Two South Korean companies with factories in the suspended Kaesong industrial zone received insurance money that will transfer the ownership of company assets there to the government, a state-run lender said Thursday.

Among 109 companies which applied for inter-Korean economic cooperation insurance, two companies received a total of 5.5 billion won ($4.9 million) in insurance money, the state-run Export-Import Bank of Korea said in a statement.

The Unification Ministry said on Wednesday that Seoul will make insurance payment worth 280.9 billion won to 109 Kaesong companies applying for the inter-Korean cooperation insurance, noting that company rights to invested capital will be transferred to the government if they receive the insurance money.

South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreed to the seventh round of working-level talks next Wednesday at the joint industrial park in the DPRK's border town of Kaesong.

Since June, the two Koreas had held six rounds of fruitless talks on reopening the complex amid differences over conditions for the normalization.

The DPRK said on the previous day that Pyongyang and Seoul should work together to prevent a recurrence of the factory park's stoppage, boosting outlooks for the upcoming talks as the recurrence prevention was called for by South Korea as a precondition for reopening the industrial zone.

The Kaesong industrial complex, where 123 South Korean companies run factories, has been suspended for four months since early April when the DPRK withdrew 53,000 of its workers from the factory park in protest against the joint military drill between Seoul and Washington.

The inter-Korean industrial park, launched in late 2004, was jointly managed by the DPRK and South Korea. It was seen as a symbol of economic cooperation between the two sides.