North Korea to release South Korean prisoners North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been sending out mixed messages to the South. Seoul: In an surprise move that could help ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula, North Korea has announced it will release six South Koreans it has been holding in detention, according to South Korean officials. The Red Cross of North Korea told its South Korean counterpart that the six would be returned to the South on Friday at the border village of Panmunjom, the South Korean Unification Ministry said in a statement. It was unclear who the detainees were. The ministry said that they were South Korean men ages 27 to 67, but that it was unclear how long they had been in the North or how they had got there. Pyongyang said in February 2010 that it was holding four South Koreans for illegal entry, but it never responded to Seoul's request that they be identified and released. In June of this year, the North said it was holding "several" South Koreans for illegally entering the country, but it did not elaborate. Thousands of South Koreans, most of them fishermen, are said to have been taken to the North in the decades since the Korean War; more than 500 of them have not returned, though Pyongyang denies holding them against their will. South Korea welcomed the announcement. "Although it is belated, we consider it a good thing that the North has decided to take this humanitarian measure," the Unification Ministry's statement said. We will get custody of our six citizens, verify their identities and find out how and why they entered the North. In recent weeks, North Korea has alternated between harsh rhetoric and conciliatory gestures. In mid-September, streams of South Korean vehicles began crossing into the North again as operations resumed at a jointly run industrial park in the North Korean border town of Kaesong. The complex had been idle since April, when the North withdrew all of its workers amid tensions sparked by its most recent nuclear test. But soon after the Kaesong complex reopened, North Korea unilaterally postponed the resumption of an emotionally charged humanitarian program under which members of families divided by the Korean War have been allowed to hold reunions. The North blamed the postponement on what it called the "reckless and vicious confrontational racket" of the conservative government of Park Geun-hye, the South Korean president. Early this month, North Korea lashed out again, advising Ms Park to "watch her mouth" and threatening to "rain fire" on the South, after South Korean leaders said that the North's policy of maintaining its nuclear arms program while rebuilding its economy would never work. Also this month, the North put its military on high alert, warning the United States of "disastrous consequences" for moving warships, including an aircraft carrier, into a South Korean port for a military exercise. But the North has also sent less hostile signals recently. On Thursday, South Korean officials said that Pyongyang had agreed to allow 24 South Korean politicians and their aides to visit the Kaesong complex next Wednesday. They will meet with South Korean factory managers there but will not hold talks with North Korean officials, the officials said. North Korea is eager to expand the Kaesong complex, where its low-paid workers make textiles, shoes and other labour-intensive goods in South Korean-owned factories. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, has vowed to attract more foreign investment and to improve his people's living standards. But the South has remained sceptical of expanding the Kaesong project until the two Koreas can agree on measures to prevent another politically motivated shutdown, such as allowing non-Korean investment in the complex. Those negotiations have advanced fitfully, however; a briefing for potential investors from other countries was cancelled this month, with continuing inter-Korean tensions cited as the reason.