Pro-PSI demo after SK accepts NK talks proposal

(20 Apr 2009) An anti-North Korea civil group staged a rally in front of South Korean Foreign Ministry in Seoul on Monday following South Korea's decision to attend talks with North Korea. South Korea has accepted North Korea's proposal for talks about a troubled joint industrial complex, setting up the first official dialogue between the two countries under South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. About fifty anti-North Korea civil group members shouted out slogans denouncing North Korea leader Kim Jong Il. The civil group burned the signs they were holding, stepped on Kim Jong Il's pictures, dragging them on the ground. Police tried to stop the protesting group by using fire extinguisher to put out the fire, and briefly held civil group leader Park Chan-sung a couple before releasing him. South Korean officials said on Sunday that representatives of the two Koreas would meet in the border town of Kaesong on Tuesday to discuss the factory complex. The industrial zone on the northern side of the border is the last major joint project between the rival Koreas and a key source of foreign currency for the impoverished North's communist regime. The meeting comes amid rising tensions over the North's rocket launch on 5 April and its weeks long detention of a South Korean man in Kaesong accused of denouncing the North's political system. Sunday's announcement also came a day after North Korea's military warned South Korea that full participation in the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) would be seen "as a declaration of undisguised confrontation and a declaration of a war" against North Korea. South Korea, which had been an observer, had planned to officially announce its full participation in the PSI on Sunday, but decided on a delay following the North's proposal of a meeting, a Foreign Ministry official said on Saturday. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...