Navies of 2 Koreas exchange fire

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091110/ap_on_re_as/as_koreas_naval_clash

SEOUL, South Korea – The two Koreas briefly exchanged naval fire Tuesday along their disputed western sea border, with a North Korean ship suffering heavy damage before retreating, South Korean military officials said.
There were no South Korean casualties, the country's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, and it was not immediately clear if there were any casualties on the North Korean side. Each side blamed the other for violating the sea border.
"It's a regrettable incident," South Korean Commodore Lee Ki-sik told reporters in Seoul. "We are sternly protesting to North Korea and urging it to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents."
North Korea's military issued a statement blaming South Korea for the clash, saying its ships crossed into North Korean territory. North Korea demanded an apology, according to a statement carried on the official Korean Central News Agency.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who convened an emergency security meeting, ordered his defense minister to strengthen military readiness.
The clash — the first of its in kind in seven years — occurred as U.S. officials said President Barack Obama has decided to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for rare direct talks on the communist country's nuclear weapons program. No date has been set but it would be the first one-on-one talks since Obama took office in January. Obama is due in Seoul next week.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that a North Korean patrol boat crossed the disputed western sea border around 11:27 a.m. (0227 GMT), drawing warning shots from a South Korean navy vessel. The North Korean boat then opened fire and the South's ship returned fire before the North's vessel sailed back toward its waters, the statement said.
The clash occurred near the South-held island of Daecheong, about 120 nautical miles (220 kilometers) off the port city of Incheon, west of Seoul, the statement said.
The North Korean ship was seriously damaged in the skirmish, a Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy.
Lee, the commodore, said the shooting lasted for about two minutes and that the South Korean ship was lightly damaged.
South Korean military officials did not say whether they believed the crossing by the North Korean ship was deliberate. The two sides regularly accuse each other of straying into their respective territories.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency, however, quoted Prime Minister Chung Un-chan as telling lawmakers that the clash was not intentional. "Today's skirmish was accidental," he said, without elaborating.
The two sides have fought deadly skirmishes along the western sea border in 1999 and 2002.
No South Korean sailors were killed in 1999, but six south Korean sailors died in 2002, according to the South Korean navy. It said exact North Korean causalities remain unclear.
The two Koreas have yet to agree on their sea border more than 50 years after the end of their 1950-53 civil war, which ended in an armistice and not a permanent peace treaty. Instead, they rely on a line that the then-commander of U.N. forces, which fought for the South, drew unilaterally at the end of the conflict.
North Korea last month accused South Korean warships of broaching its territory in waters off the west coast and warned of a clash in the zone, which is a rich crab fishing area.
The latest conflict comes after North Korea has reached out to Seoul and Washington following months of tension over its nuclear and missile programs.
North Korea launched a long-range rocket in April and carried out its second underground nuclear test in May. But it subsequently released South Korean and U.S. detainees, agreed to resume joint projects with South Korea and offered direct talks with Washington.
Two administration officials said Monday in Washington that Obama has decided, after months of deliberation, has decided to send a special envoy to Pyongyang for direct talks on nuclear issues.
Obama will send envoy Stephen Bosworth, although no date for his trip has been set, the officials said. The officials discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been publicly announced.
There were no signs of unusual tensions along the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said that were no worrisome troop movements on the North Korean side of the land border.
At Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, an Associated Press photographer said the situation was calm. A group of Chinese tourists was visiting on the North Korean side.
The area is where officers from North Korea hold meetings with their counterparts from South Korea, the United States and other members of the United Nations command.

South Koreans Struggle With Race

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/world/asia/02race.html?_r=1&em

Jean Chung for the International Herald Tribune

Hahm Ji-seon and her friend, Bonogit Hussain, were riding a bus near Seoul when insults were hurled at them.

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: November 1, 2009

SEOUL — On the evening of July 10, Bonogit Hussain, a 29-year-old Indian man, and Hahn Ji-seon, a female Korean friend, were riding a bus near Seoul when a man in the back began hurling racial and sexist slurs at them.

The situation would be a familiar one to many Korean women who have dated or even — as in Ms. Hahn’s case — simply traveled in the company of a foreign man.

