South Korea preps for talks with North Korea over Kaesong park

South Korea on Thursday began its preparations in earnest for a fresh round of talks next week with North Korea on the revival of a suspended joint industrial park in the communist country. The move came a day after Pyongyang made a surprise proposal that working-level officials from both sides met in the North Korean border town of Kaesong on Aug. 14 to reopen the factory zone. Seoul agreed to the overture hours later, paving the way for its normalization, South Korean news agency (Yonhap) reported. The Ministry of Unification, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said it officially notified North Korea of Seoul’s acceptance of Pyongyang’s proposal earlier on Thursday. The message was faxed to the North’s chief delegate, Pak Chol-su, using one of the inter-Korean communication lines that runs through the liaison office at the truce village of Panmunjom, a ministry official said. The North’s proposal comes more than a week of silence after the South’s demand for “final talks” to resolve all outstanding issues surrounding operations at Kaesong. The inter-Korean park has been shuttered since early April after Pyongyang withdrew its 53,000 workers from the complex amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and six rounds of meetings afterward on its fate went nowhere. “North Korea in general appears to take a more forward-looking stance now,” the official said, explaining the reason for the swift acceptance of the North’s proposal. While declining to forecast what results the talks would bring about, the official said the government is making preparations for the talks with a goal “to make the upcoming talks the last ones.” “We will make utmost efforts to draw reasonable ways to get the industrial park back on track,” he added.