Russia’s further participation in Khasan-Rajin project with DPRK to be justified is foreign investors join it - Russian upper house speaker

MOSCOW, June 23. /TASS/. Russia’s further participation in the Khasan-Rajin railway project to link Russia’s Khasan station and North Korea’s port of Rajin will be expedient only in case of active involvement of South Korean and other foreign investors, speaker of the Federation Council, or upper house of the Russian parliament, Valentina Matviyenko said on Tuesday at a meeting with Chairman of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly (parliament) Choe THae-bok. The Russian speaker stressed that Russia attached priority significance to the implementation of three-party projects involving South Korea. "We believe that joint work in a three-party format can not only yield economic gains to the parties but may promote normalization of the situation in the Korean Peninsula and help build up trust between the two Koreas and thus reduce investment risks for our companies," she said. "The Khasan-Rajin is the most advanced project," Matviyenko said. "You are sure to know that. But Russia’s further participation in this costly project will be justified only on condition of active participation of both South Korean and other foreign investors. I mean there are some problems there that require our joint efforts." At the same time, she said that "progress in the implementation of this railway project would create conditions for other three-party undertakings." The Khasan-Rajin project of a railway line linking the Russian station of Khasan and North Korea’s port of Rajin was implemented in 2008-2014 by a Russian-North Korea joint venture, where the Russian Railways Co., or RZD, held a 70 percent stake. The aggregate investment in the project reached 10.6 billion roubles (194.74 million U.S. dollars). A terminal in the port of Rajin was opened in July 2014. The Khasan-Rajin railway section and terminal capacity is five million tonnes of cargoes a year. Read more