Detention of S. Korean Casts Pall Over Talks

The case of a South Korean homemaker seized by North Korea while on a tourist cruise over the weekend overshadowed talks today between the two Koreas, the first direct contact between the countries in 14 months.

After repeated delays, delegates from the two sides met for almost an hour and a half in Beijing to discuss reunions of some of the estimated 1 million families torn asunder by the 1950 outbreak of the Korean War.

The meeting ended without tangible results but with a promise by the two sides to reconvene.

Analysts have been dubious about how much progress can be expected following a major shootout between the two countries’ navies in the Yellow Sea a week ago and the arrest of the South Korean tourist Sunday.

After an emergency security council meeting Monday, the South Korean government threatened to cut off all tourism to North Korea unless it immediately released Min Young Mi, 38, who was detained Sunday at Mt. Kumgang after mentioning during a chat with a North Korean tour guide that defectors from the North are living comfortably in the South.

The North accuses Min of being a South Korean agent sent to entice North Koreans to defect. Min is reported to have denied trying to solicit a defection.

About 85,000 South Korean tourists have visited Mt. Kumgang since November, when Hyundai Co. won permission to send cruise ships to the scenic area.

North Korea has been earning $25 million a month from the tours, and has been raking in more by imposing steep fines on many of the South Korean tourists for trumped-up offenses or minor infractions such as littering, according to South Korean officials.

However, Scott Snyder, a North Korea expert at the U.S. Institute for Peace in Washington, said it is “not surprising” to have a crisis at Mt. Kumgang now because as of this month, the payment to North Korea is to drop to $8 million a month.

The tourist’s detention has sparked an outcry from South Korean conservatives, who charge that President Kim Dae Jung’s “sunshine policy” of engaging the North with trade, tourism and exchanges has produced no reciprocal thaw from the hard-line Communist regime in Pyongyang.

A day after the naval shootout, South Korea allowed a ship carrying fertilizer aid to depart for North Korea, but due to bad weather, the ship arrived only early today.