North Korea says South Korean businessmen can enter a jointly run industrial park in the North that has been emptied since April after tensions between the two countries soared.
Cars packed full of electronic products cross the border after leaving North Korea's Kaesong joint industrial complex Photo: AP Photo/Kyodo News
In a statement carried by the North's official media today, the government
agency in charge of relations with Seoul said Pyongyang is ready to talk
about reopening the Kaesong complex if the business owners visit.
South Korea's Unification Ministry urged North Korea to have talks with the
government not civilians. It had no further comment.
Kaesong, run with cheap North Korean labor and South Korean funds and knowhow,
was a last remaining symbol of inter-Korean cooperation until the North
barred entry from the South in April and pulled some 50,000 workers.
Many managers and officials have asked to return to check up on their
machinery, as well as stocks of raw materials and finished goods they were
forced to leave behind.
Born out of the "Sunshine Policy" of inter-Korean conciliation
initiated in the late 1990s by South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung, Kaesong
has been a crucial hard currency source for the impoverished North, through
taxes and revenues, and its cut of worker wages.
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