hankyoreh

Gyeonggi Vice Governor for Peace Lee Jae-gang at his temporary office on Nov. 23. (Park Kyung-man)

For 16 days, Gyeonggi Vice Governor for Peace Lee Jae-gang has been reporting to work at a temporary office on Windy Hill in Paju’s Imjingak tourism zone while calling for a declaration between the South and North Korean leaders to resume operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

Lee originally planned to set up an office at Dora Observatory, which looks out over the complex. But after the UN Command (UNC) — which has jurisdiction over the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) — rejected that plan, Lee set up his temporary office at Imjingak on Nov. 10. He has also been holding one-person demonstrations to denounce the UNC for an hour each day at 11 am in front of the Unification Bridge nearby.

Speaking to the Hankyoreh on the afternoon of Nov. 23 at his office in a Mongolian-style tent on a hill next to the Imjingak DMZ Eco Tourism Support Center, Lee said, “The first thing that the South and North Korean leaders need to do for the sake of peace on the Korean Peninsula is to declare a resumption of operations at the Kaesong Complex.”

“[After that] South and North need to work together on ideas for moving beyond sanctions and eliciting international cooperation,” he urged.

Responding to comments from some quarters that Seoul has wasted an opportunity for inter-Korean cooperation toward peace slip since the inter-Korean summits of 2018, Lee noted, “Minister of Unification Lee In-young talked about how we now need to create ‘inter-Korean time’ instead of ‘North Korea-US time.’ As that suggests, now is a golden time where the South and North Korean leaders need to meet and put their heads together to open up a path toward improving inter-Korean relations through their own autonomous efforts.”

Commenting on why Gyeonggi Province has called for a resumption of Kaesong Industrial Complex operations, Lee said, “With four years and 10 months having passed since the complex was shut down, the suffering of tenant companies can no longer go ignored.”

“Over 40 of the 120 or so businesses at the time were based in Gyeonggi Province, which makes Gyeonggi the local government hit hardest by the Kaesong complex shutdown,” he explained.

Lee also said that Gyeonggi Province’s region near the border with North Korea means that “our residents’ daily lives and safety are threatened each time inter-Korean relations suffer setbacks.”

“As the vice governor in charge of Gyeonggi’s peace policy, I felt that it would be a dereliction of my duty to the province’s residences for me to simply do nothing for fear that [the tent office] might come across as a ‘show,’” he explained.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex was a testing ground for inter-Korean economics, with cumulative production totaling around 3.8 trillion won (US$3.2 billion) between its 2004 launch and its 2016 shutdown. It was also seen as a setting for “small-scale reunification” to happen on a daily basis as 55,000 South and North Korean employees worked alongside each other.

Explaining his reason for carrying out one-person demonstrations as a currently serving vice governor, Lee said, “I wasn’t planning to demonstrate at first, and my demonstrations aren’t directed at any specific institution or country.”

“The fact that citizens of the Republic of Korea need the UNC’s approval to access Republic of Korea territory is an example of unfairness, and my actions are intended to encourage a popular will toward overcoming that unfairness,” he added.

Asserting that it is the “role of the Gyeonggi vice governor for peace to serve as a pump primer when inter-Korean relations have soured,” Lee pledged to “continue working as vice governor for peace from Imjingak and Dora Observatory until the day we see a declaration resuming operations at the Kaesong Complex.”

By Park Kyung-man, North Gyeonggi correspondent

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