China envoy to visit N.Korea; U.S. activist to go free

U.S. religious activist Robert Park gestures in this undated video grab released by North Korea's KCNA news agency in Pyongyang February 5, 2010. KCNA did not state when the picture was taken. North Korea said on Friday it will release Park, arrested in December for illegally entering the country in a journey to raise awareness about Pyongyang's human rights abuses.

SEOUL (Reuters) - A senior Chinese Communist Party official will visit North Korea as early as Saturday, in what appears to be a move to press Pyongyang to return to nuclear disarmament talks, a South Korean news agency said on Friday.

The North said separately it was releasing a U.S. activist it had held since December, clearing an obstacle between North Korea and its most important dialogue partner, the United States, that could have harmed negotiations.

The moves come as pressure mounts on North Korea to end its year-long boycott of international nuclear talks and win rewards that can prop up its broken economy.

Communist Party international affairs chief Wang Jiarui is due to make the visit, Yonhap said citing diplomatic sources in Beijing and Seoul. The visit should take place Saturday or next week, it said.

Wang met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il last year and received a denuclearization pledge.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also signaled there was a chance for progress: "Tension has recently eased and there is now a new opportunity to restart six-party talks," he said in Munich where he was attending a security conference.

"The Korean nuclear issue is a complex and sensitive one ... We must find a peaceful solution to this issue through dialogue and consultation," he said.

The six parties to the talks are the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas.

China, the destitute North's biggest benefactor, is seen as having most influence on the reclusive state. Kim Jong-il told the Chinese premier in October he could return to the nuclear talks if conditions were right.

U.N. sanctions imposed after the North's nuclear test last year have dealt an economic blow, and a botched currency reform measure undertaken late last year deepened financial woes.

"This will be a very difficult year, a year of crisis for North," said Cho Min, of the Korea Institute of National Unification. "The visit may turn out to be the only way to get the urgent transfusion."

CHRISTIAN MISSION

North Korea said it was releasing U.S. activist Robert Park, 28, who walked over the frozen Tumen river from China and into North Korea on Christmas Day on a mission to raise awareness about Pyongyang's human rights abuses.

The North's official KCNA news agency said Park had confessed to illegally entering the state and had changed his mind about North Korea after receiving kind treatment.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States would welcome his release and expected Park to travel to Beijing on Friday on his way home.

Crowley added that Washington had made no special offers to Pyongyang to secure Park's freedom. "There was no deal involved here," he told reporters.

North Korea said in late January that it was holding a second American for illegal entry. The man has not been identified, and Crowley said the United States -- which has no diplomatic relations with Pyongyang -- had no information about the case.

(Additional reporting by Rhee So-eui and Andrew Quinn in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alan Elsner)