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The two Koreas on Wednesday launched a project to reconnect rail and road links severed since the 1950-53 Korean War, but actual construction cannot start while sanctions remain in place against North Korea, officials said.

SEOUL: The two Koreas on Wednesday launched a project to reconnect rail and road links severed since the 1950-53 Korean War, but actual construction cannot start while sanctions remain in place against North Korea, officials said.

The two sides agreed in October to work on reconnecting railways and roads as part of a thaw in relations that the United States fears will undermine efforts to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

"There's a lot of things to do before we actually start construction," South Korean Transport Minister Kim Hyun-mee said before the ceremony in the city of Kaesong on the North Korean side of the border.

The materials and investment needed for construction to begin are banned under U.N. and U.S. sanctions imposed over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programmes. Washington insists sanctions remain until the North gives up its nuclear weapons.

South Korean officials, politicians and members of families displaced by the war boarded a special train to the ceremony.

Shin Jang-chul, who drove the last freight train between the Koreas when they operated a joint factory park a decade ago, said he never thought he would return to the North.

"I'm just deeply moved," Shin said. "It's been 10 years and I've been wondering if I would ever be able to come back after I retire."

They were joined by a North Korean delegation, as well as officials from the United Nations, China, Russia and Mongolia, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

Speaking at the event, the North's Vice Railroad Minister Kim Yun Hyok called for an "unwavering determination to stand against headwinds" that could threaten the project.

"The results of the rail and road project hinge on the spirit and will of our people," Kim said.

The two sides will conduct additional joint surveys and design work that could take one or two years to complete, the South's Kim Hyun-mee said.

Wednesday's ceremony was another example of the thaw in relations between the Koreas, technically still at war after their conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty.

But major economic initiatives have yet to take off amid the lack of progress on denuclearising the North.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to work toward denuclearisation at a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in June. But negotiations have made little headway, with Pyongyang upset at Washington's insistence that sanctions remain until the North takes concrete steps to give up its nuclear arsenal.

"The South is trying to build on existing agreements, believing that advancing inter-Korean ties would have a positive impact on denuclearisation," said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

"But given the absence of actual construction, the North will keep pressing the South to make it happen despite sanctions, in line with Kim's efforts to shore up his regime," he added. </s> The two Koreas held a ceremony on Wednesday for a project to reconnect rail and road links, although construction cannot begin while sanctions over North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes remain in place, officials said.

The two sides agreed in October to inaugurate work on reconnecting railways and roads that have been cut since the 1950-53 Korean War, another example of the thaw in North-South relations this year.

A special train carried 100 South Korean officials, politicians and members of families displaced by the war to the ceremony at Panmun Station in the border city of Kaesong.

They were joined by a 100-strong North Korean delegation, as well as officials from the United Nations, China, Russia and Mongolia, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry.

The United States and the UN Security Council gave their support for the ceremony, South Korean officials said, but construction cannot begin while sanctions block the shipment of energy and metal products, as well as other supplies.

"There's a lot of things to do before we actually start construction," Transport Minister Kim Hyun-mee said, adding the two sides would conduct additional joint surveys and design work for one or two years.

There was a feeling of nervous excitement on the South Korean train as it left the capital Seoul.

"I'm just deeply moved," said Shin Jang-chul, who drove the last freight train between the Koreas a decade ago.

"It's been 10 years and I've been wondering if I would ever be able to come back after I retire," he added.

The ceremony was another example of the thaw in relations between the Koreas, technically still at war after their conflict ended in a truce not a peace treaty. But major economic initiatives have been stalled by the lack of progress on denuclearising the North.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to the ceremony during a September summit in Pyongyang with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a step toward joint industrial zones and reconnecting transport links.

However, the plan has been delayed amid US concerns that improving Korean ties could undermine efforts to press Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

Kim agreed to work toward denuclearisation at a summit with US President Donald Trump in June, but talks have since made little headway, with Pyongyang upset at Washington's insistence that sanctions remain until the North takes concrete steps toward denuclearisation.

"The South is trying to build on existing agreements, believing that advancing inter-Korean ties would have a positive impact on denuclearisation," said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

"But given the absence of actual construction, the North will keep pressing the South to make it happen despite sanctions, in line with Kim's efforts to shore up his regime," he added. </s> SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean officials have traveled to North Korea by train to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for an aspirational project to modernize North Korean railways and roads and connect them with the South.

Wednesday’s ceremony at the North Korean border town of Kaesong comes weeks after the Koreas conducted a joint survey on the northern railway sections they hope to someday link with the South.

The ambitious project is among a variety of peace gestures agreed between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in as they push ahead with engagement amid a stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.

