South Korea opened a foreign investment center at its major joint venture with North Korea on Friday, stepping up efforts to globalize the facilities just north of the heavily fortified inter-Korean border.

It is designed to provide potential foreign investors with administrative support and other services, the unification ministry said. Officials fluent in English and Chinese are working there.

"The center will provide one-stop service to foreign companies hoping to do business in the Kaesong Industrial Complex," ministry spokesman Lim Byeong-cheol told reporters.

Reopening the joint complex in September last year after a near five-month hiatus, South and North Korea agreed to make concerted efforts to attract foreign investment to the zone.

But related consultations are moving slowly as the North is reluctant to facilitate internet service in the area, a major concern for foreign firms.

The Kaesong complex is a fruit of inter-Korean reconciliation in the early 2000s. It is intended to combine the North's cheap labor and the South's capital and technology.

More than 120 South Korean companies, mostly small and medium enterprises, employee around 50,000 North Korean workers. (Yonhap)