hankyoreh

center

The clouds of war are gathering in inter-Korean relations as the Lee Myung-bak administration has reportedly planned to effectively announce Thursday that the sinking of the Cheonan was caused by a North Korean torpedo attack. Clashing in words and deeds, North Korean and South Korean authorities are being rapidly drawn into a hair-trigger crisis situation. While North Korea is still only at the level of making warnings and threats to South Korea in words, South Korea has already effectively stepped into action.

The South Korean government has taken the countermeasure of having all South Korean personnel staying in North Korea withdraw with the exception of those in the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Mt. Kumgang tourism zone. An excavation team of 11 South Koreans returned home Tuesday after working with North Korea on an excavation study at Manwoldae, a Goryeo Royal Palace site in Kaesong. They were initially scheduled to carry on the study through June 10.

“The government ordered us to withdraw by today, citing the recent deterioration of inter-Korean relations,” said an official with the excavation team.

Workers collecting sand from the East and West Seas off North Korea also returned home between Friday and Sunday. Forty-six people on seven collection vessels had been working in Haeju on the West Sea, while another eighteen people on two vessels had been working in Kosong on the East Sea.

A Unification Ministry official hinted at an effective “withdrawal order,” saying that the administration has pleaded with South Korean workers staying in North Korea to attend to their physical safety. As of Tuesday, there were a total of 892 South Korean workers staying in North Korea, including 877 at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, 14 at the Mt. Kumsang tourism zone, and one Pyeonghwa Motors administrator in Pyongyang.

The Unification Ministry had delivered recommendations to refrain from goods deliveries, visits to North Korea and new investment on May 11 and 12 to hundreds of companies commissioned to do processing and trade for North Korea. Since then, there have been no deliveries from the companies in question. The ministry also sent notification on May 14 to ten government offices and ministries, including the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, indicating that they should suspend any budgeted North Korea projects.

The reaction from North Korea has been vehement.

“South Choson’s puppet conservative thugs are making a strained link between the sinking of the puppet army’s warship and us and are driving the political situation to the utmost extreme of confrontation,” said North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly Standing Committee Vice Chairman Yang Hyong-sop on Monday. “We will not simply stand by and watch.”

“The South bears full responsibility for the catastrophic aftereffects that will be summoned by a resumption of psychological warfare against the North,” said a North Korean delegation leader for the inter-Korean general-level military talks on Sunday in a message to South Korea. “As warned, we will take real measures over and above the level of limiting and blocking the land passage of Southern workers at North-South administration zones in the East and West Sea regions.”

This was a warning of a counter response in connection with a plan under examination by South Korean military authorities to resume propaganda broadcasts to North Korea, and the distribution of flyers to North Korea by certain private groups. In essence, the Kaesong Industrial Complex is now a target.

Voices of concern about this sharp confrontation between North Korea and South Korea are also keen within the government.

“It is impossible to attempt to gauge where this will end,” said one government official.

“Since everything is taking place in a top-down manner, the scope of action for the working-level offices is narrow,” said another government official.

This seems to indicate that the recent hardline measures against North Korea are being directed by the Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House).

Experts have continued to call for a rational response.

“The administration’s recent measures are an ideologically driven act of self-destruction that tears down infrastructure in inter-Korean relations that was established with great difficulty over two decades following the July 7 Declaration by the Roh Tae-woo administration in 1988,” said Inje University Professor Kim Yeon-chul.

“For the sake of peace, a balance must be found between solid security on one side and interchange and cooperation on the other,” said University of North Korean Studies Professor Yang Mu-jin. “Even if the Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry are calling for pressure on North Korea, the Unification Ministry is the last bulwark for inter-Korean relations, and it must not sever the thread of interchange and cooperation.”

“If private interchange and cooperation and the Kaesong Industrial Complex are halted, after serving as a safety valve for inter-Korean relations even amid the deteriorating relations between authorities since the Lee Myung-bak administration took office, catastrophe becomes inevitable,” said an expert at one institute who request anonymity. “I am fearful of what historical disaster will be brought about by the ignorance and incompetence of conservative groups that find their identity in North Korea-bashing at a time when a carefully crafted North Korea strategy is urgently needed.”

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