What was different this time, however, was that, once it was reported in the South Korean media, prosecutors sprang into action, charging the man they have identified only as a 31-year-old Mr. Park with contempt, the first time such charges had been applied to an alleged racist offense. Spurred by the case, which is pending in court, rival political parties in Parliament have begun drafting legislation that for the first time would provide a detailed definition of discrimination by race and ethnicity and impose criminal penalties.

For Mr. Hussain, subtle discrimination has been part of daily life for the two and half years he has lived here as a student and then research professor at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul. He says that, even in crowded subways, people tend not sit next to him. In June, he said, he fell asleep on a bus and when it reached the terminal, the driver woke him up by poking him in the thigh with his foot, an extremely offensive gesture in South Korea.

“Things got worse for me this time, because I was with a Korean woman,” Mr. Hussain said in an interview. “Whenever I’ve walked with Ms. Hahn or other Korean women, most of the time I felt hostilities, especially from middle-aged men.”

South Korea, a country where until recently people were taught to take pride in their nation’s “ethnic homogeneity” and where the words “skin color” and “peach” are synonymous, is struggling to embrace a new reality. In just the past seven years, the number of foreign residents has doubled, to 1.2 million, even as the country’s population of 48.7 million is expected to drop sharply in coming decades because of its low birth rate.

Many of the foreigners come here to toil at sea or on farms or in factories, providing cheap labor in jobs shunned by South Koreans. Southeast Asian women marry rural farmers who cannot find South Korean brides. People from English-speaking countries find jobs teaching English in a society obsessed with learning the language from native speakers.

For most South Koreans, globalization has largely meant increasing exports or going abroad to study. But now that it is also bringing an influx of foreigners into a society where 42 percent of respondents in a 2008 survey said they had never once spoken with a foreigner, South Koreans are learning to adjust — often uncomfortably.

In a report issued Oct. 21, Amnesty International criticized discrimination in South Korea against migrant workers, who mostly are from poor Asian countries, citing sexual abuse, racial slurs, inadequate safety training and the mandatory disclosure of H.I.V. status, a requirement not imposed on South Koreans in the same jobs. Citing local news media and rights advocates, it said that following last year’s financial downturn, “incidents of xenophobia are on the rise.”

Ms. Hahn said, “Even a friend of mine confided to me that when he sees a Korean woman walking with a foreign man, he feels as if his own mother betrayed him.”

In South Korea, a country repeatedly invaded and subjugated by its bigger neighbors, people’s racial outlooks have been colored by “pure-blood” nationalism as well as traditional patriarchal mores, said Seol Dong-hoon, a sociologist at Chonbuk National University.

Centuries ago, when Korean women who had been taken to China as war prizes and forced into sexual slavery managed to return home, their communities ostracized them as tainted. In the last century, Korean “comfort women,” who worked as sex slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army, faced a similar stigma. Later, women who sold sex to American G.I.’s in the years following the 1950-53 Korean War were despised even more. Their children were shunned as “twigi,” a term once reserved for animal hybrids, said Bae Gee-cheol, 53, whose mother was expelled from her family after she gave birth to him following her rape by an American soldier.

Even today, the North Korean authorities often force abortion on women who return home pregnant after going to China to find food, according to defectors and human rights groups.

“When I travel with my husband, we avoid buses and subways,” said Jung Hye-sil, 42, who married a Pakistani man in 1994. “They glance at me as if I have done something incredible. There is a tendency here to control women and who they can date or marry, in the name of the nation.”

For many Koreans, the first encounter with non-Asians came during the Korean War, when American troops fought on the South Korean side. That experience has complicated South Koreans’ racial perceptions, Mr. Seol said. Today, the mix of envy and loathing of the West, especially of white Americans, is apparent in daily life.

