An advance team of South Korean officials left for North Korea Tuesday as Pyongyang gave notification of delegates that will attend inter-Korean talks later this week on continuing a joint business venture in the North.
The two Koreas are scheduled to meet again Thursday to discuss operations at the South Korean-run park in the North's border town of Gaeseong. Their first meeting in April ended bitterly over disputes on setting an agenda for the talks.
Pyongyang is demanding wage hikes and land use payments from South Korean firms at Gaeseong but refuses to discuss Seoul's major concern, a South Korean worker detained at the Gaeseong complex in March for "slandering" the North's political system.
Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said four out of South Korea's 10 or so delegates left for the joint venture, just an hour's drive from Seoul.
"These officials who traveled to the North today will be doing overall technical preparations, making sure the facilities work well," Chun was quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency.
The meeting venue, the Office for Economic Cooperation and Consultations, has remained closed after Pyongyang suspended inter-Korean dialogue last year in protest over the new Seoul government's conservative policy.
Chun said North Korea sent to Seoul the list of its five-member delegation, headed by Pak Chol-su, vice chief of the Special District General Bureau, the North's government agency overseeing the joint park. Pak represented the North's delegation in the April 21 talks, for which Pyongyang did not disclose the names in advance.
Seoul notified Pyongyang of its delegation, headed by Kim Young-tak, director general of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex Project Bureau under the Unification Ministry, over the weekend.
During the previous talks, North Korea complained that wages paid to its workers are too low and demanded that land fees be paid from next year, four years ahead of schedule.
In a follow-up statement in May, the North declared all contracts regarding the joint park "null and void," saying it will unilaterally revise them and that South Korean firms that could not accept the new terms should leave.