hankyoreh

By Kwon Eun-jung staff reporter in Hunchun, China

“The ground is still frozen here. It doesn’t feel like spring,” said Heo Man-cheol, CEO of the Stena Daea Line, a joint venture by Sweden’s premier shipping firm Stena Group and the South Korean company Daea. He was asked why the 16,000 ton vehicle ferry New Blue Ocean did not see a single vessel from the time it left Sokcho Harbor at 1 pm on May 14 until it arrived at Zarubino in Russia 20 hours later.

Considering the economic clout of the countries on the East Sea - South Korea, China, Russia, and Japan - the main maritime route in Northeast Asia is extremely quiet. The New Blue Ocean began servicing the Sokcho-Zarubino-Hunchun route on Mar. 19, and in its first two months the ships have been at less than 10% capacity. The company has already sunk half of its initial US$5 million of capital into the project.

This is the shortest route connecting the three provinces of Northeast China, the Russian Maritime Province, and South Korea. Yet even so, after the company Dongchun Maritime discontinued its ferry service in Oct. 2010, no other operators stepped in to take over the route for around three years.

The immediate cause for the cancellation was difficulties with Russian customs and the exorbitant cost of the visa: nearly 200,000 won (about US$180). The customs facility and passenger terminal at Zarubino are cramped, meaning the immigration procedures are time-consuming.

On May 15, a Hankyoreh reporter had a chance to discover this firsthand. Three inspections took place inside the Russian bus, and passengers had stand in a long line holding their bags not once but twice as they endured the tedious customs proceedings. It is not even 70km from Zarubino in Russia to Hunchun in China, but it took three hours to get there.

But the more fundamental reason the route was abandoned is the lack of trust among the countries in Northeast Asia.

In 1991, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) made a proposal in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang to develop the area around the Tumen River in order to restore trust between the countries of Northeast Asia, and in 1992, the Tumen River Area Development Project (TRADP) was launched (known today as the Greater Tumen Initiative, or GTI).

Being located at the intersection of North Korea, China, and Russia, the area is not only of strategic importance, but it is also rich in natural resources such as natural gas, coal, and tungsten. Fueled by positive assessments of the economic potential of the region, a boom began. In 2000, the Baekdu Mountain route for airliners was opened to connect the three countries. South Korean companies also increased investment in this area.

But before long China and Russia lost interest in the project, and it was soon forgotten. Under the administration of Lee Myung-bak, South Korea also neglected the project. And when North Korea stepped away from it in 2009 after being slapped with UN sanctions for its nuclear development, the project lost any potential as a way to improve peace in the region.

In an attempt to strengthen economic cooperation between the countries of Northeast Asia, which is still at square one twenty years later, the GTI Secretariat and the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), part of the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, held a seminar on the afternoon of May 15 at the Marco Polo Hotel in Hunchun, China.

“Northeast Asia is the region with the greatest potential for development in the entire world,” said Ju Sen-ping, director of the Northeast Asia Research Institute at Jilin University, during the seminar. “The single greatest key for success is devising a framework for cooperation.”

“The six countries of Northeast Asia [North and South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and Mongolia] accounted for 11.4% of world trade in 1990, which increased to 38.1% in 2012. There were also 120 million tourists to these countries in 2012, up 197.3% from 1995,” pointed out Kim Ji-yeon, a KIEP researcher. “If each of these countries establishes specialized institutions, expands the transportation networks connecting them, and simplifies the entry and exit process, tourism in Northeast Asia will take off. It would become a catalyst for economic development in the region.”

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