The government and media obsess over each new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to see how the country ranks against other developed economies. A hugely popular television program is “Chit Chat of Beautiful Ladies” — a show where young, attractive, mostly Caucasian women who are fluent in Korean discuss South Korea. Yet, when South Koreans refer to Americans in private conversations, they nearly always attach the same suffix as when they talk about the Japanese and Chinese, their historical masters: “nom,” which means “bastards.” Tammy Chu, 34, a Korean-born film director who was adopted by Americans and grew up in New York State, said she had been “scolded and yelled at” in Seoul subways for speaking in English and thus “not being Korean enough.” Then, she said, her applications for a job as an English teacher were rejected on the grounds that she was “not white enough.”

Ms. Hahn said that after the incident in the bus last July, her family was “turned upside down.” Her father and other relatives grilled her as to whether she was dating Mr. Hussain. But when a cousin recently married a German, “all my relatives envied her, as if her marriage was a boon to our family,” she said.

The Foreign Ministry supports an anti-discrimination law, said Kim Se-won, a ministry official. In 2007, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that South Korea adopt such a law, deploring the widespread use of terms like “pure blood” and “mixed blood.” It urged public education to overcome the notion that South Korea was “ethnically homogenous,” which, it said, “no longer corresponds to the actual situation.”

But a recent forum to discuss proposed legislation against racial discrimination turned into a shouting match when several critics who had networked through the Internet showed up. They charged that such a law would only encourage even more migrant workers to come to South Korea, pushing native workers out of jobs and creating crime-infested slums. They also said it was too difficult to define what was racially or culturally offensive.

“Our ethnic homogeneity is a blessing,” said one of the critics, Lee Sung-bok, a bricklayer who said his job was threatened by migrant workers. “If they keep flooding in, who can guarantee our country won’t be torn apart by ethnic war as in Sri Lanka?”

Disgraced cloning expert convicted in S. Korea

Scientist escapes jail term for embezzlement, illegally buying human eggs

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33476693/ns/health-cloning_and_stem_cells/

SEOUL, South Korea - A disgraced cloning expert who falsely claimed major breakthroughs in stem cell research was convicted Monday for embezzlement and other charges connected to the scandal, but he will not serve time in prison.
Hwang Woo-suk, 56 — once considered a national hero in South Korea for his work on stem cells and for producing the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy — was cleared of the main charge of fraud but was convicted of embezzling research funds and illegally buying human eggs for his research.
Prosecutors had asked for four years in prison, but Judge Bae Ki-yeol of Seoul Central District Court said Hwang had shown remorse and gave him a suspended sentence, sparing him jail time if he stays out of trouble for three years.Hwang, who appeared confident as he walked into the hearing, made no comment as he left the courthouse.
The verdict marked the culmination of a long fall from grace for a man once hailed as a pioneer in stem cell research.
In 2004, Hwang and former colleagues at Seoul National University claimed in a paper published in the journal Science that they had created the world's first cloned human embryos — and had extracted stem cells from them.
Stem cell research is highly sensitive, and Hwang had been the only South Korean scientist allowed to carry out studies on the master cells that scientists say could lead to revolutionary cures for hard-to-treat diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
A year later, Hwang's team also claimed in the journal that they had created human embryonic stem cells genetically matched to specific patients, a purported breakthrough that promised a way to withstand rejection by a patient's immune system.
Faked dataBut questions about his claims led to an investigation by a university committee. The committee concluded that the 2004 paper was based on faked data, and also cast doubt on the 2004 findings. The journal, Science, retracted both papers.
The South Korean government stripped him of the right to conduct stem cell research in 2006.
He was charged later that year of fraud for allegedly accepting some 2 billion won ($2 million) in private donations under false pretenses. He also was accused of embezzling 800 million won (about $800,000) and buying human eggs for research in violation of South Korea's bioethics laws.
Hwang eventually admitted the data was faked but claimed he had been deceived by a fellow researcher.
The protracted trial, which heard testimony from more than 60 witnesses, lasted more than three years. During an August hearing, Hwang pleaded for leniency, saying he was ready to "pour the last of my passion" into research.
On Monday, Judge Bae dismissed the main fraud charge against him, saying it was difficult to believe Hwang intended to deceive the donors just to get the funding.
Hwang — who with his Seoul National University team of scientists created the first known cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005 — has focused on cloning canines since being fired by the university and stripped of the right to conduct stem cell research.
Hwang still has a loyal following. Dozens of supporters rallied outside the court Monday, chanting "We trust Dr. Hwang."

