By DPA
Seoul : North and South Korea made progress Thursday on implementing cooperation projects that included resuming freight train service by year’s end over their border for the first time in more than a half-century, a South Korean spokesman said.
Whether a final agreement would be reached during three days of talks between the countries’ prime ministers remained to be seen, the spokesman said.
The first meetings between the premiers in 15 years are to conclude Friday in Seoul. They are aimed at implementing agreements reached at the second summit in the two neighbours’ history, held last month in Pyongyang.
These projects are geared toward reconciliation and cooperation between the two countries that technically remain still at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended with a truce and not a peace treaty.
Rail ties have remained cut since the Korean war until May this year, when North and South Korea conducted a one-time test when they sent trains across each other’s borders along two rail routes that they had reconnected.
The freight traffic discussed this week would move to and from their joint industrial park at Kaesong, a North Korean city near their common border and 70 km northwest of Seoul, the South Korean spokesman said.
North Korea has so far not allowed regular train service.
Other topics being taken up by North Korean Prime Minister Kim Yong Il and the South’s Han Duck Soo were a joint fishing zone along their disputed border in the Yellow Sea and South Korean aid for the modernization of impoverished North Korea’s transport infrastructure, the spokesman said.