Asia-Pacific

Two Koreas start talks over joint industrial park

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-02 10:37

SEOUL - The Republic of Korea (ROK) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) started talks on Tuesday to resolve problems hampering operations at their joint industrial park, the government said.

A group of ROK's officials crossed the border into the neighboring DPRK to reach the border town of Kaesong where the factories park is located.

"We will do our best to draw concrete and visible results from the talks to solve problems of the transportation, communications and customs systems there," Lee Kang-woo, head of the ROK's delegation, told reporters, referring to the three major issues that have hampered operations at the joint park.

The working-level contact came after weeks of exchanges over the venue and the date of the talks.

Currently, some 110 ROK's companies are running factories in the park, employing about 42,000 workers from the DPRK mostly producing labor-intensive goods.

The joint park is a long-standing but fragile symbol of inter-Korean cooperation whose operations have occasionally been threatened due to worsening ties.