Koreas discuss joint factory park settings

South and North Korea on Monday exchanged views on how to ensure the smooth running of their joint industrial complex to prevent another interruption from political or other non-economic factors, Yonhap News Agency reported. The two Koreas agreed on Aug. 14 to reopen the suspended Kaesong Industrial Complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong and inked a deal last Thursday to create a new joint committee that will oversee operations at the inter-Korean factory zone, which had been previously run by a North Korean governing body. The meeting between South and North Korea marks the first ever joint committee talks aimed at creating guidelines for progressive development of a suspended factory park in the North and set a timetable for its full reopening, the report said. The joint committee, which gives Seoul an equal say as the North in the running of the complex, will prevent Pyongyang from disrupting operations in the future, the Ministry of Unification said earlier in the day. It said that the two sides touched on the future schedule for four sub-committees and issues regarding reforms on the movement of people, communications and customs, as well as compensation for losses incurred by the South Korean firms based in Kaesong. Before the suspension of operations in early April, the Kaesong park was home to 123 South Korean factories and around 53,000 North Korean laborers. Pyongyang unilaterally pulled out its workers citing heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.