hankyoreh

South Korea's Unification Ministry said Tuesday that it plans to parcel out a 530,000-pyeong lot for South Korean manufacturers in the inter-Korean industrial complex in Kaesong late next month. One pyeong is 3.3 square meters.

The land is the remainder of the 1-million-pyeong lot which the South and North Korean governments have been jointly developing in the western North Korean border town in the first phase of the inter-Korean project which is to construct a 20-million-pyeong industrial base for South Korean companies by 2012. The complex, if completed, is expected to employ as many as half a million North Korean workers for some 2,000-3,000 South Korean manufacturers.

The government originally planned to sell the lot in three stages last year, but had to put it off amid inter-Korean tension caused by the North's missile and nuclear tests.

"I believe it's proper to sell the lot as early as the end of next month," Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said, citing his report submitted to President Roh Moo-hyun on Feb. 6 on his agency's business for this year.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex is one of the two major cross-border projects that South Korea has kept afloat in spite of U.S. opposition. The two Koreas also run a joint tourism project at the North's scenic Mount Geumgang.

In the industrial complex, South Korean businesses use cheap but skilled North Korean labor to produce goods. Currently, 21 labor-intensive South Korean factories employ about 11,160 North Korean workers.

But U.S. hard-liners criticize the complex, claiming that the factories where North Korean workers earn about US$60 per month are actually channels to funnel much-needed hard currency to the tyrannical North Korean regime.

The report by the ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs contained five other policy goals for this year, including the establishment of peace systems on the Korean Peninsula, economic cooperation for co-development, humanitarian aid and socio-cultural exchanges.

In the area of economic cooperation, the ministry plans to set up mid- and long-term strategies to build or modernize infrastructure in the North, such as ports and railroads.

It will also endeavor to attract domestic and foreign investments in the Kaesong complex by addressing the "rules of origin" issue surrounding products from the industrial base. The Seoul government is trying to persuade the international community, especially the United States, to recognize the Kaesong goods as South Korean-made.

Seoul, Feb. 20 (Yonhap News)