Regular Freight Rail Service Starts Between 2 Koreas

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/world/asia/12korea.html
By Choe Sang-Hun
December 12, 2007

DORASAN STATION, South Korea — For President Roh Moo-hyun, who steps down in February and is barred from running for another term, the journey on Tuesday of a 12-car South Korean freight train across the world’s most heavily fortified border on Tuesday was one of the last hurrahs of his reconciliation policy with the Communist North.

The opening of regular cargo rail service between the two Koreas for the first time in 56 years came a week before South Korea’s presidential election.

The man who appears almost certain to succeed Mr. Roh — the conservative front-runner, Lee Myung-bak — has vowed to review all the major joint economic projects Mr. Roh agreed to with the North during his final months in office.

“If elected, Mr. Lee will link economic cooperation with the North’s denuclearization,” said Nam Sung-wook, a professor at Korea University and a North Korea policy adviser to Mr. Lee.

“The Roh government equated engaging the North with embracing it,” Mr. Nam said. “But Mr. Lee believes that engagement should include sticks too. He will offer carrots if North Korea behaves well, but will use sticks if it doesn’t.”

In recent months, Mr. Roh and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, have agreed on a series of economic projects estimated to be worth as much as $15 billion, with Mr. Roh hoping that the momentum toward reconciliation will be hard to break, no matter who becomes the next president in the South in the Dec. 19 election.

Mr. Roh has said that he sees no alternative to helping the North rebuild its economy. A stable North Korea will help South Korea attract foreign investors and reduce the cost of eventual reunification, he says.

On Tuesday, Lee Chul, the head of the South Korean national railway, saw the northbound train off from Dorasan, the last station on the South Korean side of the border. “This is a deeply emotional moment for Koreans,” he said.

“Today, we link our arteries,” he added.

The freight rail service inaugurated Tuesday is scheduled to operate five times a week on a track about 10 miles long.

Cross-border train service was cut in 1951, during the Korean War, which ended two years later in a cease-fire rather than with a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically at war.

Although hundreds of motor vehicles already cross the border daily, resuming the inter-Korean rail line has been a top ambition of recent South Korean leaders, who hoped it would bolster trade between the Koreas and provide South Korea with a cheaper, faster way of carrying its exports to the Chinese, Russian and European markets.

But for now, the rail line links only the South Korean border town of Munsan with Kaesong, a North Korean frontier city where South Koreans run factories with inexpensive North Korean labor. On Tuesday, it carried curbstones for roads and raw materials for shoes. Hours later, it returned to the South with finished shoes, garments and hydraulic pumps, all made in Kaesong.

Next year, a North Korean train will take over the daily shuttle.

When Mr. Roh met with Mr. Kim in Pyongyang in October, South Korea agreed to help the North renovate its main rail line between Kaesong and Sinuiju, North Korea’s main entry point to China. The project could cost $150 million, according to officials in Seoul.

“I fear that the two governments struck many deals ahead of the election in the South, hoping that the next government in the South will have no choice but to honor them,” Mr. Lee, the presidential candidate for the opposition Grand National Party, said in a newspaper interview last week. “But I will scrutinize each of those agreements to see if they are justified, or if they should be considered only after North Korea dismantles its nuclear weapons programs.”