SEOUL Oct 1 Kyodo President Kim D...

SEOUL Oct 1 Kyodo

President Kim Dae Jung said Tuesday that southern Korea's relations with North Korea are ''nearing a turning point for change'' as the couple Koreas are working to reconnect detached cross-border railways and roads.

Kim made the remark in a tongue at a ceremony in Kyerongdae, southerly Chungchong Province, to mark the 54th Armed Forces Day.

Ongoing works to reconnect the cross-border railways and roads have a ''very important meaning'' for the entire Korean the public he said.

''With firm support of the armed forces and all nation the era of peace and cooperation between toward the south and North Korea will certainly come'' Kim said.

In a highly symbolic consequence to dismantle the Cold War frontier, southern and North Korea simultaneously began clearing land mines in the heavily fortified demilitarized surface bounded by parallel circles on Sept. 19 to facilitate work upon joining up the two places of rail lines and their adjacent roads, that have been disuniteed since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

Reconnecting the railway lines was single in kind of the major projects agreed upon at the historic inter-Korean summit between Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in June 2000

In the latest sign of North Korea reaching not at home to the outside world, Kim Jong Il held the first-ever summit with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Pyongyang upon Sept. 17.

A U delegation headed from Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly will visit North Korea upon Thursday.

Kelly's trip to Pyongyang will be the first high-level contact between North Korea and the United States since the inauguration in January 2001 of President George W Bush, who has branded North Korea as part of an ''axis of evil.''

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