North Korea gains frozen funds

25 Jun, 2007 01:23 / Updated 17 years ago

A major step towards North Korea ceasing its nuclear activities has been achieved, with Russia transfering money to Pyongyang, which had previously been frozen in a Macau bank.

Russian bank “Dal'KomBank” successfully transferred the North Korean funds to the North Korean Bank of Foreign Commerce. The money transfer was the principle condition set by the North Koreans before it would consider shutting down it's nuclear programme. Now that the transfer has been completed it is hoped that Pyongyang will honour the next step in the process of halting nuclear activities. To that end, United Nations inspectors are on their way to North Korea to negotiate how the shutdown of North Korea's key nuclear reactor will be verified.