Korean talks continue after nuclear tension
South Korean officials travelled today to North Korea for the first meeting between the two governments in more than a year, amid tension over Pyongyang's moves to restart its nuclear programme following a defiant rocket launch.
Adding strain to the meeting was North Korea's recent warning that the South not join a US-led programme to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
The North also has been holding a South Korean worker at a joint industrial complex for allegedly denouncing Pyongyang's political system.
South Korea hopes to try to win the release of the detained worker during the talks.
Analysts and media have speculated the North could use the meeting to raise tensions by threatening to further undermine the troubled industrial zone in Kaesong, just north of the border, if Seoul announces its participation in the anti-WMD programme.
Pyongyang has long denounced the programme as part of what it claims are US efforts to overthrow the North Korean government.
"It is possible that the North might threaten to shut down the Kaesong Complex if South Korea joins" the program, Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the security think-tank Sejong Institute, south of Seoul, told reporters.
North Korea has also been stoking tensions in the standoff over its nuclear programme after the UN Security Council condemned its rocket launch.
It has kicked out all international monitors of its nuclear facilities and vowed to restart them and boycott international nuclear talks.
The chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohamed El Baradei, said in Beijing that the North could restart the facilities within months - a move that could lead to production of weapons-grade plutonium.
Pyongyang said the UN rebuke is unfair because the rocket liftoff was a peaceful satellite launch. But the US and others believe the launch was a test of the North's long-range missile technology.
A group of 11 South Koreans, including six government officials, arrived at the Kaesong industrial zone by land this morning, said Lee Jong-joo, spokeswoman for South Korea's Unification Ministry.
She said the South will "strongly respond" if North Korea takes any other steps against the detained worker beyond a fine, warning or expulsion - moves that were agreed to by both sides.
There has been media speculation that the North might put the worker on trial. He was detained on March 30 for allegedly instigating North Koreans at Kaesong to flee the communist nation.
