Politics
12:15, 09-Aug-2018
DPRK, ROK officials meet again to discuss railway cooperation
Updated
12:05, 12-Aug-2018
["china"]
Share
Copied
The Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) officials are holding a meeting to discuss cooperation in modernizing and eventually reconnecting railways across their border, Seoul's Ministry of Unification said on Thursday.
The meeting is currently underway between railway policymakers of the two countries at the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine (CIQ) office in Paju, just south of the inter-Korean border, the ministry said.
It would be difficult to give a timetable of the railway projects as the modernizing process is time consuming, an engineer said earlier.
Read more:
The combination of the photos shows a train (top) is seen running from Sinuiju to Pyongyang in the DPRK in August 2016, and a high-speed railway is seen going through tests in a railway station in the ROK in August 2013. /VCG Photo
The combination of the photos shows a train (top) is seen running from Sinuiju to Pyongyang in the DPRK in August 2016, and a high-speed railway is seen going through tests in a railway station in the ROK in August 2013. /VCG Photo
"It’s difficult to predict just how long it will take to connect the railroads,” said Ahn Young-hoon, a technical support engineer of the Korea Transport Institute, adding that the ROK "has a limited amount of data about the railway network of the DPRK."
Ahn said the ROK must modernize DPRK's rail – which can only travel at about 40 to 50 kilometers per hour – so that trains from the ROK can travel at least 100 kilometers per hour.
This marked the second of its kind since their first joint research team meeting was held July 24 in the DPRK's border city of Kaesong after surveying the conditions of the sections of railways inside the DPRK.
Yonhap reported that the officials are expected to discuss schedules and other details with regard to additional field surveys likely to start later this month.
In April, the leaders of the two countries agreed to work together on modernizing and connecting railways over their border as part of efforts to deepen ties.
(Top image: A citizen holds up a train ticket from Seoul to Pyongyang bought at the Seoul Station in the capital on June 3, 2018. The ticket was issued to mark the 100th anniversary of an activist advocating for the unification of the divided Korea. The train to Pyongyang only ran to Dorasan, the northernmost station in the South before the military demarcation line dividing the two Koreas. /VCG Photo)