South Korean officials have arrived in North Korea's Rajin Port to test run a cross-border coal shipping project.
 
The Ministry of Unification said Monday that 13 officials from a South Korean consortium participating in the Rajin-Khasan logistics partnership project and the unification ministry arrived in Rajin by train across the North Korea-Russia border earlier in the day. 
 
The officials will stay at Rajin Port until Friday to oversee the process of loading 40-thousand tons of Siberian coal onto a ship at the North Korean port. Barring unusual weather, the ship will leave Rajin on Friday and arrive in the South's Pohang Port at about 10 p.m. on Saturday.
 
The test run will review whether the project can run stably and has commercial viability.
 
The consortium consists of steelmaker POSCO, the Korea Railroad Corporation and Hyundai Merchant Marine. POSCO currently imports two million tons of Russian coal a year by ship through the Russian port of Vladivostok. The steelmaker is considering increasing the imports of Russian coal if the sea route through Rajin turns out to be more cost-effective.