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REPORT – In this photo of 15 October 2018, South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, left, shakes hands with his North Korean counterpart, Ri Son Gwon, after exchanging the joint statement at their meeting south of Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone, South Korea. South Korea said the United Nations Security Council has granted a sanctions exemption for investigations into North Korean railway sections that the Koreas want to link to the South. (Korea Pool / Yonhap via AP, File)
Seoul, South Korea – South Korea said on Saturday that the United Nations Security Council has granted an exemption to the sanctions that will allow investigations into the North Korean railway sections that the Koreas want to link to the South.
The surveys would require the South to bring fuel and a variety of goods to the north, possibly including test cars on northern runways.
The Koreas plan to organize by the end of the year a ceremony to inaugurate work on an ambitious project to connect their railways and roads, as agreed by their leaders . But beyond investigations and band cuts, they can not move much further without lifting the sanctions imposed by the United States against North Korea, which is unlikely before Pyongyang takes more action. to give up its nuclear weapons and missiles.
The plan to modernize North Korea's railways and obsolete roads and reconnect them to the South was among the many agreements reached between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. who met three times this year as part of a diplomatic push easing tensions. on the northern nuclear program. Kim also met with President Donald Trump in Singapore in June, when they issued a statement on a Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons, without specifying how and when that would happen.
North Korea insists that sanctions be lifted before progress is made in nuclear negotiations. There is also uneasiness between the United States and South Korea over the pace of inter-Korean engagement, which Washington says should go hand in hand with US efforts to denuclearize the North.
South Korea initially stated that joint investigations into North Korean railways would not be a violation of UK sanctions and hoped to start them in October. Seoul then said that Washington had different points of view and that both sides had discussed the issue in a newly created working group.
Even though the North is taking concrete steps towards denuclearization and getting sanctions, experts say the update of North Korean railways and trains, which are slowly crunching along the rails that were built at the beginning of the Twentieth century, would require considerable efforts that can take decades and tens of billions of dollars.
US sanctions against North Korea have increased considerably since 2016, when Pyongyang stepped up its weapons tests. The measures now include bans on "dual-use" technologies that could potentially be used for the development of weapons, transport vehicles and machinery, as well as fuel import ceilings. Washington's own sanctions against Pyongyang restrict an even wider range of economic activities and target a larger number of companies and individuals.