But beyond on-site reviews and ceremonies, the Koreas cannot move the project much further along without the removal of U.S.-led sanctions against the North.

During his three summits with Moon and a meeting with President Donald Trump in June, Kim signed vague statements pledging a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing how and when it would occur. But followup nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled for months over the sequencing of the denuclearization that Washington wants and the removal of international sanctions desired by Pyongyang.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, said the Seoul government plans to conduct further surveys on North Korean railways and roads before drawing up a detailed blueprint for the project.

“Actual construction will be pursued in accordance with progress in the North’s denuclearization and the state of sanctions against the North,” the ministry said in a statement.

Even if the North takes concrete steps toward denuclearization and gains sanctions relief, some experts say updating North Korean rail networks and trains, which creak slowly along the rails that were first built in the early 20th century, could take decades and massive investment.

Seoul said it received an exemption to sanctions from the U.N. Security Council to proceed with Wednesday’s ceremony as it involved the usage of South Korean transport vehicles and goods. The Koreas’ joint survey of North Korean railways in November, which also required U.N. approval, marked the first time a South Korean train traveled on North Korean tracks.

The Koreas in December 2007 began freight services between South Korea’s Munsan Station in Paju and the North’s Panmun Station to support operations at a now-shuttered joint factory park in Kaesong. The South used the trains to move construction materials north, while clothing and shoes made at the factory park were sent south. The line was cut in November 2008 due to political tensions over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

The Kaesong factory park was shut down under the South’s previous conservative government in February 2016 following a North Korean nuclear test and long-range rocket launch. </s> (Bloomberg) -- North and South Korean staged a symbolic ground-breaking ceremony to upgrade severed rail links, although UN Security Council approval would be needed to advance the project.

Long-stalled plans to restore rail links severed by the Korean War were revived in historic summits by North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in earlier this year. While South Korea said the Security Council granted an exemption to United Nations sanctions Tuesday to allow the ceremony to proceed, additional relief would be needed to start construction.

“The result of the North and South Korean railway and road project depends on our nation’s mental strength and will. If we are swayed by others’ views, we cannot achieve the unification that our nation wants,” Kim Yun Hyok, North Korea’s vice railway minister, said at the ceremony, according to the YTN TV network.

“Railways will now also play a role of reducing the gap between the hearts of South and North Korea,” South Korean Transport Minister Kim Hyun-mee said.

The rail project was first launched more than 15 years ago, but scuttled by political acrimony and global sanctions imposed on Pyongyang over its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The U.S., which holds a Security Council veto, has refused to ease the economic penalties until North Korea takes steps toward disarmament and talks between the two sides have achieved little progress.

Last week, North Korean state media said removal of the U.S.’s nuclear weapons from the region was a condition of its own disarmament, raising the stakes for President Donald Trump’s efforts to hold a second summit with Kim, after their first meeting in June.

Seoul has said work to modernize North Korean railways and roads before connecting them with its own wouldn’t start until the international sanctions against Pyongyang were lifted, adding construction hinges on North Korea’s denuclearization steps.

North Korean Ri Son Gwon who oversees the North’s exchanges with the South, his South Korean counterpart Cho Myoung-Gyon and transport officials from China, Russia and Mongolia were among the hundreds of people attending the rail event in the North Korean border city of Gaeseong.

Sanctions enforced by the Security Council and the U.S. prohibit sending fuel or conducting economic activities that could generate cash for Kim’s regime. South Korea said in November it had won exemptions for the rail survey.

The last rail service during the 1950-1953 Korean War came in 1951 when a train carrying wounded soldiers and refugees crossed into South Korea. Links were cut for decades after that.

But a few years after the first summit of leaders on the divided peninsula in 2000, South Korea built roads and restored rail links to the North Korean border region. For a brief period about a decade ago, South Korea ran freight trains into Gaeseong, where South Korea had an industrial park, until political tensions undermined the project.

Moon’s rapprochement toward North Korea included three summits with Kim Jong Un this year, but have been limited by international sanctions and the slowing pace of diplomacy between the two sides.

Pyongyang hasn’t responded to the latest move by Washington to review its policy on humanitarian aid to the North, which was proposed when U.S. nuclear envoy Stephen Biegun was in Seoul last week.

The Chinese ambassador to South Korea, Qiu Guohong, told South Korea’s Kim Hyun-mee during the event Wednesday that he believed the railway project would help denuclearization.

To contact the reporters on this story: Youkyung Lee in Seoul at ylee582@bloomberg.net;Sohee Kim in Seoul at skim847@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Jon Herskovitz

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com </s> North and South Korea have symbolically joined their railway networks together as they begin work to reconnect transport networks between the two countries.

