By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
President Roh Moo-hyun plans to visit the inter-Korean industrial complex in Gaeseong today on his way back from Pyongyang. His visit to the joint industrial park will be the grand finale of his three-day historic visit to North Korea.
Gaeseong, a border city in the North and site for the joint venture between the two Koreas, has caught the eyes of the world on the occasion of the 2007 South-North Korean Summit.
If North Korean leader Kim Jong-il accompanies him, the historic visit could become a landmark moment for cross-border economic integration that would promote a peace process on the Korean Peninsula.
Roh, cited the joint work of South and North Koreans in Gaeseong while emphasizing the economic cooperation between the two sides in talks with the North Korean leader.
``He stressed that economic cooperation is needed even for the South's growth and stressed that cross-border economic cooperation should be further expedited,'' Roh's spokesman Cheon Ho-seon told reporters in Pyongyang.
Roh presented wristwatches made by Romanson _ in Gaeseong _ to Kim, among many other gifts, to highlight the achievement of cross-border economic cooperation, according to Cheong Wa Dae deputy spokesman Kim Jeong-seob.
``By wearing and presenting the watch, a symbol of inter-Korean business cooperation, President Roh expressed his will to achieve co-prosperity for the two Koreas,'' Kim said in a briefing at the press center in the Lotte Hotel, Seoul.
Gaeseong, situated about 140 kilometers south of Pyongyang and some 60 kilometers north of Seoul, was once a major North Korean military base. During the complex's development North Korea even withdrew some of its conventional artillery.
Launched more than three years ago, the industrial complex has been a gauge of the volatile security situation on the peninsula, the last flashpoint of the Cold War era where hundreds of thousands of troops face each other across the border.
Operations in the zone, for example, nearly stopped late last year in the wake of a nuclear test by Pyongyang. Since the Feb. 13 denuclearization agreement, however, businesses have gone back to normal.
Currently, more than 20 firms are producing clothes, shoes, watches and kitchen utensils in the 3.3 million-square-meter pilot site of the complex, which will sprawl to over 66 million square meters in the coming years.
Since the first products came out in December 2004, annual output of the firms _ mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises _ has increased from $14.9 million (13.8 billion won) in 2005 to $73.7 million (68.4 billion won) in 2006.
Beside South Korean manufacturers, a growing number of foreign investors seem eager to do business in the special economic zone, where nearly 15,000 North Koreans churn out products worth nearly $100 million a year.
Gaeseong hopes to employ 350,000 workers in 3,000 firms by the mid-2010s, when the full-fledged complex (the same size of Changwon) is completed with hotels, apartments, shopping centers and even an amusement park and golf course.