South Korea's state-owned commodities developer held talks in North Korea last year about a possible North-South project to develop North Korea's rare-earth deposits, an official at the company said Monday.
South Korea
's
state-owned commodities developer held talks in
North
Korea
last year about a possible
North-South project to develop
North
Korea
's rare-earth deposits, an
official at the company said Monday.
The talks took place in November as part of a second round of discussions over
a graphite development project in the North that Korea Resources Corp., or
Kores, invested in about a decade ago. That project has been stalled since
2010.
Jointly developing rare earth mines is a possibility "but the precondition
is always this: an improvement in the North and
South
Korea
relationship," said the
Kores official. For now the potential project is on hold, he said. The official
declined to be named.
During the November visit, Kores received samples of North Korean rare earths. Kores
analyzed the samples, some of which turned out to be "good," the
official said.
North Korea
makes
occasional claims to have large deposits of rare earths, a potential source of
hard currency for the impoverished nation. There are no reliable data on
North
Korea
's rare earth deposits.
China
controls about 95% of the world's rare-earth production. Rare-earth minerals
are used in products ranging from consumer electronics to batteries to defense
systems.
Kores invested 6.25 billion won ($5.5 million) in 2003 to jointly develop a
graphite mine in
North Korea
. The
project has capacity to produce as much as 3,000 tons of graphite annually and
the deal allows Kores to take half of the annual produce for 20 years,
according to the official. So far, Kores has collected 850 tons of graphite.
Economic ties between North and
South
Korea
remain almost completely suspended
following two attacks on
South
Korea
in 2010 by the North that
killed 50 people.
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