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SEOUL: South Korea was Sunday considering North Korea's offer to hold a first official contact in more than a year to discuss a Seoul-funded joint industrial estate, officials said.
The North, cutting all official contacts with the South's conservative government since early last year, offered to hold talks "concerning the Kaesong industrial zone" on Tuesday, Seoul's unification ministry said Saturday.
The ministry, which handles cross-border relations, met Sunday to discuss a response to Pyongyang's offer, with a briefing scheduled in the afternoon.
"The government will set its basic directions, like how to respond to the North's offer, at the briefing," spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo told AFP.
The industrial estate, which was opened in 2005 as a symbol of reconciliation, has been hit by souring inter-Korean ties since conservative President Lee Myung-Bak took office in Seoul in February 2008.
In December, Pyongyang restricted border crossings and expelled hundreds of South Korean managers from the estate just north of the border.
On March 30, it arrested a South Korean employee at Kaesong for allegedly criticising the North's communist regime and trying to persuade a local woman worker to defect. Seoul's access to him has since been denied.
Some analysts say the North is likely to warn the South that the Kaesong industrial estate and all other inter-Korean ties will be cut if Seoul joins a US-led initiative to curb trade in weapons of mass destruction.
Pyongyang repeatedly warned Saturday that Seoul's participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) would be regarded a declaration of war.
Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies said Saturday the North would use the proposed meeting to give the South a fresh warning against its participation in the PSI.
North Korea has been a leading exporter of missiles in recent years.
Seoul has delayed an announcement of its decision to join the PSI, which was initially planned shortly after the North's rocket launch on April 5.
Pyongyang Tuesday announced it was quitting six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and would restart nuclear facilities in protest at a UN Security Council statement which condemned the rocket launch.
The North warned Saturday that the South's capital, Seoul, "is just 50 kilometres (31 miles) away" from the heavily fortified border.
- AFP/yt
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