Sleep disorder victims surge

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/NEWKHSITE/data/html_dir/2009/09/28/200909280021.asp

The number of Koreans suffering from sleep-related problems has increased nearly five times over the past eight years, a government report said yesterday.

According to the National Health Insurance Corporation, a total of 228,000 sleep patients visited hospitals last year, up 4.5 times from 51,000 in 2001.

The increase was more apparent among women in their 20s, with their figure growing 6.7 times during the same period. Symptoms of sleep disorders were 1.5 times more common in women than in men.

Common sleep disorders include: primary insomnia, chronic difficulty in falling asleep and/or maintaining sleep; bruxism, involuntarily grinding or clenching of the teeth while sleeping; delayed sleep phase syndrome, inability to awaken and fall asleep at socially acceptable times but no problem with sleep maintenance; and hypopnea syndrome, abnormally shallow breathing or slow respiratory rate while sleeping.

Experts say several social and psychological factors could possibly prevent people from sleeping well.

"Due to the recent economic and job crisis, more people are experiencing anxieties about an uncertain future, pressure and mental illness such as obsessive-compulsion disorder. With lifestyles becoming varied, a growing number of shift-workers and travelers with jet-lag also show symptoms related to sleep disorders," said Park Sang-jin, doctor at the NHIC Ilsan Hospital.

Some medicines that affect the nerve system and irregular eating habits also could lead to sleep problems, Park added.

Despite the recent surge in sleep problems, many Koreans still hesitate to seek medical help or counseling because it is widely considered a taboo here.

"Sleep problems cannot be improved without intentional effort. If the causes are not verified, medicines or conventional remedies may deepen the symptoms further. People having difficulty in sleeping should see a doctor for close examination," Park said.

Saying some changes in lifestyle are helpful to improve the symptoms, Park offered several tips that include: getting up at a regular time; avoiding taking a nap or lying down during the daytime; doing other activities when feeling uneasiness; lying down as long as the usual sleeping time; refraining from doing exercise after 7 p.m. as it could stimulate the brain functions and cause insomnia; and avoiding overeating, painkillers, alcohol and beverages containing caffeine such as coffee, tea and cola..

(jylee@heraldm.com)

By Lee Ji-yoon

Random Checks for Illegal Aliens Upset Foreigners

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/09/117_52277.html

By Ines Min
Contributing Writer



The Korea Immigration Service's crackdown on illegal immigrants this year has been met with controversy due to allegations its officers are making random checks on those who look like foreign workers. 

Members of the legally residing foreign community are also upset at the failure to stick to a legal set of procedures. 

"Immigration officials make raids on the street," said a foreign scholar in Seoul who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

She said three Nepalese foreigners were grabbed on their way to get a haircut recently, while a pregnant woman was taken outside of the city last week. Others are caught during routine shopping errands, she said. 

"The intense crackdown was to start from November, but it's been very terrible since September," the scholar said. 

KIS spokesman Ahn Kyu-suk neither denied nor confirmed these allegations in an e-mail interview with The Korea Times, but simply cited the legal procedures. 

Ahn said the Immigration Law dictates that "if foreigners residing here always carry a copy of their passport and alien registration card, the concerned shall satisfy the requirements of immigration and passport officials." 

"Therefore, suspected foreigners in these circumstances must show their identification" during on-the-spot checks, the spokesman added. 

"Enforcement will start in October or November," Ahn said, denying that the crackdown has begun without public notice. 

This year the office will join with regional police forces and other related agencies to help find as many illegal immigrants as possible, he said. 

"The system doesn't work properly and foreign workers are suffering," the anonymous scholar said. 

She added that the illegal foreigners are given no time before being sent back to their native countries, which was refuted by the spokesman. 

"To actually investigate violation of law, the signature of the person is received in a written format, followed by a deportation order and then deportation," Ahn said. "It can take anywhere from two to three days, to one to two months." 

This excludes the case of an Iranian national known locally as Peter Talebi, who it is claimed was deported from South Korea in July with no time to gather his belongings.

