And a trip to Korea sounds like a good idea too... it would be nice to see this happen, first hand.

----- Original Message -----

From: Bill Hanrahan

To: BoundaryPoint

Sent: Friday, August 30, 2002 4:44 PM

Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Koreas Agree on Cross-Border Railway, Food Aid for North

Aug 30, 2002

Koreas Agree on Cross-Border Railway, Food Aid for North
By Sang-Hun Choe
Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North and South Korea agreed Friday to reconnect rail and road links by year's end, building a corridor of traffic across the mine-strewn Demilitarized Zone that has separated the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War.
After three days of economic talks in Seoul, the two sides reached an agreement that also called for the South to provide the impoverished North with a loan of 400,000 metric tons of rice worth $106 million, and a free donation of 100,000 metric tons of chemical fertilizer worth $17 million.
The agreement, the latest step toward reconciliation on the divided peninsula, came as North Korea's isolated communist regime is moving to reach out to the rest of the world, including the United States and Japan.
Shortly after the two Koreas struck their economic deal, Tokyo and Pyongyang announced that Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in mid-September.
Friday's agreement said the two Koreas will tear down barbed wire fences and remove land mines to reconnect a rail line across the western sector of the 2 1/2-mile wide DMZ by year's end. They will also finish a parallel road by next spring.
The two sides will start work simultaneously on Sept. 18, a joint statement said.
Work will also begin at the same time to reconnect a second railroad and another road across the eastern sector of the border. The road will be connected by November to carry South Korean tourists to the scenic Diamond Mountain on the North's east coast. Until now, tourists have traveled by expensive cruise ships. Finishing the eastern rail link is expected to take several years.
Opening road and rail links would be a significant breakthrough in relations between the two Koreas, which are separated by the world's most heavily armed border. The Korean War ended in an armistice, not in a peace treaty, and the border is guarded by 2 million troops on both sides.
The two sides have a history of reaching big agreements that later fall through when tensions flare.
Plans to build a railway and a parallel road across the western sector of the border were originally included in an agreement reached at a historic inter-Korean summit in the summer of 2000. North Korea stopped construction early last year amid tension with the United States, Seoul's main ally.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has yet to keep a promise he had made during the summit to visit South Korea.
"North Korea's main motive is economic benefits," said Park June-young, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Ewha Womans University, commenting on Koizumi's planned visit to North Korea and the inter-Korean agreement. "But through these agreements, North Korea is slowly changing itself and moving in the right direction."
Potential stumbling blocks remain in the railway project. Military officials of the two sides must meet before Sept. 18 to work out details of cooperation inside the DMZ during the railway work.
As an incentive, South Korea will supply North Korea with needed material and equipment for the rail and road projects.
South Korea also extracted a North Korean promise to let South Korean officials monitor distribution of its rice loans to ensure that they do not feed North Korea's armed forces.
The agreement also revived a proposal to build an industrial park in Kaesong, a North Korean border city, where South Korea plans to relocate hundreds, perhaps thousands of labor-intensive plants such as shoe factories.
The statement said North Korea agreed to allow South Korean contractors to start building the industrial park this year.
If reconnected, the railway would be first direct land transport link between the Koreas since the war. It could also boost trade, allowing South Korea to export goods to Europe by land, rather than by more expensive sea routes.

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