Korean talks on industrial park end with no progress (Roundup)

Jul 2, 2009, 13:12 GMT

   Seoul - Talks between North and South Korea on the future of an industrial park, their final remaining large joint economic project, began and ended Thursday without any tangible results.

   North Korea continued to demand large increases in the rent paid for the industrial park in the North Korean border city of Kaesong as well as in the wages paid to North Korean workers employed by South Korean firms there, the Unification Ministry in Seoul said.

   South Korea had been demanding that its neighbour release a South Korean worker detained at the park, which is a big money maker for impoverished North Korea. The South Korean had allegedly criticized the totalitarian regime in Pyongyang.

   Neither side at the talks was able to narrow their differences in the discussions at the park, which lasted a little more than an hour, the ministry said.

   The negotiations ended hours before North Korea began a series of missile launches.

   The South Korean Defence Ministry confirmed two launches of what appeared to be short-range, ground-to-ship missiles over the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea. The ministry later told the Yonhap news agency that North Korea had fired a third similar rocket.

   The launches came as a nuclear test, earlier missile firings and threats from Pyongyang as well as tightened UN sanctions against North Korea have ratcheted up tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Those tensions have put the future of the Kaesong complex, which is financed by South Korea, in doubt.

   Negotiations two week ago also ended without results.

   North Korea unilaterally cancelled all the contracts concerning the Kaesong industrial park in May. It then demanded an increase in the fee for leasing the complex by 3,000 per cent to 500 million dollars over 50 years and a quadrupling of the wages of its North Korean workers to 300 dollars per month.