But construction on the project cannot actually begin because of international sanctions banning the import of metals and energy products into North Korea.

Instead, engineers from the North and South - which are still technically at war - will spend the next two years conducting joint surveys and doing design work.

The groundbreaking ceremony was held at Panmun Station in the border city of Kaesong on Wednesday.

A train full of 100 South Korean government officials, ministers and family members displaced by the Korean War was driven to the station for the event.

They were in turn greeted by a 100-strong North Korean delegation, as well as officials from the United Nations, China, Russia and Mongolia - amid wider plans to link North Korea with the trans-Siberia and trans-China railways.

But, underlining the scale of the challenges facing the project, even getting a train to Panmun required South Korea to obtain a permit from the UN Security Council.

Kim Yun Hyok, the North Korean vice railways minister, said the Koreas should push further with engagement instead of 'wobbling on the path while listening to what others think,' designed as a rebuke to Seoul over its close ties with America.

North Korea has repeatedly voiced displeasure about the slow progress in the reconciliatory projects agreed between their leaders.

The Seoul government plans to conduct further surveys on North Korean railways and roads before drawing up a detailed blueprint for the project.

Actual construction will proceed depending on the progress in the North's denuclearization and the state of sanctions against the country, the ministry said.

'We plan to hold detailed negotiations with the North to coordinate on the specific levels we want to achieve in the modernization of railways and roads and how to carry out the project,' said Eugene Lee, the ministry's spokeswoman.

South Korea has set aside some $600,000 for the project, but experts say the North's transport infrastructure is so dilapidated that it could take decades and absorb billions of dollars to modernise.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed to the ceremony during a September summit in Pyongyang with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a step toward joint industrial zones and reconnecting transport links.

It is another example of the thaw in relations between the Koreas, which began at the Winter Olympics and saw Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in holding hands while listening to K-Pop together.

The same thawing also saw American President Donald Trump meet with Kim in Singapore for the first ever summit between the two countries.

Trump let the summit full of admiration for Kim and certain he had achieved concrete steps towards 'denuclearising' the North, but progress has stalled over what that word actually means.

Pyongyang insists that it has taken several concrete steps towards winding down its nuclear weapons program, such as destroying the underground Punggye-ri testing site, and that it is time for America to reciprocate by lifting sanctions.

However, Washington is insisting that North Korea give up its entire nuclear arsenal first before sanctions are lifted later - an idea that Pyongyang has balked at.

A second summit between Trump and Kim is scheduled to take place in Washington sometime early next year, which the US leader has said he is 'looking forward' to. </s> The United Nations Security Council has granted a sanctions exemption for North and South Korea to hold a joint event for their railway and roads connection project, Yonhap news agency reported Tuesday.

"Consultations over the groundbreaking ceremony with the council's North Korea sanctions committee were wrapped up Monday, New York time," a Seoul foreign ministry official said, according to the agency. </s> TOKYO — A South Korean train rolled across the heavily militarized frontier into North Korea for the first time in a decade Friday, as Seoul pushed ahead with a plan to reunite the two railway networks despite heavy U.N. sanctions.

The train pulled six cars carrying dozens of South Korean officials and experts, who will undertake an 18-day, 750-mile survey of railway tracks in the North. The journey required special permission from the United Nations to carry equipment and fuel into the North despite the sanctions regime.

Seoul plans to hold a groundbreaking ceremony before the end of the year on a plan to establish road and rail links between the two Koreas, first agreed upon by the countries’ two leaders at a summit in April. But the project can’t go beyond symbolic gestures to become reality unless sanctions are lifted.

Nevertheless, with talks between the United States and North Korea stalling, the government in Seoul is keen to show progress in its own peace process with Pyongyang.

“The inter-Korean railway connection project is intended to overcome division and open a new future of the Korean Peninsula,” Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said at a ceremony at Dorasan Station near the border, according to pool reports. “Through the one connected railway, the South and the North will prosper together and the ground for peace on the Korean Peninsula will be consolidated,” he said. “The train crossing the Korean Peninsula will carry peace and prosperity to northeast Asia and the world.”

Cho also promised to maintain close consultation “with related nations” – in other words, the United States – so that the project proceeds with international support.

After whistling twice, the South Korean train slowly traveled toward North Korea’s Panmun Station, near the town of Kaesong, where the cars would be reconnected to a North Korean engine.

The survey will run in two stages. The first will go through central North Korea and along the northwestern coast to the city of Sinuiju near the Chinese border.

