The recent trip of the two Koreas to China and Vietnam was a major sign of Pyongyang's shift towards greater cooperation with Seoul.
Kaesong town
The two Koreas reached consensus during a rare survey in China and Vietnam that both sides want their joint factory park to become internationally competitive, though a number of issues remain, Seoul's chief delegate said Wednesday.
The fate of the inter-Korean park in the North's border town of Kaesong came into question earlier this year amid deteriorating political relations and North Korean demands to sharply raise wages and land fees paid by South Korean firms.
"As the joint inspection team witnessed advanced factories in Chinese and Vietnamese industrial parks as well as their competitive products, the North Korean members expressed a wish to develop the Kaesong complex," Kim Young-tak, a Unification Ministry official who led the South Korean team, said at a press briefing.
A 10-member delegation from each side returned home Tuesday night after visiting several emerging industrial parks in China and Vietnam in a bid to find benchmark models for the Kaesong complex.
Their itinerary included visits to Chinese factories owned by such South Korean giants as steelmaker POSCO Co. and office equipment maker Sindoh Co., and to a Vietnamese handset plant operated by Samsung Electronics Co. Their factories are located in Qingdao, an industrial port town in China's northeast, and in Suzhou, a hub for China's silk industry, as well as in Yenpong, a Vietnamese complex near Hanoi.
"The notable thing was that the North side was always cooperative and actively participated," Kim said.
North Korean officials paid attention to wage and insurance systems, and particularly to ways of preventing payment delays by investors, noting that wage payments for North Korean workers in Kaesong are often deferred by South Korean firms, Kim said.
The South side was more interested in infrastructure and safety issues, tax benefits and customs systems, he said.
The joint survey, the third of its kind since the Kaesong park opened in late 2004, has yet to produce any agreement on adjusting wages or follow-up meetings, Kim said.
The minimum monthly wage in surveyed factories in China and Vietnam was about US$100, though these are not subject to comparison with the Kaesong complex because of the difference in payment systems, the official added.
South Korean firms pay an average of $80 a month to North Korean workers in Kaesong. The payments are made directly to the North Korean government.
The Kaesong venture was a major result of the historic first inter-Korean summit in 2000. Currently 116 South Korean firms operate there with more than 42,000 North Korean workers, producing mostly labor-intensive goods such as electronics, clothing and kitchenware.
The park's output in October reached $27 million, up 12 percent from $24 million a month earlier, according to the latest ministry data.