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Seoul: The US envoy for North Korean human rights has canceled a trip to North Korea to inspect a jointly run North-South industrial complex, a South Korean official said on Monday.
The envoy, Jay Lefkowitz, this week planned to visit the Kaesong complex, just north of the heavily fortified border dividing the peninsula, but he "voluntarily withdrew his plan," Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon told The Associated Press.
A US Embassy official in Seoul said Lefkowitz would not be coming through Seoul for a trip to the North, and that he was unaware of the scheduled Kaesong visit.
The move comes amid tensions on the peninsula following the shooting death of a South Korean tourist by a North Korean soldier at a mountain resort in the North.
Despite the latest setback, South Korea said it was committed to the industrial zone. "The Kaesong complex should be developed in a steady and stable manner," Kim Yong-tak, a ministry official handling the complex said on Monday.
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