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North Korea meets with South on economic issues

North Korean officials arrived in Seoul yesterday to discuss economic issues with their South Korean counterparts amid Pyongyang's refusal to accept international demands that it give up its nuclear weapons.

At high-level meetings last month, officials from the two Koreas agreed in Seoul to a series of reconciliation moves but failed to set a date for a resumption of international talks on the North's nuclear ambitions. The North's delegation, headed by Choe Yong-gon, vice-minister of Construction and Building Materials Industries, will be in Seoul through Tuesday to discuss restoring transport links across the two Koreas' heavily fortified border among other issues.

The North's request for 450,000 tonnes of rice aid to feed its impoverished population is also expected to be on the agenda. The economic talks were last held in June 2004.

"Let's cooperate with new forces from a new angle," Choe said upon meeting South Korea's Vice Finance Minister Bahk Byong-won, who heads the Seoul delegation.

Contacts between the Koreas resumed in May following a 10-month freeze after the North was angered by mass defections of its citizens to the South.

The economic talks between the Koreas are the tenth such discussions since a landmark 2000 summit between leaders of the countries. The two Koreas remain technically at war since a 1953 ceasefire, not a peace treaty, ended the Korean War, but South Korea has reached out to its communist rival in recent years in the belief that engagement will encourage reform.

In the past five years, the Koreas have opened a joint economic zone just north of their border that combines cheap North Korean labor with South Korean know-how and marketing. Trade between the two Koreas is increasing and totaled US$690 million last year.
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