Two Koreas sign deal to reopen joint industrial park
Iran Press TV
Thu Aug 29, 2013 1:49PM GMT
South and North Korean officials have signed an agreement to form a new joint committee to reopen the shared industrial complex shut down in April.
The South's Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said in a statement on Thursday that the 12-member committee will meet next week at the Kaesong industrial zone to discuss the process of reopening the facility.
The committee will also set a timeframe for the resumption of operations in Kaesong, located 10 kilometers (six miles) inside the North Korean border.
Prevention of any work stoppage in the future will be high on the agenda.
The agreement on the industrial complex comes after the two countries held talks and finally decided to resume operations at Kaesong.
The zone, where some 53-thousand North Koreans worked, has been a rare symbol of cross-border cooperation between the two Koreas for the past few years.
The complex was established in 2004, but its operations were suspended in April 2013 amid heightened military tension between Seoul and Pyongyang over provocative South Korea-US joint military exercises.
Tensions began to soar after the United States flew its B-2 nuclear bombers over the peninsula during recent military drills. Pyongyang, in response, threatened to attack the US mainland with nuclear weapons and to enter a war with the South.
Pyongyang has warned that if Washington and Seoul launch a preemptive attack, the conflict “will not be limited to a local war, but develop into an all-out war, a nuclear war.”
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) recently said the escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula is attributable to the US ‘heinous hostile policy’ toward North Korea.
JR/KA
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