by Hyunsu Yim
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea’s foreign economic relations minister met with the governor of Russia’s Primorye region to discuss strengthening regional economic cooperation, the North’s KCNA news agency reported on Wednesday.
Discussions between Yun Jong Ho and Oleg Kojemiako focused on “increasing economic cooperation”, KCNA reported.
The North Korean agency also reported that working groups representing the two countries had signed an agreement, without providing details about it or the meeting between Yun Jong Ho and Oleg Kojemiako.
The meeting comes as South Korean intelligence said Tuesday it had observed signs that North Korea was preparing to deploy workers to Russia, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
Any country employing paid North Korean workers would be violating U.N. Security Council sanctions aimed at curbing Pyongyang’s banned weapons programs, on the grounds that the revenue can be used to finance those projects.
Oleg Kojemiako told Russian news agency TASS in November that his region, located in Russia’s Far East, was ready to consider the possibility of allowing North Korean farmers to settle on some of its lands. agricultural.
(Reporting by Hyunsu Yim in Seoul and by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; French version Camille Raynaud)
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