North Korea has offered a series of proposals and guarantees to break deadlocked talks with South Korea on reopening a joint industrial zone shut down in April.
As well as allowing South Korean companies full access to the Kaesong complex, the North said on Wednesday it would guarantee the future attendance of its workers and the safety of all South Koreans working there.
South Korea agreed on Wednesday to hold a new round of talks with the North Koreans.
"We accept the North's proposal for a meeting on August 14," said Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk, who described the North's latest offer as "forward-looking".
Pyongyang had barred access to Kaesong in early April as military tensions on the Korean peninsula soared, and shortly afterwards withdrew its entire 53,000-strong workforce.
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Crucially, Wednesday's statement by the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea (CPRK) also proposed that both North and South prevent any future closure of Kaesong by ensuring that its operations are never again "affected by any situation in any case".
Calling it "this bold and magnanimous stand", the committee said the North would agree to a seventh round of working-level talks on Kaesong's future on August 14.
The statement, carried on the North's official Korean Central News Agency, was the North's first response to South Korea's request, made on July 28, for a "final" set of talks.
It came just hours after Seoul announced it would begin paying out $US250 million ($A279.47 million) in compensation to the South Korean companies forced to abandon their factories in Kaesong.
The announcement was widely seen as presaging a decision permanently to shut down all operations at the complex, which lies 10 kilometres across the border in North Korea.
The two Koreas have already held six fruitless rounds of talks aimed at agreeing a framework for the resumption of operations at Kaesong.
The main sticking point has been the South's insistence that the North provide a binding guarantee against any unilateral closure in the future.
The business association representing owners of the 123 South Korean companies in Kaesong said it "actively welcomed" the North's latest offer.
