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.
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