The two Koreas have agreed to begin telephone service between the South and the Gaesong industrial park in the North on May 31.

KT Corporation said Thursday the fixed-line phone charges have been set at 40 cents or 400 won per minute.

Telephones in the industrial park will have nine-digit telephone numbers beginning with the signal code 001-8585.

The two sides signed a preliminary agreement to open inter-Korean telephone service for the industrial partk in December last year.

A KT official said in a press briefing that the launching of the telephone service has historic importance because cross-border fixed-line phone service will be installed for the first since the Korean division of the peninsula some sixty years ago.

According to KT documents, telephone lines were severed in 1945 after troops of the former Soviet Union were stationed in what later became North Korea.