By Yoo Dong-ho
Staff Reporter

Working-level officials from South and North Koreas on Wednesday embarked on three-day economic talks in Seoul to discuss ways to further promote cross-border economic projects.

During the first round of South-North Economic Cooperation Promotion Committee this year, Seoul’s chief delegate Kim Gwang-lim proposed a cross-border road be reconnected in June to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the historic 2000 inter-Korean summit.

The North Korean counterpart Choe Yong-gon, vice minister of construction material and industry, shared the view that the reconnection of cross-border roads should be completed within the first half of this year.

South Korea has completed its portion of a railroad and an adjacent road on the western sector of the border just north of Seoul but North Korea has yet to finish work on its side of the border.

In his keynote speech, Kim, vice Finance and Economy Minister, also said inter-Korean cooperation projects would pick up speed if the standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons are resolved.

He further proposed that liaison office for direct bilateral trade be set up at the envisioned industrial complex in the North’s southern border city of Kaesong and a joint flood prevention system be developed for Imjin River, which runs through the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.

The South suggested that the two Koreas expedite their continued working-level efforts for key inter-Korean economic projects.

The two delegates didn’t touch upon the South’s possible supply of electricity power to the impoverished communist country.

Issues on high agenda are sightseeing tours to the North’s scenic Mt. Kumgang, the reconnection of two set of cross-border railways and roads that were severed just before the start of the Korean War in 1950 and the creation of an industrial park in the North Korean border city Kaesong.

If completed, one railway will connect the two capitals _ Seoul and Pyongyang _ and continue to Sinuiju, a North Korean city bordering China. The other line is to run along the east coast of the Korean Peninsula to the Russian Far East.

The economic talks in Seoul, the eighth since the landmark inter-Korean summit in 2000, are the main channel of dialogue between the two sides on major cross-border economic projects.

yoodh@koreatimes.co.kr