North Korea will free a South Korean worker in the next few days after detaining him for nearly five months for allegedly insulting the country’s rulers, South Korean media said yesterday, quoting informed sources.
The release could decrease tension on the Korean Peninsula that has risen following the North’s May 25 nuclear test and threats to attack the South while easing concern among investors about a rupture in ties leading to chaos.
South Korean TV news broadcaster YTN said the release of the man identified by his family name Yoo could take place today, while others expected it by the end of the week. A Unification Ministry official would not comment on the reports.
Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of the Hyundai Group, which has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in projects in the North went to Pyongyang on Monday to seek Yoo’s release.
The visit took place a week after former US president Bill Clinton met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang and secured the freedom of two US journalists who had been held since March for suspected illegal entry.
Yoo has been held since late March at a joint factory park located in the border city of Kaesong. About 100 South Korean firms use cheap North Korean labor to make goods at the park.
The North’s propaganda machine will portray the trips by Clinton and Hyun as leaders paying tribute to Kim, analysts said. This will help erase doubts about his grip on power after the 67-year-old Kim was suspected of suffering a stroke last year and also help him press forward with his succession plans.
Repairing ties with Hyundai could also bolster the North’s state coffers, hit by UN sanctions for its nuclear test as well as a cut in aid from the South, which once sent handouts equal to about 5 percent of the North’s yearly economy.
Hyun said she wanted to restart a joint mountain resort in North Korea visited by more than 1 million South Koreans. It was shut last year after a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier after wandering into a military area.
Meanwhile, Seoul has repatriated two Chinese members of the Falun Gong spiritual group following a court decision not to grant them refugee status, officials said yesterday.
A justice ministry spokesman said they were deported last month following the earlier court decision. He declined to say whether more would be sent back.
In January last year a court granted refugee status to two Chinese Falun Gong practitioners, saying they would be persecuted back in China because of their beliefs.
It was the first time a local court had given members of the group refugee status.
But the court rejected similar petitions from 30 other people, saying they could not prove they had been persecuted in China and did not play leading roles in spreading the group’s teachings in South Korea.
In March this year the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision.
Lee Yanglan, a Korean-American Falun Gong practitioner, said Seoul sent three Falun Gong members back to China last month while two others await deportation in a detention center.
“This is in a way much worse than China’s expelling North Korean refugees ... that the [Seoul] government has been condemning all along,” she said in an e-mail.
The ministry spokesman denied accusations that Seoul was deporting Falun Gong members under pressure from the Chinese government: “The government cannot allow foreigners to stay illegally without clear evidence that they have been persecuted because of their faith.”
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