South and North Korea held their groundbreaking ceremony in North Korea
earlier today marking the linking and modernizing of Railways and rows between
the two sides and this comes eight months after the leaders of so impugn
yang first agreed to work together on the projects
it wasn't exactly smooth sailing due to a lack of progress in the North Korea
u.s. nuclear negotiations but after many twists and turns the two Koreas did hold
this groundbreaking ceremony before we say goodbye to 2018 and for more on this
our Unification Ministry correspondent song he joins us live from tourism
station the northernmost train station in South Korea chun-hee give us the
latest good afternoon - yes I'm standing at tourism station just 700 meters apart
from the Demilitarized Zone if trade early get to start traveling
between the two Koreas and this would be the last train station before you cross
the border into North Korea by now we're expecting the groundbreaking ceremony to
have ended already it was scheduled to be a one-hour long ceremony at North
Korea's Parliament station with 100 participants each from South and North
Korea from North Korea reason God the head of Pyongyang's reunification
committee was at the event with senior North Korean officials from the Economic
Cooperation committee in vice ministers of railway in land from the south
Seoul's transport and unification ministers Kim Hyung me and whom
jung-geun attended along with the leaders of South Korea's political
parties and rail and road related officials a few South Koreans who lived
in the north before being displaced by war had been invited as well along with
the engineer who last friend trains across the border let's have a listen to
what they had to say this morning
I'm very excited and I think I'm very lucky there are a lot of us who had to
live our hometown it'd be great if all of us could go and visit our hometown by
train we're all old is our big wish to go
there by train it's been 10 years since I last run trains to the north via
tongue a rail line back then I didn't have any special thoughts but after it
was all suspended and I retired I've been thinking when will I ever get to go
there again it's great that I get to visit there again all right so this is
an exciting development indeed and we're hearing that there were also
participants at today's event or from outside the Korean Peninsula tell us
more about them and also could their presence possibly mean that this
transport project could start right away well Jim to answer your first question
yes top railway and Road officials from Russia China and Mongolia also attended
the groundbreaking ceremony this morning and that as inter-korean railways could
eventually be linked to railways cutting across these three countries to join the
translation rail network in the future also the executive secretary of the UN's
economic and social commission for Asia and the Pacific was there we're assuming
her presence was because of a project called the Asian highway network where
uns cop and countries in Asia and Europe aim to connect highways that cross the
continent and reach Europe a couple of proposed routes pass through the two
Koreas but even if we had quite a number of high-level figures come to the event
today's groundbreaking ceremony doesn't mean that the two Koreas will kick-start
related construction right away the two Koreas have received sanctions waivers
from the UN Security Council for on-site surveys and today's ceremony but that
doesn't mean these waivers will apply to whatever work happens in the future
Seoul also plans to do more detailed surveys before coming up with
construction plans South Korea says the actual construction work won't begin yet
and things will go in accordance with progress on North Korea's
denuclearization and following waivers on sanctions back to you Joon