Seoul (AsiaNews/Agencies) – South Korea is requesting talks with North Korea over “the fate of a Kaesong joint industrial park” and the “release of a South Korean worker” held hostage by the North.  Pyongyang, replies by declaring its contracts with the South “null and void”: if companies do not accept a “revision” of the accords, they will have to “abandon the area”.

Kim Ho-nyoun, Unification Ministry spokesman, confirms that the proposal has been sent North “asking for a meeting early next week”. But the proposal is returned to the sender by the communist government which announces “the nullification of all contracts” which regulate the Kaesong industrial complex.  A note published by the official state agency Korean Central News Agency (Kcna) reads “The South Korean firms […]  should unconditionally accept the revisions, and if they don't have intentions to accept them, they can leave”.

The Kaesong industrial complex lies within the special administrative region created in 2002, circa 10 km from the demilitarised zone that serves as a no-man’s land between the two Koreas.  A group of South Korean industrialists financed the construction of numerous factories, within which thousands of North Korean workers are employed. It is the fragile symbol of an attempt to restore economic and trade relations between the two nations who are still formally at war.

This last stance by the communist regime seems aimed at obtaining more aid.  The North Korean economy has been hit by serious financial woes worsened by international sanctions, imposed in the wake of its April missile/satellite launch.  Moreover, Seoul has always conditioned its economic aid to the North’s interruption of its’ nuclear program.  In April the first inter-Korean summit in over a year was held in Kaesong.  North Korea demanded “fresh talks” with the South to review its terms of use for the terrain and the “special benefits” conceded to South Korean companies who operate there.

Seoul also intends to discuss the release of a South Korean who has been held by the communist regime since March 30th; he is charged with having “criticised the North Korean political system”.  Seoul says this detention is an “obvious violation of human rights”;  Pyongyang has replied that the South “has raised the issue without being fully informed of the case in hard” and that it has no intention of freeing the hostage.