SEOUL, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- A former U.S. defense secretary Thursday traveled to a North Korean city that hosts an inter-Korean joint industrial park, Seoul officials said.
The one-day visit to the North's border city of Kaesong by William Perry comes amid tensions running across the border following the North's nuclear and missile tests last year.
During a visit, Perry hailed inter-Korean efforts for economic cooperation as a move to ease military tensions on the peninsula, according to the South Korea's Unification Ministry.
"Perry said he was greatly impressed and surprised by the progress of the inter-Korean project," a ministry official said. "He described the project as the future of the Korean peninsula," he said.
The Kaesong industrial park is a testing ground for mixing South Korean capitalism and technology with the communist North's cheap labor.
