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staff photographer)

By Gil Yun-hyung, staff reporter and Seok Jin-hwan, Blue House correspondent

Working-level talks between the governments of North and South Korea for normalizing the Kaesong Industrial Complex are scheduled to take place at Panmunjeom Peace Village on July 6. It has been 25 days since government-level talks between South and North fell through on June 11 because of a dispute over the rank of delegation heads.

After trading proposals and counter-proposals, North and South agreed to hold the working-level talks at the Unification Pavilion, on the North Korean side of Panmunjeom Peace Village. After receiving North Korea’s initial proposal, on July 4 the Ministry of Unification suggested holding the working-level talks at the Unification Pavilion on the North Korean side of Panmunjeom or the House of Peace on the South Korean side.

However, a battle of wills ensued when North Korea suggested instead that the talks be held at the Kaesong Complex. When the South Korean government responded by proposing they take place at Dorasan Inter-Korean Transit Office, it appeared that the talks were in danger of collapsing again. But after some behind-the-scenes haggling, the two sides finally agreed on Panmunjeom.

The ostensible reason that North and South reached an agreement on holding working-level talks is that they can no longer ignore the suffering of the companies operating at Kaesong. Additionally, since the agenda items proposed by the South Korean government were technical items including inspecting the facilities and equipment at the Complex and removing finished products and raw and subsidiary materials, there was little to get in the way of resuming the talks. For this reason, it appears likely that these working-level talks will have more tangible results than the working-level talks held in advance of the canceled inter-Korean minister-level talks in June.

Nevertheless, the actual intentions of Seoul and Pyongyang as they go into the talks are not that simple. It is expected that the North will engage in the talks with South Korea with the hope of making it possible to take part in talks with the US.

On June 16, North Korea’s National Defense Commission made an offer for direct talks with the US, but the US did not agree, insisting that North Korea must take measures to deal with the nuclear issue before any talks can take place. The US also indicated that there must be improvement in inter-Korean relations before it agrees to dialogue with the North.

For these reasons, it is believed that North Korea strongly feels the necessity of resolving the issue of Kaesong, which has become a bellwether for the situation on the Korean Peninsula.

The South Korean government had been regarding President Park Geun-hye’s so-called trust-building process for the Korean peninsula as a success until the first meeting with North Korean officials in June. But after the talks fell through and the controversy over the Northern Limit Line in the West (Yellow) Sea erupted recently, the government lowered its assessment of the policy.

Even as the Blue House asserted on July 4 that it does not have an indiscriminate and unprincipled policy toward North Korea, the related government ministries were reportedly making overtures for talks with the North through indirect means.

When the talks resume and the negotiators began to address the major points, there are several perils awaiting them. “It is our view that the South Korean government cannot simply reopen the Kaesong Complex under the same conditions as existed before operations were suspended on April 3. Instead, they must receive assurances from the North that it will prevent such an issue from occurring again,” said Cho Bong-hyeon, a researcher at the Industrial Bank of Korea’s Economic Research Institute. “As a result, they will have no choice but to ask North Korea to provide a definite answer on this point when the talks resume.”

After resolving working-level issues, including the removal of equipment, it is possible that the South Korean government will make some tough demands about the operation of the complex, the assets of investors, and the safety of individuals there (including a guarantee of their freedom of travel). This is because mistrust of North Korea has deep roots at the Blue House.

In fact, when a senior official at the Blue house met with reporters before the Ministry of Unification made its proposal for government-level talks with North Korea, the official made it clear that the only way they could get any results out of the talks was if the North Korean government came up with some specific measures for preventing such an incident from happening again.

It does not appear that North Korea will take responsibility for the suspension of operations at Kaesong and meekly accept all of those requests. If the working-level talks at Panmunjeom do not go as Pyongyang wishes, it could wreck the entire talks by demanding that the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian military exercises this August be canceled in exchange for normalizing operations at the Kaesong Complex. In fact, this was suggested by the spokesperson of the policy bureau of the North Korean National Defense Commission in May.

In fact, the pretext that North Korea used to suspend operations at the Kaesong Complex was joint US-ROK military drills. Although, with some difficulty, talks between North and South have been agreed upon, there are still many hurdles in the way of operations at Kaesong being normalized.

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