A Foreign Ministry official says China rejected a ministry request for consular access to a South Korean human rights activist being detained in China.

The official told reporters on Wednesday that the Liaoning Province’s security office, which is detaining four South Korean activists, sent a document to Seoul denying its request for consular access to one of the four detainees, Kim Young-hwan. Kim is the author of a manual for the North’s Juche ideology that played a key role in college students’ antigovernment movements in the 1980s.

In the document, Chinese authorities noted that according to Chinese law, they can prohibit consular access to people suspected of violating China’s security laws.

The official said that after the denial, the Foreign Ministry summoned China’s consul general in South Korea and conveyed that Seoul hopes China will reconsider the request.

Troubles continue for the minor Unified Progressive Party (UPP) despite the formation and launch of an emergency leadership committee.

Committee head Kang Ki-kab said during the emergency body's first meeting on Wednesday that he will work to resolve the issue regarding the resignation of proportional representation candidates before May 30th.

Kang urged Lee Seok-ki and Kim Jae-yeon, who were elected under the proportional representation system during last month’s general elections, to step down over the party’s election fraud scandal. Lee and Kim reaffirmed that they have no intention to resign.

Meanwhile, members within the UPP's former leadership circle have refused to take part in the new leadership committee and aim to launch their own emergency leadership committee. They plan to disclose a list of party members that would sit on the new committee as early as Thursday.

Seoul City buses may not be running on Friday morning if union bus drivers follow through with a planned strike.

The labor union of Seoul's bus drivers and the organization of bus company owners held negotiations for more than 12 hours until early Thursday morning but failed to reach an agreement over unionized drivers’ demands for higher wages.

The union is expected to hold a rally at Seoul Station on Thursday afternoon to officially declare the strike, which will begin at 4 a.m. Friday. Some seven-thousand unionized drivers are set to take part in the rally.

Given that both the union and bus company owners’ organization would face enormous burdens from a strike, there is a possibility that the two sides will dramatically reach an accord before buses stop running on Friday.

If the strike does take place, it would be the first time in 15 years for Seoul city buses to halt operation.

A joint consultative committee on the free trade agreement between South Korea and the U.S. held its first meeting in Washington on Wednesday.

South Korea’s Trade Minister Park Tae-ho and U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, who are joint chiefs of the committee, assessed the implementation of the trade pact. It was the first meeting since the deal took effect on March 15th.

After the meeting, Park told reporters that he did not discuss the issue of U.S. beef or the investor-state dispute (ISD) provision with Kirk. He said that such issues will be addressed at related committees or working-level teams.

On the possibility of renegotiating the trade pact, Park said that contentious issues can be handled effectively by related committees.

A U.S. research institute says North Korea seems to have resumed efforts to build a light-water reactor within its nuclear complex in Yongbyon.

The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies made the assessment on Wednesday based on satellite photos of the nuclear complex taken on April 30th.

The Washington-based institute said construction of a light-water reactor proceeded at a significantly quick pace last year before it was suspended for three months from December. The institute added that construction seems to have resumed from the end of March.

However, the institute noted that the light water reactor wouldn't likely be up and running before 2014 or 2015. It said the construction efforts highlight that North Korea is focused on expanding its nuclear program despite international criticism.

Six North Korean escapees were found to have entered South Korea via a third country last week after taking refugee at South Korean diplomatic missions in China for nearly three years.

An official of a South Korean organization that helps North Korean escapees said Wednesday that the group includes a daughter and a grand daughter of a South Korean soldier who was taken prisoner during the Korean War.

Last month, four other North Korean escapees entered the South, including three family members of a South Korean prisoner of war after living at the South Korean Consulate General in Beijing for three years.

All North Korean escapees that had been living in South Korean missions in China have now entered the South.

The official said China apparently allowed the six escapees to leave China in order to resolve the issue of escapees living in South Korean missions ahead of President Lee Myung-bak's summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing earlier this week.