The first part of the survey of North Korea’s railways has been completed:
This photo provided by the Joint Press Corps shows a group of South Korean officials and railway experts speaking to reporters after returning home on Dec. 5, 2018, following a six-day railway inspection in North Korea. (Yonhap)
A group of South Korean officials and railway experts returned home Wednesday after completing a joint inspection of the rail system in western North Korea.
The 28 South Koreans crossed into Dorasan Station, just south of the inter-Korean border, at around 5:11 p.m. following a six-day inspection that covered the rail line from Kaesong near the border with the South to Sinuiju near the border with China.
A train carrying six South Korean cars left for the North on Friday. It was taken over by a North Korean locomotive at Panmun Station, from which point five North Korean cars were connected to it for the joint work.
“The overall railway conditions have not been better or much worse compared with when we visited there before,” Lim Jong-il, a transportation ministry official who headed the team, told reporters. He was involved in a 2007 railway inspection in the North. [Yonhap]
After the ROK completes this railway inspection they will know how much cash they will need to handover to Kim Jong-un to upgrade his railway lines while he does little to nothing in return. The artillery along the DMZ is still there pointed at Seoul and the ballistic missiles and rockets are still there pointed at other cities in South Korea:
A South Korean train departed for North Korea on Friday for an 18-day joint railway inspection that the Koreas are conducting as part of efforts to modernize, and eventually reconnect, rail lines across their border.
The train, made up of six cars and carrying dozens of South Korean officials and experts, left Dorasan Station, just south of the inter-Korean border, around 9:05 a.m. for Panmun Station, near the North’s border city of Kaesong.
The train will be used to inspect 1,200 kilometers of rail track in the North through Dec. 17.
The inspection is part of a summit agreement between the leaders of the Koreas, signed in April, to modernize and eventually reconnect rail systems across their border in a bid to foster reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula.
“The inter-Korean railway connection project is intended to overcome division and open a new future of the Korean Peninsula,” Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told a ceremony at Dorasan Station to mark the launch of the inspection. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if the South Korean officials on this train will get to see the North Korean child slave labor in action maintaining the rails?
The ‘chain gang’ of children works along a stretch of railway (Image: Daily Mirror)
It appears the UNC is on board with letting this happen:
This photo, provided by South Korea’s unification ministry on July 24, 2018, shows officials from the two Koreas checking the North Korean side of the western Gyeongui railway. (Yonhap)
South and North Korea are likely to start their joint on-site inspection as early as this week for a project to modernize and re-link railways across their border, government officials said Sunday.
At high-level talks last week, the two Koreas agreed to begin field surveys of the western Gyeongui railway in late October and the Donghae railway along their east coast in November.
“The Koreas are known to be discussing ways to conduct the inspection (on the North section) of the Gyeongui line starting late this week,” a government official said.
“The schedule is flexible, depending on consultations between the government and the United Nations Command (UNC) over the passage of the Military Demarcation Line,” he added.
In August, the Koreas failed to carry out a joint railway field survey as the U.S.-led UNC did not approve the plan, citing “procedural” problems, a move widely seen as U.S. objection to the inter-Korean railway project on the basis that it might hamper sanctions. “As far as I’m concerned, Seoul’s consultations with Pyongyang as well as the UNC are smoothly under way,” the official said. [Yonhap]
It looks like the Moon administration continues to work around the sanctions on the North Koreans:
South Korea will seek to launch joint on-site inspections of cross-border railways with North Korea next month as part of efforts to reconnect the railways, as called for in last week’s inter-Korean summit agreement, the presidential spokesman said Friday.
The decision was made at a meeting of the committee formed to discuss measures to carry out the Pyongyang Declaration reached in the third summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang last week.
The agreement calls for breaking ground before the end of the year toward reconnecting two sets of cross-border roads and railways. One of them, called the Seohae Line, runs through the western section of the border and the other, called the Donghae Line, runs through the eastern section. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if the United Nations Command has blessed off on this yet? Despite all the concessions the Moon administration has made to the Kim regime, I have yet to read or see any report that the North Koreans have removed one piece of artillery or troop formation away from the DMZ.
