North Korean delays may keep
rail link
with South from being finished this year
By Jim Lea, Stars and Stripes
The rail
link between South and North Korea may not be completed this year unless Pyongyang
restarts work on the project within a month, Seoul’s Unification Minister told the
National Assembly on Friday.
The removal
of thousands of land mines in the Demilitarized Zone has not begun because the North has
not signed a document ensuring security will be maintained during the work, Lim Dong-won
told the assembly’s Inter-Korean Relations Committee.
The U.N.
Command last year granted the South Korean military administrative rights in the portion
of the buffer zone where the work is to be done. The two Koreas worked out an agreement
ensuring security will be maintained in the area, but the North so far has refused to sign
and exchange copies of the document.
Rail
service between the two Koreas was cut when the nations were founded in 1948. South Korean
President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il agreed during last year’s
Inter-Korean Summit to restore the link and build a four-lane highway through the DMZ.
The work is
to be done through the western end of the buffer zone. South Korea removed many land mines
on its side and did preliminary work last fall. That work was suspended through the winter
and resumed in March.
North Korea
did some preliminary work on the project outside the DMZ last year, but also suspended it
during the winter.
Relations
between the two Koreas have soured somewhat since the election of President Bush.
Pyongyang is angry because Bush has adopted a harder line toward it than the Clinton
administration.
Lim,
Seoul’s point man in North Korean matters, told the assembly that if the North
doesn’t resume work on the project in May, it will not be completed as planned by the
end of this year.
Bae
Gi-chul contributed to this report.
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