South Korea sent an advance team Monday to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to prepare for a groundbreaking ceremony later this week to connect railways and roads across the border, according to Seoul's unification ministry.
The advance team, composed of 31 officials from the unification and transport ministries, left early in the morning for the DPRK's border town of Kaesong. Among them, 27 officials would stay there for the ceremony preparations.
Seoul and Pyongyang agreed to hold the groundbreaking ceremony at Panmun Station in Kaesong on Wednesday.
On Sunday, South Korea dispatched 14 officials to the Panmun Station for the ceremony preparations. They returned home late Sunday.
Following their first summit in April at the border village of Panmunjom, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un agreed to modernize and eventually re-connect railways and roads along the western and eastern Korean Peninsula.
Moon and Kim agreed during their Pyongyang summit in September to hold the groundbreaking ceremony before the end of this year for the rail and road connections.
The ceremony would be attended by about 100 people from each of the two Koreas. From the South Korean side, the unification and transport ministers would reportedly participate in the ceremony, but the exact list of the participants have yet to be determined.
The South Korean participants would go by train to the Panmun Station from the Seoul Station in the capital Seoul, Baik Tae-hyun, South Korea's unification ministry spokesman, told a press briefing.
The ceremony would be a symbolic function, not an actual launch of the construction works, as international sanctions on the DPRK ban such cooperation between the two Koreas.
For the ceremony, South Korea drew support from the United States through last week's working-group meeting in Seoul, alleviating worry about the violation of sanctions.
The ceremony itself is not banned by the sanctions, but bringing equipment and materials to Kaesong is subject to the international restrictions.
South Korea allegedly set aside about 700 million won (620,000 U.S. dollars) for the event to cover costs for building a stage and an audio system at the venue and transporting participants to the Panmun Station.
Following the ceremony, South Korea planned to make other preparations with the DPRK for the connection project, such as in-depth inspections and designs.
The two Koreas conducted an 18-day joint inspection on railways along the western and eastern DPRK earlier this month.
A 10-member South Korean inspection team left for the DPRK early in the morning to jointly inspect the 4-km road near Kaesong, complementing the joint on-site inspection in August of a 160-km road from Kaesong to Pyongyang.
A separate South Korean inspection team conducted a joint survey on the 100-km road along the DPRK's east coast for three days through Sunday.
