Seoul offers talks with N. Korea over Gaeseong stalemate

South Korea on Thursday extended an offer to hold working-level talks with North Korea over a joint industrial complex that has been idle since early this month amid heightened inter-Korean tensions.

"We make an official offer to North Korea to hold a working-level meeting to discuss ways of normalizing the suspended Gaeseong Industrial Complex and providing humanitarian aid to South Korean workers there," the Ministry of Unification said in a statement.

Seoul will have no choice but to take serious measures if Pyongyang fails to respond to the dialogue offer, it said.

Currently, 176 South Korean nationals are staying at the complex in the North Korean border city of Gaeseong.

The latest call comes a day after Seoul announced pan-governmental action to help companies with factories at the border town deal with liquidity problems caused by lost production and the cancellation of orders.

All operations at Gaeseong came to a halt on April 9, when Pyongyang pulled out all of its 53,000 laborers who worked for the 123 South Korean companies. Six days earlier, the North barred South Korean personnel and industrial materials into the complex. (Yonhap News)