HONG KONG — North Korea said Wednesday that it would reopen the shuttered Kaesong industrial complex, a rare symbol of cooperation with South Korea whose operations were shut down by the North four months ago amid mounting tensions between the sworn enemies.
The North Korean government also proposed new talks with the South, to start next week, on the future of the complex, whose 53,000 North Korean workers were employed by South Korean firms. Pyongyang also pledged to guarantee the safety of South Korean managers who run the complex.
The announcement, released in a statement carried by the KCNA news agency in North Korea, signaled a thaw in relations between the two countries, which hit a low point over the winter when North Korea’s detonation of a nuclear device prompted tough new sanctions by the United Nations against Pyongyang.
Since that nuclear test, North Korea’s main ally and benefactor, China, has put increasing pressure on Pyongyang to modify its behavior and return to talks about the future of its nuclear program. In addition to the costly U.N. sanctions, the North has also lost badly needed hard currency earned by the tens of thousands of North Korean workers at the Kaesong complex.
The complex, where companies manufactured consumer goods using capital and technology provided by the South and a work force mainly from the North, has been closed since April 8. The two countries held talks last month in an effort to reopen the plant. A major issue in the talks had been the South’s demand that the North take responsibility for the damage caused by the abrupt shutdown of the complex’s factories. The North blamed the shutdown on the South, saying that the South’s confrontational attitude has kept the complex from reopening.
The North also withdrew its 53,000 workers from the complex April 8, blaming tensions it said were caused by joint American-South Korean military exercises. The South later withdrew its own citizens, most of them factory managers.
The Reuters news agency said the North’s decision to reopen the plant came an hour and a half after South Korea announced steps to compensate its firms for losses sustained during Kaesong’s shutdown.
The Kaesong complex was the last of a group of cross-border projects set up during an earlier period of rapprochement, which were then closed one by one as relations soured. It opened in 2004 and produced $ 470 million worth of goods last year.
Signaling Thaw, North Korea Opens Plant Run by South
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