For the first time in fifty-seven years, South Korea is supplying electricity to North Korea.

The state-run Korea Electric Power Corporation began providing power Wednesday to the Gaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea. The complex is being built near the border between the two Koreas as a joint project between Seoul and Pyongyang.

KEPCO began generating fifteen-thousand kilowatts of electricity via an electrotyping method to the pilot complex Wednesday afternoon. The power will help boost production for fifteen South Korean companies currently operating there.

By 2007, output will be increased to one hundred-thousand kilowatts via transmission towers for use by some three hundred companies expected to operate in Gaesong.

This is the first time electricity has been provided across the shared Korean border since Pyongyang unilaterally suspended electricity supply to the South in 1948.