Koreas hold ceremony for railway project

SEOUL, South Korea

South Korean officials have traveled to North Korea by train to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for an aspirational project to modernize North Korean railways and roads and connect them with the South.

Today’s ceremony at the North Korean border town of Kaesong comes weeks after the Koreas conducted a joint survey on the northern railway sections they hope to someday link with the South.

The ambitious project is among a variety of peace gestures agreed between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in as they push ahead with engagement amid a stalemate in larger nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang.

But beyond on-site reviews and ceremonies, the Koreas cannot move the project much further along without the removal of U.S.-led sanctions against the North.

During his three summits with Moon and a meeting with President Donald Trump in June, Kim signed vague statements pledging a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing how and when it would occur. But followup nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled for months over the sequencing of the denuclearization that Washington wants and the removal of international sanctions desired by Pyongyang.