European businessmen visit inter-Korean factory park in N. Korea
2014/04/29 11:57
SEOUL, April 29 (Yonhap) -- More than 40 European businessmen in South Korea traveled across the heavily fortified border into North Korea on Tuesday for a rare trip to an inter-Korean factory park amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula, a unification ministry official said.
A 42-member delegation of the Korean-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul plan to tour facilities and South Korean factories in the North's western border city of Kaesong before returning home later in the day, the official said.
The delegation includes officials of the German engineering giant Siemens AG and BMW, a premium German automaker. It also includes Swiss nationals and Austrians, according to the official.
The one-day trip comes as North Korea announced its plan to conduct a live-fire drill near the disputed western maritime border Tuesday, less than a month after the rival Koreas exchanged artillery fire near the sea border.
Still, the North's military did not notify the exact time of the planned exercise near the sea border -- the scene of a series of bloody naval clashes between the two Koreas.
North Korea sank a South Korean warship near the sea border in March 2010 and shelled a border island eight months later, killing 50 South Koreans, mostly soldiers.
The trip also comes amid concerns that the North may carry out a fourth nuclear test in defiance of international warnings. The communist nation previously conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye warned last week after summit talks with U.S. President Barack Obama in Seoul that a new form of provocation would lead to new levels of pressure from the international community.
On Sunday, North Korea called Park a "despicable prostitute," in the latest in a series of sexist swipes at the unmarried female leader.
Separately, about 40 South Korean business leaders from around the world also plan to visit the factory park in Kaesong on Friday, according to the unification ministry official.
In December, about two dozen officials from the world's G-20 economies toured the Kaesong complex on the sidelines of their global financial meeting in Seoul.
The sprawling enclave in Kaesong is home to 120 small South Korean plants producing garments and other labor-intensive goods. More than 44,000 North Koreans work in the complex.
The Kaesong factory park resumed operations in September, more than five months after the North unilaterally closed it in anger over South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises.
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