hankyoreh

On May 28, North Korea released a statement in the name of the spokesperson for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF) indicating that it wanted to hold talks for normalizing operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, but the South Korean government rejected this straight away. We hope that the government will reverse its position and allow the talks to take place.

The reason the government gave for turning down the offer for talks is that Pyongyang is avoiding inter-governmental talks and trying to deal directly with the businesspeople who run companies at Kaesong and the representatives of the Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee (KIDMAC).

On May 29, Ryoo Kihl-jae, Minister of Unification addressed the issue, urging North Korea to abide by international standards. “For the government, the difficulties faced by the companies doing business in Kaesong are not the only consideration affecting our decisions,” Ryoo said.

By adopting this position, the South Korean government is contradicting its repeated demands for the North to allow operations to resume at Kaesong. Furthermore, the agenda for the working-level talks that the South Korean government proposed on May 14 was limited to retrieving the materials and completed products that South Korean companies had left at Kaesong. As Pyongyang has pointed out, if the entire complex returns to normal operations, this topic does not need to be discussed.

Seeing the South Korean government block talks for reopening the complex and focusing only on retrieving the primary and secondary materials and the completed products is enough to make us doubt whether the government even wants Kaesong to be reopened.

To be sure, there are plenty of problems with the North’s behavior. Pyongyang unilaterally shut down operations at Kaesong, citing military and political reasons, and has made no sort of apology. It has also not responded to the South Korean government’s request that measures be taken to ensure this kind of situation does not happen again. If the North is able to arbitrarily manipulate operations at the complex, the stability of operations at the complex is sure to decrease in the future. Nevertheless, it would be possible to discuss these issues after the complex has been reopened.

Pyongyang’s latest proposal indicates that the North wants operations at the complex to be normalized. It also coincides with a number of signals the North has sent recently suggesting it is interested in talks. It is not, as the South Korean government has suggested, an attempt to return to the status quo as if nothing had happened.

Speaking in regard to Pyongyang’s attitude on the Kaesong issue, Ryoo said, “Does North Korea take us [the government] for some kind of fools?” It is dangerous to allow one’s injured pride to create a confrontation like this.

Looking back over the past few months, North Korea was the first to act irrationally, but the South Korean government has also failed to adopt a future-oriented attitude to improving inter-Korean relations.

The attitude that is needed is not trying to fix the North’s bad habits, as the Lee Myung-bak administration tried to do, but rather aiming to create a new, forward-looking framework for inter-Korean relations. Even with the issue of the Kaesong Complex, the government should not be playing tug-of-war over working-level talks but should rather hold a meeting between cabinet-level or other senior officials to discuss how to achieve stable development.

According to the KIDMAC website, the Kaesong Complex is “not only the first industrial complex that North and South Korea have made together but also a successful model for economic cooperation that can lead to a win-win relationship contributing to mutual prosperity.” Normalizing operations at Kaesong must take the priority over the damaged pride of the South Korean government and any other tactical considerations.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]