SKorea offers talks for relinking railroad to North

September 5, 2000
Web posted at: 3:03 PM HKT (0703 GMT)

SEOUL (Reuters) -- South Korea proposed on Tuesday working-level talks with North Korea on relinking a railroad and highway across the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that has divided the two for almost 50 years.

Scheduled for completion by next September, the project faces hurdles as the Koreas remain technically at war and involves terrain laced with landmines, some dating from the 1950-53 Korean War.

Seoul's Unification Minister Park Jae-kyu proposed the two sides hold vice-ministerial talks on Thursday morning at Panmunjom on the DMZ.

The idea was conveyed to the North via a phone line linking border liaison offices that the two Koreas agreed to reopen after a four-year hiatus just last month.

The North provided no immediate response.

Park led a South Korean delegation to Pyongyang last week for ministerial talks that produced agreements to allow more reunions between families divided by the DMZ.

Last month, 100 people from each of the two Koreas were allowed to visit the other side to meet relatives, most not seen since the Korea War.

In a joint statement following last week's talks, Pyongyang said it would soon send a delegation to Seoul to discuss economic issues such as setting up a legal framework to avoid double taxation and safeguard investments.

Hyundai Group and several other top South Korean conglomerates have expressed interest in investing in the North.

The joint statement also said South Korea would positively consider food aid for the North.

Long icy relations between North and South Korea have given way to a recent flurry of bilateral talks in the wake of an historic summit in June.

President Kim Dae-jung traveled to Pyongyang to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il for the first face-to-face meeting of leaders of the two Koreas since the two nations were founded in 1948.

They pledged to increase economic and social exchanges as a way of building trust to replace decades of animosity.

The two Koreas remain at war as an armed truce they entered into in 1953 has never been replaced with a formal peace pact.

Border fighting was common in the 1960s and 1970s and clashes have been reported as recently as June 1999, when the South Korean navy sank a North Korean naval vessel during a firefight off the west coast.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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