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FACTBOX-Key facts on ties between North and South Korea
02 Mar 2007 07:21:39 GMT
Source: Reuters
March 2 (Reuters) - North and South Korea reached a deal on Friday to resume reunions of families separated during the Korean War in a step at improving ties chilled by Pyongyang's weapons tests last year.

Following are key points in the ties between the two:

STILL AT WAR

- An armistice ending the 1950-53 Korean War dominates the relationship between the two Koreas. Nearly 1.2 million North Korean soldiers and South Korea's 680,000 troops remain in a tense military standoff despite political and commercial ties that have warmed since 2000.

- The two have enough missiles and artillery pointed at each other to destroy major cities on both sides of the border.

POINTS OF EXCHANGE

- An industrial park in Kaesong just a few minutes' drive from the heavily-fortified border is home to 21 companies employing about 12,000 North Korean workers.

- About 1.4 million South Koreans have visited the Mount Kumgang resort in the North just above the border on the east since the tours began in 1998. Roughly a quarter of a million made the visit in 2006 even as tension spiked following the North's missile and nuclear tests.

- About 102,000 people crossed the border last year, not including Kumgang tourists and most of them South Koreans visiting the North for business. The total exchange of people was 269,336 as of the end of 2006.

TRADE

- Cross-border trade was $1.35 billion in 2006 up from $1.05 billion a year ago, largely from the strength of the Kaesong industrial park.

HUMANITARIAN AID

- South Korea has supplied between 200,000-350,000 tonnes of fertiliser a year to the North since 2000.

- It has also shipped up to 500,000 tonnes of rice a year to the North, technically in the form of low-interest, long-term loans. Food aid has been suspended since the North's missile tests in last July.

REFUGEES, PRISONERS OF WAR AND ABDUCTEES

- South Korea believes more than 1,000 of its people are still alive in the North either as civilian abductees or as prisoners captured during the Korean War.

- North Korea has said 10 South Korean POWs and 11 civilians were alive there.

- More than 1,000 North Koreans each year have fled hunger and persecution in the North and sought refuge in the South. In the first six months of last year, 854 arrived in the South for a total of 8,541. (Source: South Korean Unification Ministry, Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee, Reuters)
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The former secretary of North Korea's Workers Party, Hwang Jang-yeop (R), who defected to South Korea in 1997, and former South Korean President Kim Young-sam (2nd R), salute during a launching ceremony of the Committee for Democratization of North Korea (CDNK) in Seoul April 10, 2007. About 20 groups of North Korean defectors were set to form an alliance as the CDNK, to realize democracy in North Korea and strengthen their political influence ahead of the year-end presidential election in South Korea, CDNK said.



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