From Yonhap:
SEOUL, May 1 (Yonhap) — North and South Korea are to hold working-level talks this week to discuss ways to increase economic cooperation, including Seoul’s proposal to jointly develop the Han River’s sand-rich estuary and mineral mines in the communist North, Seoul’s Unification Ministry said Monday.
The new round of dialogue between officials of the Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation Promotion Committee is to be held in the North’s border town of Kaesong from Wednesday through Thursday, the ministry said in a press release.
The meeting will include talk of ways to jointly develop the western mouth of the Han River, called the Imjin River in the North, which is believed to contain at least 1 billion cubic meters, or about 1.6 billion tons, of sand.
It will also serve as a venue to fix the next meeting of the inter-Korean committee, the highest-profile dialogue between the divided Koreas. Last month the two sides agreed on a deadline of end-May.
The sand project was proposed by Unification Minister Lee Jong-Seok, Seoul’s chief delegate to the inter-Korean Cabinet talks, at a meeting in Pyongyang last month.
The Seoul metropolitan area houses almost half of the country’s 48 million population live and requires some 80 million tons of sand a year for use in construction, according to ministry officials.
The South Korean minister also proposed the two sides work together in developing the North’s zinc and magnesite mines in the country’s northwestern city of Danchon.
In an eight-point agreement adopted at the end of the ministerial talks, the North Korean side welcomed Seoul’s proposal, but left actual projects for joint mining to be discussed at the upcoming inter-Korean economic talks.
The South Korean delegation is to be led by the head of the ministry’s social and cultural exchanges bureau, Kim Chun-sig, while the North Korean side will be led by Cho Hyon-ju, an official from the North’s National Economic Cooperation Committee, the ministry said.
