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North Korea reopens to South as economy weakens
Mon Aug 17, 2009 2:30am EDT
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By Jonathan Thatcher
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Monday it would reopen its border with the South, ending a self-imposed 9-month blockade on a vital source of cash for its leaders as their ravaged economy is squeezed by tightening U.N. sanctions.
It is the latest step by the hermit North to end near complete isolation by the outside world over its months of military grandstanding, including a second nuclear test in May.
But in a reminder of tensions on the peninsula, North Korea's KCNA news agency followed the report on the border deal with one warning of a "merciless and prompt annihilating strike," including nuclear weapons, if U.S. and South Korean military drills that started on Monday infringe on its sovereignty.
The agreement to ease restrictions on the border, effectively closed since last December, and restart lucrative tourism to the North came during four-hour talks between the reclusive state's ruler Kim Jong-il and the head of the South Korean Hyundai Group.
"(Kim Jong-il) said to tell him all that I wanted, so I did," Hyundai's Hyun Jeong-eun told reporters on arrival back in the South after her trip to Pyongyang, at the North's invitation, to seek the release of a worker detained for nearly five months for insulting the North Korean leadership.
Hyun, who described the meeting over lunch on Sunday as convivial, said Kim also agreed to talks over the fate of four South Korean fisherman detained late last month after straying into North Korean waters.
The Hyundai Group runs tourism to the North and operates the Kaesong industrial park just across the border and an important source of income for Pyongyang's leadership.
The group is linked to one of the most powerful corporate families in South Korea, one of whose senior members is also a close political ally to President Lee Myung-bak.
Hyun's visit followed hot on the heels of one earlier in the month by former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who also met Kim, to win the release of two jailed American journalists.
Wu Dawei, the top nuclear envoy from China, the closest North can claim as a major ally, is planning to go to Pyongyang later on Monday in a bid to restart the six-country talks on ending North Korea's atomic ambitions, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
"North Korea ... wants a better relationship with the U.S. In order for that to happen, they must have a well-established relationship with South Korea," said Cho Myung-chul, an expert on North Korea at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul.
Relations between the two Koreas, technically at war for more than half a century, have become increasingly bitter after the South's conservative president took office 18 months ago, ending years of aid unless his neighbor gave up nuclear weapons.
SANCTIONS BITE
Analysts say tightened U.N. sanctions over its military provocations are starting to bite, especially its profitable weapons exports.
Yang Moon-soo, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, estimated that Pyongyang had earned about $30 million last year from its business with the Hyundai Group. Continued...
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