Two Koreas set for silk road through sinister border

September 17, 2000
Web posted at: 12:34 PM HKT (0434 GMT)

In this story: Concrete evidence of thaw Railway as Trojan Horse RELATED STORIES, SITES

Seoul, South Korea (Reuters) -- South Korean President Kim Dae-jung on Monday launches work on a railway and highway through the Cold War's last frontier, a project he hopes will be akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall more than a decade ago.

President Kim has described the restoration of the 20-kilometer (12.5 mile) road and railway through the world's most militarised border as an "iron silk road" that will link the Far East to Europe through China and Russia.

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Thousands of soldiers from both communist North and capitalist South will put aside their weapons to help with the work -- mostly digging up landmines in the oxymoronically named demilitarized zone (DMZ).

The South Korean government has earmarked 54.7 billion won ($49.0 million) to restore its 12 kilometer (7.5 mile) portion of the railway, blown up in the early days of the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korea is responsible for the repairing the other eight km of severed track and for upgrading the line to Sinuiju on its border with China.

Seoul has allocated another 100 million won to build a four-lane highway on its side of the border parallel to the railroad.

Concrete evidence of thaw

The land links may be the the most concrete evidence so far of the rapid thaw between the two Koreas, who remain in a state of war because their conflict a half-century ago ended in an armed truce that has not been replaced by a peace accord.

In the three months since President Kim held an unprecedented summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang, the two Koreas have been engaged in a whirlwind of events that may signal a true breakthrough in their half-century Cold War stalemate.

Kim Dae-jung deliberately chose Berlin to deliver a landmark speech in March on Korean reconciliation, comparing it to Germany's reunification, which set the stage for his June summit in Pyongyang.

Kim Jong-il's top adviser, party secretary Kim Yong-sun was in South Korea last week to set the stage for the enigmatic North Korean leader's return summit in Seoul early next year.

Top level defence talks are tentatively scheduled for September 25-26 in Hong Kong, the first such bilateral meeting.

Two rounds of cabinet-level meetings have yielded a slew of agreements, including at least two more reunions of families torn asunder during the traumatic events of the Korean War.

Top South Korean conglomerate Hyundai is set to build a huge industrial complex in North Korea's southwestern Kaesong, an ancient royal capital that Pyongyang will also open up to tourists from the south -- on those new rail and bus lines.

Railway as Trojan Horse

Conservative hardliners in South Korea, led by former president Kim Young-sam, worry things are going too fast. They see the restored railway as a kind of Trojan Horse that will make it all the easier for an unregenerate North to invade again.

They also were outraged when South Korea recently repatriated 63 North Korean spies without reciprocal action from Pyongyang on the estimated 800 Korean War prisoners and kidnap victims believed to be held in the North.

But if the railway plan goes as contemplated, a major step will be taken to reducing confrontation in one of the world's most dangerous spots.

South Korea's defence ministry said some 2,800 soldiers will be deployed to build groundworks and remove landmines with mine clearing equipment bought from abroad. Kim Jong-il said last month he would deploy 35,000 of his troops to the task.

A million landmines are strewn across the four-kilometer (2.5-mile) DMZ which bisects the peninsula, about 3,000 planted where the road and railway will be built, the defence ministry said.

When completed by next September, the 318-kilometer Seoul-Sinuiju line will lay the groundwork for an international railway that would give shippers in Japan and Korea a faster and more inexpensive route to Europe via the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears eager to pursue a plan that could revitalise long-neglected Siberia.

He discussed the plan with Kim Jong-il on a visit to Pyongyang in July and talked about it some more with Kim Dae-jung on the sidelines of the U.N. Millennium summit.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)
North Korea: Politics and Government
North Korea
South-North Korean Summit
UniKorea
CIA -- The World Factbook 1999 -- Korea, North
CIA -- The World Factbook 1999 -- Korea, South

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