Six South Korean detainees will be allowed to return home from North Korea in an unusual move by the reclusive nation. The move accompanies the North’s separate approval for South Korean lawmakers to visit a recently restarted factory park both Koreas run in the North.
The detainees will cross over the heavily armed border at the truce village of Panmunjom on Friday, according to a short statement from South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which is responsible for ties with the North.
Seoul didn’t provide many details on the detainees , only saying that they were men between the ages of 27 and 67, reports Yahoo! News . The country plans to investigate how its citizens traveled to the North and why.
Along with releasing detainees, 24 South Korean lawmakers will be allowed to visit Kaesong factory park, a jointly-run facility located just over the border in North Korea. Kaesong is the final inter-Korean project from a previous period of rapprochement. It was closed earlier this year amid high tensions , but was reopened last month, notes USA Today .
Lawmakers won’t meet with North Korean officials during the trip, but they will meet with their own South Korean managers to discuss operations. Analysts believe that the North takes Kaesong’s return to production seriously, because of its struggling economy. However, the country’s other goal of nuclear production could make foreign investors wary of supporting the North in any way.
Despite tensions between the two nations this year, the six South Korean detainees’ return to their home country could mean that the North is willing to put aside tensions, at least for now. The South believes that more than 500 South Koreans have been kidnapped and detained by the North since the Korean War ended with an armistice.
It isn’t clear why the North is releasing the South Korean detainees, or why they went to the reclusive country in the first place. However, analysts think that they either voluntarily crossed the border or were captured near it.
[Image via meunierd / Shutterstock.com ]
