The U.S. envoy for North Korean human rights has canceled a trip there to inspect a jointly run North-South industrial complex, a South Korean official said Monday.

Jay Lefkowitz had planned to visit the Kaesong complex, just north of the heavily fortified border dividing the peninsula, this week but he “voluntarily withdrew his plan,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon told The Associated Press.

A U.S. Embassy official in Seoul said Lefkowitz would not visit South Korea for a trip to Kaesong. The official asked not to be named as he was not authorized to speak to media.

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. The North blamed the South for the death and has refused to cooperate with an investigation, claiming the victim entered a restricted area and fled after ignoring a soldier’s warning to stop.

South Korea has since suspended the Diamond Mountain tour program and said it could put on hold a separate tour program to Kaesong if strict safety measures for visitors are not assured.

South Korea’s foreign minister said Monday he would try to hold impromptu talks with his North Korean counterpart in Singapore to seek Pyongyang’s cooperation in a probe into the tourist’s death.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan and North’s Pak Ui Chun will be attending Asia’s annual security conference in Singapore this week, but are unlikely to hold formal bilateral talks.

Still, the two are sure to run into each other during the conference, and Yu said he would use those impromptu opportunities to talk to Pak.

“I will urge (Pak) that government-level talks between the South and the North should open at an early date to discuss the shooting of the tourist,” Yu told reporters after his arrival in this city state for a five-day trip.

North Korea has spurned repeated calls from the South that the two sides open talks and jointly investigate the shooting.

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, told a group of South Korean business leaders who run business in Kaesong.

Lefkowitz has openly criticized alleged worker exploitation at the Kaesong complex. South Korea has strongly protested the allegations, urging Lefkowitz to visit the site and see the working conditions for himself.

In 2006, the envoy also canceled his plan to tour the complex after the North’s missile tests.

The sprawling industrial complex is a prominent symbol of reconciliation between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.

The project combines the South’s technology and management expertise with the North’s cheap labor.

Some 1,000 South Koreans work along with more than 29,400 North Korean laborers for 72 South Korean companies at the industrial enclave.

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Associated Press Writer Jae-Soon Chang in Singapore contributed to this report.