hankyoreh

North Korea and South Korea.

By Son Won-je, Staff Writer　

It emerged on Tuesday that Russia has suggested a route for the gas pipeline that will connect it to South Korea via North Korea. The proposal would have a pipeline run through North Korea’s Gyeongseong and Wonsan, then on to South Korea’s Goseong, Incheon and Pyeongtaek.

Delivering a paper at the 43rd seminar of a forum on North Korean economics on Tuesday morning at the Lotte Hotel in Seoul’s Sogong neighborhood, Kwon Won-soon, professor of economics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and an expert on economic cooperation between South Korea and Russia, revealed that Russia’s Gazprom had recently suggested to KOGAS (Korea Gas Corporation) installing the pipeline along North Korea’s east coast railway line. The Gyeongseong-Wonsan-Goseong-Incheon route would pass along three railway sectors in North Korea: the Hambuk Line (Gyeongseong-Wonsan), the Pyeongna Line (Najin-Wonsan) and the Geumgangsan Cheongnyeon Line (Wonsan-Goseong), before continuing to South Korea’s metropolitan region along the Gyeongwon Line (Seoul-Wonsan).

“Building a pipeline along a railway line is the most economic and efficient method,” said Ahn Byeong-min, head of the Center for Northeast Asia and North Korea Transport Studies at the Korea Transport Institute. “It appears that North Korea has also agreed to the pipeline crossing these areas.”

A government official also said, “To my knowledge, Russia has already finished taking satellite photographs of these areas.”

Regarding the route for the pipeline within South Korea, however, Kwon claimed, “A J-shaped route that first went down to Samcheok and then came back up again would be preferable to one that went straight from Goseong to Incheon and Pyeongtaek. This would enable the exporting of gas to Japan, using the gas liquefaction terminal at Samcheok.”

Kwon flatly dismissed the possible theft of gas or blowing up of the pipeline by North Korea that some had mentioned, saying, “North Korea has no gas pipe network, so it would have nowhere to store gas even if it siphoned it off secretly, and blowing up the pipeline would clearly cause a large fire along the entire east coast.”

Kwon estimated the total cost of installing the pipeline to be $2.2 billion, and the annual fee for passing through North Korea to be $118.4 million. He also stated that the cost of sending gas through the pipeline to be no more than one third of the cost of sending liquid natural gas by ship.

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