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In the latest of a string of cross-border business contacts, a group of officials from the South's major shipbuilders, the state-managed power monopoly and the energy ministry traveled to the North early this week. During their stay, the 37-member delegation -- which included executives from Samsung Heavy Industries, the world's second-largest shipbuilder, and its local rival Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering -- visited the North's port cities to check the feasibility of constructing joint shipyards there.
"They traveled to Nampo and Anbyon in North Korea to study if the areas can support shipbuilding needs, such as geological, electrical and communication conditions," said an official from the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, which organized the business trip.
The delegation led by Choi Pyong-rak, head of the ministry's infrastructure manufacturing industries office, also met North Korean officials and shipbuilding experts on how to start setting up the joint projects.
Daewoo Shipbuilding, the world's third-largest shipbuilder, has said it was considering building a US$150 million block plant in Anbyon on the east coast. To boost the project, the state power monopoly is considering directly supplying electricity to the proposed Anbyon shipyard.
Late last month, Kim Yang Gon, North Korea's spy master and pointman on Seoul, traveled to the shipyard of Daewoo Shipbuilding on the South's southern coast, in an apparent bid to woo its investment in building the joint shipyards in the North.
Daewoo Shipbuilding said the block plant in the North would help meet rising demand. South Korea's shipyards are enjoying an unprecedented boom, making up about 40 percent of the global shipbuilding industry this year. Industry analysts said the booming business will continue into next year, prompting shipbuilders to pursue capacity expansion. South Korea is home to seven of the world's top 10 shipyards.
In another sign of flourishing inter-Korean economic cooperation, 500 tons of North Korean zinc, worth US$1.2 million, arrived in the South late last week in Pyongyang's first repayment of industrial material and economic assistance provided by Seoul. Under a deal, South Korea had agreed to provide US$80 million worth of raw materials to help the North improve its tattered light industry and produce more daily necessities, such as textiles, shoes and soap. Seoul's assistance is to be paid back with North Korean natural resources, such as zinc and magnesite.
Energy-poor South Korea plans to develop the North's mineral resources to reduce its heavy reliance on energy imports. The North is said to hold up to US$2.4 trillion worth of unexploited mineral resources -- 30 times more than what has been found in South Korea, according to the Seoul-based Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The two Koreas have recently begun daily freight train service across their heavily fortified border to boost inter-Korean economic projects. The regular train traffic came seven years after the two Koreas agreed to reconnect a cross-border railway severed just after the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War due to military wrangling.
The militaries of the South and the North still remain in a standoff over the disputed maritime borderline, which could upset the fragile inter-Korean reconciliation process. Last week, high-level military officers from the two sides met to discuss ways to back the cross-border economic cooperation projects, but failed to reach any tension-reduction measures as they were overshadowed by the border issue.
The Northern Limit Line, the inter-Korean maritime border imposed by the United Nations at the end of the Korean War, has been a source of armed conflicts between the two Koreas. The North does not recognize the U.N.-set border and insists on its own sea border, far south of the line, to include lucrative blue crab beds in its territorial waters.
The territorial sovereignty contest triggered an armed clash in 1999 and again in 2002 when the two Koreas traded naval gunfire which left dozens of casualties on both sides.
During their summit last October leaders of the two Koreas struggled to resolve the border standoff, but failed to reach any compromise, leaving the issue to defense ministers' talks. But the defense chiefs also failed to reach a breakthrough last month, and lower general-level officials from both sides met last week to discuss the border issue.
Military officers from the two sides, however, engaged in a physical tussle and acrimonious verbal exchanges over whether to open to the media their talks on a proposed joint fishing zone along the disputed western sea border. The two sides failed to issue a joint statement or even a press release summarizing the three-day talks, revealing there is still a long way to go.
"Closer military cooperation between the two sides is necessary to expanding inter-Korean economic projects," said Paik Hak-soon, a North Korea expert at Seoul's private Sejong Institute.
