SEOUL: North and South Korea agreed yesterday to hold talks about reopening a jointly-run industrial estate which had shut down amid high military tensions.
The agreement — described by one analyst as a good sign — follows months of friction and threats of war by Pyongyang, after its February nuclear test attracted tougher UN sanctions.
The announcement came a day after the North restored a cross-border hotline and said it would let the South’s businessmen visit the Kaesong estate just north of the border to check on their closed factories.
The South’s unification ministry had responded by suggesting a working-level meeting at the border truce village of Panmunjom on Saturday. After some dispute about the venue, the North accepted the South’s proposal, a ministry spokesman said.
Plans for high-level talks last month on the future of the estate, which has been shut since April, had collapsed at the last minute due to a protocol dispute.
The Kaesong estate, where 53,000 North Koreans worked in 123 Seoul-owned factories, is the last remaining symbol of cross-border reconciliation and a valuable source of hard currency for the impoverished North. It was the most high-profile casualty of the months of elevated tensions that followed the North’s third nuclear test, the subsequent tightened UN sanctions and US-South Korean military exercises.
After repeatedly threatening Seoul and Washington with conventional and nuclear attack, Pyongyang in recent weeks appears to want to shift to dialogue. The North’s first vice foreign minister Kim Kye-Gwan is currently on a visit to Moscow to discuss possible resumption of six-party nuclear talks stalled since December 2008.
Kim late last month discussed restarting the talks in Beijing, where he met China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Operations at Kaesong just north of the heavily fortified border came to a halt after the North banned entry by the South’s factory managers and other officials and pulled all its own workers out in April.
Its concessions on Wednesday came hours after dozens of South Korean firms threatened to withdraw altogether from the zone, complaining they had fallen victim to political bickering between the two rivals.
AFP
