North Korea allows business from the South to re-enter Kaesong industrial park
North Korea says South Korean businessmen can enter a jointly run industrial park in the North that has been emptied since April after tensions between the two countries soared.
Cars packed full of electronic products cross the border after leaving North Korea's Kaesong joint industrial complex Photo: AP Photo/Kyodo News
Agencies
11:06AM BST 28 May 2013
In a statement carried by the North's official media today, the government agency in charge of relations with Seoul said Pyongyang is ready to talk about reopening the Kaesong complex if the business owners visit.
South Korea's Unification Ministry urged North Korea to have talks with the government not civilians. It had no further comment.
Kaesong, run with cheap North Korean labor and South Korean funds and knowhow, was a last remaining symbol of inter-Korean cooperation until the North barred entry from the South in April and pulled some 50,000 workers.
Many managers and officials have asked to return to check up on their machinery, as well as stocks of raw materials and finished goods they were forced to leave behind.
Born out of the "Sunshine Policy" of inter-Korean conciliation initiated in the late 1990s by South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung, Kaesong has been a crucial hard currency source for the impoverished North, through taxes and revenues, and its cut of worker wages.