The second phase will go from an area near the Mount Kumgang tourist region and along the east coast up to a riverside station near the border with Russia.

The train will include passenger and sleeping cars as well as a power-generator car and a fuel tank.

Freight services ran between the two Koreas from December 2007 until November 2008 to support factories in a joint economic zone at Kaesong in North Korea. But the line was cut in 2008 and the Kaesong park eventually closed in 2016 as relations deteriorated. </s> SEOUL, South Korea — A South Korean train Friday crossed into North Korea for the first time in a decade, as the two countries began a joint study on renovating the North’s decrepit rail system and linking it to the South’s.

Over the next 18 days, dozens of officials and engineers from both Koreas will live and work on the six-car train, traveling more than 1,600 miles as they study the North’s rail network and consider what it would take to bring it up to international standards. The train rolled north across the countries’ heavily armed border Friday morning.

The joint study “signals that inter-Korean cooperation is reaching a new level,” said Kim Eui-kyeom, the spokesman for President Moon Jae-in of South Korea.

The study is one of a number of collaborative projects that Moon has championed to develop closer ties with the North and demonstrate what economic benefits the country could gain from giving up nuclear weapons. When Moon and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, met for the first time in April, the South agreed to help rebuild the North’s railroads and highways, which Kim said were in “embarrassing” shape.

But whether that happens will depend on progress in ridding the North of its nuclear arms. International sanctions imposed on the North over its weapons program forbid the kind of significant investment from the South that such infrastructure work would entail. Even bringing in the fuel and equipment needed to carry out the joint rail study required special approval from the United Nations Security Council.

The two Koreas last conducted such research in 2007, when they carried out a limited field study on a rail line in western North Korea. They connected short stretches of railway across their border that year.

A South Korean cargo train ran five times a week on one of those short cross-border routes until 2008, when the countries’ relations began to sour over the North’s pursuit of nuclear arms. Plans for further connections between the two rail systems were suspended.

On Friday, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon and other South Korean officials sent off the study team during a brief ceremony at the Dorasan train station near the border with the North.

“You will visit train stations and cross hills and rivers in North Korea no outsiders have visited before,” said Cho, according to pool reports from South Korean journalists. “By reconnecting our railways, South and North Korea will be able to prosper together and make peace on the Korean Peninsula more solid.”

The Koreas’ rail lines have been severed since the 1950-53 Korean War. Moon hopes that reconnecting them will be a step toward economic integration and, eventually, reunification.

But while Moon has been eager to pursue such projects, the United States is adamant that the South refrain from significant economic collaboration with the North until it takes major steps toward denuclearization. The apparent discord raised fears of a rift in the alliance.

South Korea’s proposal to conduct the rail study was thwarted earlier this year by American concerns that it could violate U.N. sanctions. But last week, Washington and Seoul launched a joint working group to better coordinate their interactions with North Korea, and the United States signed off on the rail study.

Moon has said he agrees with the Trump administration that major economic cooperation with the North can begin only after sanctions have been lifted. He plans to meet with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit conference in Argentina this weekend to discuss how to break a stalemate in the denuclearization talks between North Korea and the United States.

South Korea, whose only land border is with the North, has long dreamed of building a trans-Korean railroad that could provide a link to China and beyond. That would give it a faster way to ship exports that are now sent by sea to China and Europe, and to bring in Russian oil and other natural resources.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times </s> For the first time in more than a decade, a South Korean train entered the North on Friday, as officials and engineers begin a surveying mission on the tracks.

The move is crucial to realizing Pyongyang and Seoul's shared goal of re-establishing rail connections between the two countries. The aim is to facilitate cross-border travel and trade.

"Iron Horse is now running toward the era of peace and prosperity," read a banner on the train as it pulled out of Dorasan Station, near the border.

"Through the railways that will be connected in one, the South and North will prosper together and peace in the Korean Peninsula will become firmer," South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said during a ceremony at the station.

Leaders of both countries have announced a desire to break ground on a new, interconnected rail line by the end of the year.

However, US sanctions make it difficult to proceed with this plan. While Washington has signaled a willingness to roll back the penalties, it has said that North Korea must first prove that it has taken steps to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.

At the same time, soldiers from both sides were making another show of solidarity by removing at least 20 guard posts from the border. Teams are then going to search for human remains left over from the Korean War, marking the first-ever joint search.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, seeking to improve diplomatic relations as part of his ultimate goal to reunite the Korean peninsula. To that end, several cooperation projects have been announced, including a bid to co-host the 2032 Olympics.

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North Korea and South Korea hold a ceremony for a project to reconnect rail and road links, although construction cannot start while sanctions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs remain in place.