North Korea will jointly build a hi-tech industrial park in its border city of Kaesong with a consortium of foreign firms from Singapore and other nations, according to the communist country's official media.

The firms include Jurong Consultants and OKP Holdings of Singapore, P and T Architects and Engineers of Hong Kong and other "well-known" companies in East Asia and the Middle East, according to a brief dispatch released Thursday by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"The consortium agreed with the DPRK's related organs on collaboration in building the Kaesong Hi-Tech Industrial Park and Highway Toll Road from Capital Airport to Pyongyang City," the KCNA said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

"The projects will soon begin," it added, giving no further details.

In May, North Korea introduced a law that calls for building special economic zones, including a hi-tech industrial park, across the country. Under that law, the special zones would give preferential treatment to foreign businesses.

The two Koreas recently resumed operations at a joint industrial park in Kaesong, just north of the inter-Korean border, after the communist country withdrew all its 53,000 workers from the zone in April in protest of American-involved military drills in the South and new U.N. sanctions against its regime.

"Considering Kaesong's geographical location, it appears that North Korea is trying to attract South Korea's advanced technology with the expectation that inter-Korean ties will improve in the long term," said Lim Eul-chul, a research professor at Kyungnam University in Changwon, about 400 kilometers south of Seoul.

Others, however, suggested that the new project could reflect the North's lack of interest in expanding the existing industrial complex in Kaesong.

The complex, a key outcome of the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000, combines South Korean capital and technology with cheap North Korean labor to produce clothes, utensils, watches and other labor-intensive goods.

The project serves as a key source of cash for the impoverished country. (Yonhap News)