North Korea renews Kaeseong talks after shunning U.S. envoy

SEOUL — North Korean negotiators renewed talks with South Korea to reopen the jointly operated Kaeseong industrial park, days after shunning a U.S. envoy seeking the release of an American sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

The two Koreas on Monday began their first meeting of a joint committee to oversee the reopening of Kaeseong, which was shuttered in April when Kim Jong Un withdrew the North’s 53,000 workers at a time of heightened tensions between the countries.

The meeting coincided with South Korea’s announcement that it will provide $6.3 million in humanitarian aid to the North through a United Nations agency. That assistance was in addition to $6 million in aid announced on Aug. 6.

The committee was established after an Aug. 14 agreement to open the site, which signaled a thawing of relations that contrasts with the decision not to receive the U.S. official.

Robert King, the State Department’s special envoy on North Korean human rights, was scheduled to visit North Korea on Aug. 30 to negotiate the release of Kenneth Bae, a tour operator and Christian missionary from the Seattle area who was arrested in a North Korean city in November for alleged hostile acts against the country.

King’s trip would have been the first public visit to North Korea by a U.S. official in more than two years. The two countries remain in a deadlock over ways to restart multinational talks on the North’s nuclear arms programs. A Chinese envoy who visited North Korea on Aug. 26-30 discussed ways to revive the negotiations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a briefing in Beijing Monday.

North Korea said it revoked King’s invitation over U.S. military drills with the South.