The scholar, however, said that the government was also lacking in efforts to enforce the rule equally to foreigners and give aid where needed. 

The problem lies in that the system is broken and immigrants are often left with nowhere to turn, the scholar said.

Under the Lee Myung-bak administration, crackdowns on illegal aliens has intensified. Under the previous liberal administrations, foreigners overstaying their visas were allowed to live here as long as they didn't violate laws, the scholar said. 

"They want to control foreigners in Korea," she said. "Natives have more rights, while foreigners have fewer rights because they are foreigners."

The KIS said the number of illegal immigrants in South Korea was 185,000.


Naro Satellite Destroyed

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2009/08/133_50747.html

GOHEUNG, South Jeolla Province ― Engineers and officials say that the cone of the Korean rocket that contained the satellite opened later than it was supposed to, causing the satellite to miss the designated orbit.

However, they say the exact cause can't be determined until further investigations are carried out.

The initial conclusion acquitted the Russians, the provider of the first-stage rocket and related technologies, of any responsibility in the failed deployment.

Officials are trying to confirm whether an object which fell near Darwin, Australia, was debris from the upper stage of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1 rocket, which carried the satellite and was intended to push it into proper position.

In a video session disclosed only to a limited number of reporters Wednesday, the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the country's space agency, revealed footage taken from two built-in cameras planted on the KSLV-1 second stage.

The images show that the pair of "nose fairings," a cone which covers and protects the satellite, did not separate properly, with one of the fairings remaining attached 216 seconds after the 5 p.m. launch.

The second fairing fell off only 540 seconds after the launch, which was when the satellite was programmed to separate itself from the second-stage of the rocket.

The fairings weighed 300 kilograms each, compared to the 100-kilogram satellite. The extra 300 kilograms was enough to prevent the second-stage of the rocket from achieving the desired speed, causing the satellite to miss its planned position, KARI officials said.

Data indicates that the second-stage and satellite crashed back to Earth, with most of the debris likely to have burned up in the atmosphere.

However, heat-resistant materials made from carbon-carbon composites, which were used to protect the nozzle of the second-stage rocket engine, would have survived the crash, KARI officials said. This may explain the space junk that landed near Darwin.

A team of engineers from KARI and Russia's Khrunichev State Space Science and Production Center, which provided technology for the Korean rocket project, has yet to confirm what caused the rocket malfunction.

KARI refused to release the images publically, citing confidentially issues.

"The second-stage tumbled back to Earth, and the satellite soon followed, as the remaining fairing was heavy enough to prevent the rocket from achieving desired speed and pushing the satellite to a speed faster than 8 kilometers per second that was required for the spacecraft to remain in orbit," Park Jeong-joo, who heads KARI's KSLV systems unit, said.

"The second fairing stayed until the satellite separated from the second stage. The satellite likely knocked off the fairing in the process," he said.

KARI officials are reluctant to get deep into a guessing game over what prevented the fairings from separating properly, but Tahk Min-jae, a KAIST rocket scientist who worked as an advisor for the KSLV-1 project, says the problem is likely related to the set of explosives used to break the fairings from the rocket.

The KSLV-1 second-stage uses an "explosive bolt" technique whereby a dozen or more bolts stitching the fairings with the rocket are ignited and popped, he said.

There were eight bolts circled around the bottom of the fairings, the part that is attached to the rocket, Tahk said. Four other bolts, probably more, are positioned to cut the fairings in half.

He pointed out that a misfire on just one or two of the explosive bolts would be enough to keep the fairing attached to the rocket, disrupting the whole plan.

The explosive bolts were produced by Hanwha, a Korean conglomerate involved in explosives among many other business areas, based on KARI design.

"The separation of fairings account for nearly 10 percent of failed space missions. There could be a lot of problems, including turbulence or electricity malfunction, but I think that this is likely to be a case of the explosives misfiring," Tahk said.

The 13.6-billion-won (about $10.8 million) satellite, jointly developed by the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), was expected to have a space life of two years and be used to observe the Earth's radiant energy and satellite orbits.

The satellite was programmed to send back signals to a Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) research center in Daejeon starting early Wednesday. It did not send any signal.

