A South Korean delegation left for North Korea on Wednesday to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for reconnecting roads and railways across the divided peni
SEOUL – A South Korean delegation left for North Korea on Wednesday to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for reconnecting roads and railways across the divided peninsula despite stalled denuclearization talks.
A nine-car special train carrying some 100 South Koreans, including officials and five people born in the North, was seen leaving Seoul railway station early in the morning for a two-hour journey to the North’s border city of Kaesong.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, agreed to hold the ceremony by the end of this year when they met at their third summit in Pyongyang in September.
Concerns arose that the train and other materials being brought into the North for the ceremony could breach various sanctions imposed on the isolated regime over its nuclear weapons program, but the U. N. Security Council reportedly granted a waver for the event.
Seoul stressed that the ceremony would not herald the start of actual work on reconnecting and modernizing road and rail links between the two Koreas — which remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty.
