Seoul, June 11: Military officials of North and South Korea travelled across their fortified border today for the first time since the Korean war to inspect each other's work on railways that will reconnect the two countries divided for more than a half century. Two delegations from South Korea walked across the border into the northern side of the four kilometre-wide demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, the defence ministry said in a statement. Each delegation looked at one of the two separate railway lines being built.
North Korea also sent two military delegations across the DMZ to check the South's work on both tracks, the South Korean ministry said. It was the first time that military officials visited each other's side of the 240-kilometre-long DMZ since the end of the 1950-53 Korean war, which ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The US-led United Nations command controls the southern half of the DMZ and North Korea oversees the northern half.
Despite tensions over North Korea's suspected development of nuclear weapons, the Koreas agreed to connect the rail line on Saturday, the first such link since the last train crossed the border shortly before the Korean war. The nuclear dispute flared in October when US officials said North Korea admitted having a secret nuclear weapons programme. Bureau Report