[USFK Forums] S. Korea opens new border check points with North [Reuters]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Thursday, March 16, 2006

S.Korea opens new border check points with North

Wednesday March 15, 11:27 PM

PAJU, South Korea (Reuters) - The buildings are bright and modern, but mostly empty, a testament to modern South Korean efficiency and impoverished North Korea's reluctance to embrace its neighbour and the outside world.

On Wednesday, the South opened two new check points to process the trickle of traffic crossing the fortified border. But business was hardly brisk.

South Korea has strict rules on its citizens crossing the Cold War's last frontier and ordinary North Koreans are banned from travelling to wealthy, capitalist South Korea.

Anyone attempting to sneak across the fortified border runs the risk of being blown up by landmines or being shot.

South Korea spent nearly $100 million building and upgrading the two existing checkpoints with a clear eye to a future when the two sides are much closer and travel restrictions on Koreans are largely lifted. Combined, the new checkpoints can process more than four million people a year.

But that could be years or decades away given both countries remain technically at war. To underscore the point, the North said on Tuesday it had the right to launch a pre-emptive attack against the South.

At present, there are only two spots on the divided peninsula where South Koreans can cross regularly into the North. One is a mountain resort and the other is an industrial park. Both are operated by a branch of South Korea's Hyundai conglomerate.

ALL DRESSED UP, NOWHERE TO GO

By 11 a.m. (0200 GMT), all the metal detectors and immigration counters in the Paju office were idle under stark fluorescent light.

The checkpoint has one busy period in the morning when approved South Koreans travel for work at the Kaesong Industrial Park in the North.

"Can we sit here?," an elderly visitor timidly asked a security official, pointing to rows of deserted seats in the departure lounge.

South Korea has also built a shiny new train station near the Paju border check point.

The station has tracks that cross into the North, signs pointing the way to the platform for service to Pyongyang, but no trains leaving the station bound for its communist neighbour.

South Koreans wishing to travel to the North -- no matter how insignificant the purpose of the trip may be -- require an official invitation from the North. Applications made through the South Korean government are put through background checks.

Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok said the South was showing it wanted more contact across the border and urged the North to match progress being made in the South to promote ties.

The 1950-1953 Korean War ended in a truce and not a peace treaty. Both Koreas have hundreds of thousands of troops stationed near the land-mined border.

The North's military has been reluctant to give its blessings to expanding ties between the two Koreas, and has yet to give the formal go-ahead to projects originally planned for last year linking the two Koreas by highway and railroad.

The new checkpoints on North Korea's side of the border have yet to open, the glass and steel structures standing in stark contrast with corrugated tin roofs and crumbling plaster of other buildings nearby.



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