The minimum wage for North Korean workers at the South-run industrial complex park in the communist nation rose 5 percent over the past year, the same annual rate of increase since 2007, Seoul’s unification ministry said Monday.

The joint industrial park in the border city of Kaesong opened in 2004 as a symbol of cross-border reconciliation and has been in operation without any major interruptions despite high cross-border tensions between the two Koreas.

The factory park’s management officials from the two sides last week agreed to increase the minimum monthly wage for North Korean workers to $67.005, said the ministry in charge of inter-Korean affairs.

The latest increase, which follows a five percent wage hike set at $63.814 last August, is effective for another year from Aug. 1, the ministry said.

Under the park’s labor regulations agreed in 2004, the monthly wage of the North Korean workers there is allowed to be raised by up to five percent from the previous year.

The complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong was born out of the inter-Korean reconciliation that had boomed following the first-ever summit of the two Koreas in 2000. The complex was designed to combine cheap North Korean labor, and South Korean capital and technology.

As of May, 51,452 North Koreans work at about 123 small labor-intensive South Korean plants there, according to the ministry. (Yonhap News)