Pyongyang ready to discuss transit of Russian gas to South Korea - Lavrov

MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. North Korea is ready to consider projects to use its territory as a transit route for Russian gas and electricity deliveries to South Korea, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday. “There is a whole range of very promising projects, including the project which is already being implemented to create an intermodal rail terminal at the North Korean port of Rajin, renovated with the help of [Russian railway monopoly] RZD,” Lavrov said after talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s special envoy, a high-ranking member of the ruling Workers' Party, Choe Ryong Hae. Speaking about joint plans to develop economic cooperation, the Russian foreign minister said Rajin, hub of North Korea's Rason Special Economic Zone, was already being used to export Russian coal to South Korea with assistance of South Korean experts, Russia and North Korea. “Following these pilot coal supplies, we hope to begin actual work to link the Trans-Korean and Trans-Siberian railways,” Lavrov said. “This is a very important infrastructure project that goes far beyond bilateral and trilateral relations.” “If it proves successful, our North Korea partners confirmed their readiness to consider in practical terms also other trilateral projects, including the project to deliver Russian gas to South Korea via North Korea and a similar route for electricity,” he added. Running from the Russian eastern border town of Khasan to North Korea’s rebuilt port of Rajin, a 54-kilometer (34-mile) railway link is part of a project that would reunite the railway systems of the two Koreas and tie them to the Trans-Siberian Railway. Read more