Despite heightened tension caused by North Korea's recent missile launches, South Korea will go ahead with its plan to expand a joint industrial complex in the communist country as scheduled, officials said Tuesday.
Concern has risen over the future of the complex in the North's border city of Kaesong after Pyongyang defiantly test-launched seven missiles on July 5, drawing strong U.N. condemnation and limited weapons sanctions.
"North Korean officials want to continue the project," said Kim Eun-jong, an official at state-run Korea Land Corp., the South Korean developer of the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
The complex, close to the border with South Korea, is a key product of the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000. Currently about a dozen South Korean garment and other labor-intensive plants are operating there, employing some 8,000 North Koreans.
"Currently, about 9,000 people, including 622 South Korean and 8,296 North Korean workers, are working at the Kaesong industrial complex," said Goh Gyeong-bin, a Unification Ministry official in charge of the inter-Korean project.
He said 21 other South Korean firms have started building factories or would do so in the near future. Under the first phase of the project slated to be completed in the first half of next year, an additional 24 South Korean companies have applied to relocate their plants there, according to the official.
When fully developed by 2012, the complex will be home to some 2,000 South Korean firms with up to half a million North Koreans working there.
Kaesong, a one-and-a-half-hour drive from Seoul, is an ancient city where the Korean War armistice agreement was negotiated.
Seoul, Sept. 5 (Yonhap News)
Despite tension, inter-Korean industrial project will continue: official |
