Seoul 'open' for Kim's visit this month

The Republic of Korea's presidential Blue House has left "all possibilities open" for a visit by Kim Jong-un, top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to Seoul in December.

Kim Eui-keum, spokesman for ROK President Moon Jaein, told reporters that the Blue House was making preparations for the DPRK leader's Seoul visit, with all possibilities open.

The spokesman said nothing had been decided yet, but he noted that preparations were being made under various scenarios.

His comment came in response to the report by ROK newspaper Chosun Ilbo saying that Seoul was eager for Kim to visit between Dec 12 and 14.

After the Pyongyang summit in September with Moon, the DPRK leader promised to visit Seoul at an early date to reciprocate Moon's trip to Pyongyang.

Moon had expressed his hope that Kim's visit to Seoul would take place by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, a train carrying ROK engineers and officials crossed into the DPRK on Friday to begin a landmark joint survey to reconnect railway tracks between the two neighbors.

The joint railway inspection came as part of efforts to implement the Panmunjom Declaration, which Moon and Kim signed after their first summit in April at the border village of Panmunjom. It was also the first time since 2007 that a train from the ROK had entered the DPRK.

TV footage on Friday showed a red, white and blue train - displaying a banner reading "Iron Horse is now running toward the era of peace and prosperity" - pull away from the ROK's Dorasan station, the nearest terminal from the western part of the inter-Korean border.

"This signals the start of co-prosperity of the north and the south by reconnecting railways," said ROK Transport Minister Kim Hyun-mee.

She added the railway reconnection would help expand the ROK's "economic territory" to Eurasia by land, as the division of the Korean Peninsula had left it geopolitically cut off from the continent for many decades.

The six-carriage train is transporting 28 ROK citizens, including railway engineers and other personnel, and carrying 55 metric tons of fuel and an electricity generator.

There is a passenger coach, a sleeping coach, an office coach and a wagon loaded with water for showers and laundry.

When it arrives at Panmun Station - the first DPRK terminal across the border - the six carriages will be linked up to a local train, and the ROK locomotive will return home.

The ROK engineers and their counterparts will live in the train, inspecting two railway lines for a total of 18 days - one linking the DPRK's southernmost city of Kaesong to Sinuiju near the Chinese border, and the other connecting Mount Kumgang near the inter-Korean border to the Tumen River bordering Russia in the east.

They will travel around 2,600 kilometers by rail, the ROK Transport Ministry said.

Before the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1948, there were two railway lines linking the northern and southern parts of the peninsula - one in the west and the other in the east.

As a gesture toward reconciliation, Seoul and Pyongyang reconnected the western line in 2007, and limited numbers of freight trains transported materials and goods to and from the Kaesong industrial zone in the DPRK for around a year.

But the line was later taken out of service due to heightened tension between the neighbors.

Xinhua and AFP contributed to this story.