South Korea launched regular ferry service with China today for the first time since the Korean peninsula was divided in 1945. A 4,300-ton ferryboat carrying 130 people left the western port city of Inchon for Weihai on China's Shandong peninsula, the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported. The boat will leave Inchon twice a week, Yonhap said. It will fly a Panamanian flag because the two countries have no diplomatic relations. South Korea has strengthened economic and non-political ties with China, a close ally of Communist North Korea. In recent months it has also increased ties with the Soviet Union and most of the formerly Communist nations in Eastern Europe. China intervened on North Korea's side in the 1950-53 war between the Koreas. The two Koreas have never signed a peace treaty, and hundreds of thousands of troops guard their borders.
