[USFK Forums] North bars travel by Roh allies [JoongAng]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Saturday, March 18, 2006

North bars travel by Roh allies

The JoongAng Daily

March 18, 2006 ㅡ North Korea has rejected plans by Lee Jong-seok, the unification minister, and Chung Dong-young, the Uri Party chairman, to visit the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where South Korean firms are manufacturing products with North Korean labor. There are 15 such plants there now, with hopes to increase the number tenfold this year.

The Ministry of Unification said it had asked Pyongyang, which gave no reason for the rejection but said it might reconsider next month, to allow them to travel then.

The emphasis on “next month” in the North’s message was a clue to the reason for its action, officials here said. Pyongyang also postponed an inter-Korean ministerial meeting planned for the end of this month because of upcoming U.S.-Korea military exercises.

Mr. Lee was to have traveled to the complex on Wednesday; Mr. Chung and other senior Uri members had planned to go there on March 29. Mr. Chung is the predecessor of Minister Lee.

An official here complained of a double standard in Pyongyang. “While the North criticizes us for toeing the U.S. line in the military exercises, it is using the New York channel to talk with Washington. That is just inconsistent.”

He was referring to a working-level dialogue carried on between the U.S. and North Korean governments through the North’s mission at the United Nations.
Unification Ministry officials grumbled that Pyongyang was showing the bare minimum of respect to the South’s donation of 150,000 tons of fertilizer it recently shipped there.

Pyongyang has not, however, canceled a separated family reunion scheduled for Monday at Mount Kumgang.

The prospects for a visit in April, however, are clouded by political considerations, domestic and bilateral. The closer a visit is to the May 31 elections, the more the opposition parties will howl, and April 15 is the North’s biggest holiday, Kim Il Sung’s birthday.


by Lee Young-jong, Ser Myo-ja


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