US vice president Al Gore’s Current TV media venture — for allegedly crossing the border illegally and engaging in “hostile acts.”
Tension on the Korean peninsula has heightened since the North conducted a long-range rocket test on April 5 despite repeated international warning. The North has claimed it sent up a satellite into space, but regional powers counter nothing made it into orbit and the country only tested its long-range missile technology.
Earlier this week, North Korea said it would restart its nuclear program and quit disarmament talks in protest of the UN Security Council’s condemnation of the rocket launch, which some say tested long-range missile technology.
Four US monitors of North’s nuclear program left the communist nation after the regime ordered them out. They declined to speak to reporters after their arrival in Beijing on Friday. The last remaining American on the monitoring team — an administrator — left yesterday, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
The pullout of international inspectors will leave the global community with no onsite means to monitor North Korea’s nuclear facilities, which can yield weapons-grade plutonium if restarted.
Stoking tension further, South Korea has decided to join a US-led program aimed at halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction that mainly target so-called rogue states like North Korea. The North has warned that it will regard the South’s participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative as “a declaration of war.”
South Korea had planned to officially announce its participation in the program today, but decided to put it off following the North’s proposal, a South Korean Foreign Ministry official said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
The official did not elaborate, but Yonhap news agency quoted unnamed Seoul officials as saying the delay was aimed at reviewing “factors like inter-Korean talks,” but that did not mean that South Korea would cancel its plan to join the program.
Ties between the two Koreas have been strained since a pro-US, conservative government took office in Seoul last year with a tougher policy on the North. Pyongyang responded by cutting ties, halting key joint projects and significantly restricting border traffic.
The Kaesong complex has been considered a promising example of inter-Korean cooperation and it marries Seoul’s technology and management expertise with Pyongyang’s cheap labor.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS