South Korean business leaders operating joint ventures in North Korea vowed Saturday to continue their operations despite intense pressure to stem the flow of cash to Pyongyang over its nuclear test.
The leaders made the pledge after meeting at the Kaesong industrial park, just north of the Korean border, to discuss UN sanctions imposed over the Stalinist state's first atom bomb test, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.
"Businesses in the zone (park) should not be swayed by international politics, as they are run 100 percent on private investment," said Kim Ki-mun who represents South Korean companies in the park.
"We will do our best in building successive cases of capital from the South combined with manpower and land resources in the North," Yonhap quoted Kim saying after he arrived back in Seoul from the meeting.
Kim, chairman of watchmaker Romanson Co, downplayed concerns that profits from the park were going to a regime bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
He valued overseas shipments of products produced at the park at 15 million US dollars. And he called on the South Korean government to support the mostly small to medium sized companies operating there in their drive to become more competitive.
The main opposition party here has demanded that the park and Mount Kumgang tourist resort, both built in the North with the South's money, be scrapped, while government officials indicate they are irrelevant to the UN sanctions imposed on the North. Kaesong, where thousands of North Koreans work for 15 South Korean companies just north of the heavily fortified border, was opened in 2004.
Seoul hopes to make it a development model, combining its capital and the North's cheap labour, to reduce tensions, which have existed since the 1950-1953 Korean War. Workers earn a minimum wage of 57 dollars a month but 30 percent of this is deducted by their government for social and health insurance fees. Seoul hopes to attract some 3,000 factories there by 2024.
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