Lee Sang-mok, who heads the science and technology policy department at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, said the government will cooperate with local authorities to identify the debris found in Darwin, after being first informed by the Korean embassy in Australia late Tuesday.

US ranks 28th in Internet connection speed

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/afp/20090825/tc_afp/ustelecombroadbanditinternet_20090825230334
WASHINGTON (AFP) -
The United States ranks 28th in the world in average Internet connection speed and is not making significant progress in building a faster network, according to a report released on Tuesday.

The report by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said the average download speed in South Korea is 20.4 megabits per second (mbps) -- four times faster than the US average of 5.1 mbps.

Japan trails South Korea with an average of 15.8 mbps followed by Sweden at 12.8 mbps and the Netherlands at 11.0 mbps, the report said.

It said tests conducted by speedmatters.org found the average US download speed had improved by only nine-tenths of a megabit per second between 2008 and 2009 -- from 4.2 mbps to 5.1 mbps.

"The US has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet," the report said. "Our nation continues to fall far behind other countries."

"People in Japan can upload a high-definition video in 12 minutes, compared to a grueling 2.5 hours at the US average upload speed," the report said.

It said 18 percent of those who took a US speed test recorded download speeds that were slower than 768 kilobits per second, which does not even qualify as basic broadband, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Sixty-four percent connected at up to 10 mbps, 19 percent connected at speeds greater than 10 mbps and two percent exceeded 25 mbps.

The United States was ranked 20th in broadband penetration in a survey of 58 countries released earlier this year by Boston-based Strategy Analytics.
South Korea, Singapore, the Netherlands, Denmark and Taiwan were the top five countries listed in terms of access to high-speed Internet.

US President Barack Obama has pledged to put broadband in every home and the FCC has embarked on an ambitious project to bring high-speed Internet access to every corner of the United States.

According to the CWA report, the fastest download speeds in the United States are in the northeastern parts of the country while the slowest are in states such as Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

South Korea Agrees to Visit by North

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/asia/21korea.html?_r=2&hp

HONG KONG — The South Korean government has agreed to allow North Korean diplomats to travel to Seoul on Friday to bring a funeral wreath for the former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung.

Multimedia

Photographs

Kim Dae-jung, Former South Korean President, Dies

Related

Kim Dae-jung, Ex-President of S. Korea, Dies at 83 (August 19, 2009)

Several North Korean envoys are due to fly to Seoul on Friday and depart on Saturday, according to Seon Mi-kim, a press official with South Korea’s Unification Ministry.

The timing of the trip suggests the North Koreans will not attend the state funeral, which has been scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Instead, they are expected to meet with Mr. Kim’s widow, Lee Hee-ho, and other relatives, and perhaps visit a memorial altar at the National Assembly.

Following a series of recent conciliatory gestures, including a personal message of condolence from the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, the North floated the idea of a cross-border trip on Wednesday. The South agreed to the proposal on Thursday.

Kim Dae-jung, who died Tuesday at age 85, had traveled to North Korea for a landmark summit meeting in 2000 — including a now-famous handshake with Kim Jong-il. As president from 1998-2003, his “sunshine policy” achieved a rare rapprochement with the North.

Those policies have essentially been reversed by the current South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak.

South Korea canceled the first satellite launching from its own territory on Wednesday only seven minutes before the planned liftoff, momentarily averting new friction with North Korea. The North, which was widely denounced for launching a rocket this year, was angered by subsequent United Nations sanctions and has said the same punitive standards should be applied to the South.

But North Korea has taken steps in recent weeks, including releasing two American journalists and a South Korean worker, that have calmed tensions somewhat with the United States and on the Korean Peninsula.

In the last several days, North Korea declared its intention to reopen its highly militarized border to groups of tourists and to pursue possible new business ventures with the South.

In the latest sign of a thaw, two diplomats from North Korea met Wednesday with Gov.Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who twice went to North Korea in the 1990s to secure the release of Americans. Mr. Richardson declined to comment on the substance of the talks or say why North Korea requested the meeting, but he called it a “hopeful sign” of improving relations, The Associated Press reported.