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SEOUL: The two Koreas will conduct a joint survey of industrial plants in China and Vietnam next month in a bid to revive a shared industrial project in the North, officials said on Thursday.
The trip involving ten officials each from the two sides will be conducted in mid-December, said the South's unification ministry in charge of cross-border relations.
Ties between North and the South Korea have been frosty since a naval clash last month.
But the proposed trip reflects Seoul's willingness to step up development of a joint industrial estate in Kaesong just north of the border, spokesman Chun Hae-Sung told reporters.
"Our government hopes the joint trip will provide a chance for Kaesong to become an internationally competitive industrial complex," Chun said.
South and North Korean experts inspected Chinese factories twice in 2005 and 2007, but this would be the first joint trip to Vietnam, Chen added.
Kaesong is the last operating inter-Korean reconciliation project. But its fate has been clouded by cross-border tensions which began after a conservative government came to power in Seoul in early 2008.
After months of bitter hostility, Pyongyang began making peace overtures to the South in August. It eased border restrictions and allowed a new round of reunions for families separated since the 1950-1953 Korean War.
But relations worsened again after the naval clash on November 10 on the tense Yellow Sea border.
Some analysts believe the North wants to keep the estate going since it faces tighter international sanctions imposed in response to its nuclear and missile tests.
More than 40,000 North Koreans work at some 110 South Korean factories on the estate. The cash-strapped North received 26 million dollars last year in wage payments at Kaesong.
- AFP/so
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