N. Korea Frees Detained S. Korean Worker

North Korea's release of a South Korean worker it had detained for months signals an attempt to improve ties with Seoul and Washington amid tensions over the regime's nuclear weapons program, analysts say.

Last week, the North released jailed American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling to former U.S. President Bill Clinton. On Thursday, Pyongyang deported Yoo Seong-jin, a 44-year-old technician who worked at a joint industrial park in the North, where about 110 South Korean-run factories employ about 40,000 North Korean workers. Yoo has been held for allegedly denouncing the North's government and attempting to persuade a North Korean worker to defect.

"I'm happy that I returned safely," Yoo told reporters in a brief comment after arriving at a South Korean immigration control center near the border.

Hyundai Group Chairwoman Hyun Jung-eun has been in the North for the past few days, and she may have negotiated the release of Yoo, who is an employee for Hyundai's North Korean business arm, Hyundai Asan.

Hyun met with North Korea's spy chief Kim Yang Gon, but not with the country's leader Kim Jong Il, Cho Kun-shik, president of Hyundai Asan, told reporters before heading to the industrial zone in the North's border city of Kaesong.

Cho also said Hyun extended her stay in the North for another day - the third time this week - and plans to return home on Saturday. It was not immediately whether Hyun could get a chance to hold rare talks with the reclusive leader.

Analaysts said that Clinton's reported urging that Yoo be freed may also have been just as important as Hyun's visit. After months of antagonizing Seoul and Washington - with atomic and long-range rocket tests that drew new U.N. sanctions - the North may be looking to turn things around, they said.

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In Washington, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley welcomed Yoo's release and expressed hope that it would remove an obstacle to potential dialogue between North and South.

"We hope that ... they will begin to assertively go down a path towards denuclearization," Crowley told reporters.

Relations between the two Koreas - which remain technically at war more than 50 years after their conflict ended in a truce - began deteriorating when pro-U.S., conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul early last year. Lee has advocated and implemented a harder line on the North than his predecessors. The North responded by cutting most ties or curtailing key joint projects except for the Kaesong industrial complex.

Ties reached new lows this year as the isolated regime pulled out of nuclear negotiations, vowed to restart its shuttered reactor, and then conducted its second-ever nuclear test.

Analysts have said recently that those provocative actions were designed to push Washington into holding direct talks with the North. Clinton's visit may have halted the provocation - offering Pyongyang, and leader Kim, a measure of prestige.

And now, analysts say, the North may be responding in kind.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said the release of the South Korean was meant to please Washington as much as Seoul, citing Clinton's request.

"We can consider the releases as the North's gestures showing its intention to facilitate ties with Seoul and Washington and resolve pending issues," added Paik Hak-soon, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute think tank near Seoul.

But the North is still holding four South Korean fishermen whose boat was seized last month after straying accidentally into northern waters, and the analysts said their fate - and that of the ties, in general - depends on the South's next move.

"Now the ball is in the South Korean court," Paik said.

But it is unclear, however, if Seoul is willing to play that game.

"It's fortunate that Yoo is returning to his family, though it's rather late," presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said in a statement. He added that the South Korean government will maintain a "consistent policy" toward North - apparently signaling it will not change its hard-line stance.