Former president Kim Dae-jung likely to visit N. Korea by train
South and North Korea agreed Saturday to conduct test runs of two sets of railways they have built across their heavily fortified border later this month, South Korean officials said. Inter-Korean railway services were cut off just before the Korean War broke out in 1950. As part of their reconciliation projects, the Koreas had reconnected two sets of cross-border railways last year but their test runs have been delayed due to political and other tensions. The two Koreas agreed to conduct the test runs on May 25 during two days of extended railway talks which ended at the North's border city of Kaesong early Saturday, the Unification Ministry officials said.South Korean officials hoped that the agreement would provide an opportunity for their country to expand its economic and political influences toward and beyond the communist North. "Even though Korea is a peninsula, South Korea has in reality remained an island as its northern boundary is blocked. Opening the cross-border railways would provide a stepping stone for our advance to the [Asian]continent," Yang Chang-seok, a Unification Ministry spokesman, told Yonhap News Agency. The agreement came ahead of a planned second trip to North Korea by former South Korean president and Nobel laureate Kim Dae-jung in mid-June for a meeting with the North's leader, Kim Jong-il. Kim Dae-jung has expressed hope to travel to North Korea by train when he goes there in June. The Unification Ministry spokesman said the agreement to test-run the cross-border railways did not specifically target Kim Dae-jung's upcoming travel to the North. "The agreement is the result of our long negotiations with the North aimed at reconnecting the nation's blood vessels," he said. Kim Dae-jung held a historic inter-Korean summit with the North's leader on June 15, 2000, which set off a relative detente on the divided Korean Peninsula, the Cold War's last frontier. If North Korea agrees, the former South Korean president is expected to travel by a railway running across the western sector of the 248-kilometer Korean border which connects the two Korean capitals, Seoul and Pyongyang. The other line runs across the eastern part of the border. Unification Ministry officials said the Seoul-Pyongyang railroad may become available in time for Kim Dae-jung's planned trip to the North, although many issues still have to be resolved. The North had previously claimed that the opening of the railways, especially the one across the western sector of the border, would expose many of its military installations along the way and demanded that the Seoul government shoulder the cost of relocating them. The western railway runs along a route North Korea used to invade South Korea at the start of the Korean War. The issue of the cross-border railways is expected to be discussed again when high-level military generals of the two sides meet at the border village of Panmunjom next week. South Korea has reportedly agreed to provide the North with some 4 billion to 5 billion won (4.3-5.3 million USD) worth of equipment to help modernize its railroad tracks. Whether the government has agreed to pay the cost of relocating the North's military bases was not known. The two Koreas, which remain divided since 1945, are still in a state of conflict, because the three-year Korean War ended in an uneasy armistice, not in a permanent peace treaty. (Yonhap News Agency)
