SEOUL, Nov 30, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A train carrying South Korean engineers
and officials crossed into the North on Friday to begin a landmark joint
survey to reconnect railway tracks between the two Koreas.
Linking up the railway systems was one of the agreements made earlier this
year in a key meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the South’s
President Moon Jae-in.
It is the first time since 2007 a train from the South has entered North
Korea.
TV footage on Friday showed a red, white and blue train — displaying a
banner reading “Iron Horse is now running toward the era of peace and
prosperity” — pull away from the South’s Dorasan station, the nearest
terminal from the western part of the inter-Korean border.
“This signals the start of co-prosperity of the North and the South by
reconnecting railways,” Transport Minister Kim Hyun-mee said.
She added the railway reconnection would help expand the country’s
“economic territory” to Eurasia by land, as the division of the Korean
peninsula has left South Korea geopolitically cut off from the continent for
many decades.
The six-carriage train is transporting 28 South Koreans including railway
engineers and other personnel, and carrying 55 tonnes of fuel and an
electricity generator.
There is a passenger coach, a sleeping coach, an office coach and a wagon
loaded with water for showers and laundry.
When it arrives at Panmun Station — the first North Korean terminal across
the border — the six carriages will be linked up to a North Korean train,
and the South Korean locomotive will return home. – Information gathering –
The South Koreans and their counterparts will live in the train, inspecting
two railway lines for a total of 18 days — one linking the North’s
southernmost Kaesong City to Sinuiju City near the Chinese border, and the
other connecting Mount Kumgang near the inter-Korean border to Tumen River
bordering Russia in the east.
They will travel some 2,600 kilometres (1,600 miles) on railway tracks
together, the transport ministry said.
Before the division of the Korean peninsula in 1948, there were two railway
lines linking the North to the South — one in the west and the other in the
east.
As a gesture towards reconciliation, the two Koreas reconnected the western
line in 2007 and limited numbers of freight trains transported materials and
goods to and from the Seoul-invested Kaesong industrial zone in the North for
about a year.
But the line has since then been put out of service due to heightened
tension over the North’s nuclear development programme.
The current railway project has also faced delays over concerns it could
violate UN sanctions imposed on the North over its nuclear and missile
programmes.
But the UN Security Council granted an exemption for the joint study last
week, although it is unclear whether others will be given as the project
progresses.
Seoul said the survey was purely aimed at gathering information on the
current state of the North’s rail system and assured that actual restoration
works would come only after consents from the UN.
The study comes as differences emerge between Seoul and Washington, which
stations 28,500 troops in the South as part of their decades-old alliance.
The South’s dovish President Moon has long favoured engagement with the
nuclear-armed North and has dangled large investment and joint cross-border
projects as incentives for steps towards denuclearisation.