SEOUL: North and South Korea yesterday held their first talks since Pyongyang’s shock purge raised tensions, meeting at a joint industrial park in the North as a delegation of G20 officials toured the facility.
Last week’s execution of Jang Song Thaek, a high-level official who was the uncle and former political mentor of leader Kim Jong Un, sparked international fears of instability in the nuclear-armed North.
The last round of North-South talks about the operations of the Kaesong industrial zone was in September, when the complex reopened after a five-month closure caused by military tensions.
The meeting in Kaesong coincided with a trip by a 25-member foreign delegation to Kaesong as South Korea seeks outside investors in the estate, hoping their involvement would prevent the North shutting it down in the future. The Seoul-funded Kaesong, which opened in 2004 as a rare symbol of cross-border cooperation, employs some 53,000 North Koreans in around 120 South Korean light industrial firms.
But its operations have often been hampered when cross-border ties turn sour.
Yesterday’s delegation included senior Turkish financial official Ibrahim Canakci and other officials from the world’s 20 leading economies, as well as executives from the International Monetary Fund and Asian Development Bank. They were visiting Seoul for a conference.
They inspected several factories run by South Korean businessmen and other facilities in Kaesong. “We’re very impressed with what we’ve seen here, in terms of people having jobs and producing,” Canakci said, according to pool reports.
AFP
