North Korea today restored its official hotline with South Korea and announced it would let the South’s businessmen visit a shuttered joint industrial zone, Seoul officials said.<\/p>\n
The move came hours after dozens of South Korean firms threatened to withdraw from the zone at Kaesong in the North<\/strong>, complaining they had fallen victim to political bickering between the two rivals.<\/p>\n “The hotline was restored this afternoon after North Korea accepted our request to normalise it,” a South Korean unification ministry official said on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n After months of tensions and threats of nuclear war, the North restored the hotline in the border truce village of Panmunjom last month <\/strong>for talks on setting up a rare high-level meeting to discuss the fate of the zone.<\/p>\n But it was switched off again after plans for the talks collapsed due to disputes over protocol.<\/p>\n In an unexpected reversal on Wednesday, the North sent a message to the South through Panmunjom saying South Korean businessmen and managers would be allowed to visit the industrial complex.<\/strong><\/p>\n It said the businessmen could take emergency steps to avert damage to facilities and materials in the complex during the rainy season, according to a unification ministry statement.<\/p>\n South Korea will review the North’s proposal and convey its response later, the ministry said.<\/strong><\/p>\n Established in 2004 as a rare symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, the industrial estate was the most high-profile casualty of months of elevated tensions that followed the North’s nuclear test in February.<\/p>\n Operations at the complex just north of the border ground to a halt soon after the North banned entry by southerners on April 3 amid soaring military tensions with Seoul.<\/p>\n Source AP<\/em> North Korea today restored its official hotline with South Korea and announced it would let the South’s businessmen visit 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Korea today restored its official hotline with South Korea and announced it would let the South’s businessmen visit 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\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"