hankyoreh

By Kim Jong-cheol, political correspondent

North Korea notified the Ministry of Unification on Oct. 26 that it would accept the tentative schedule and delegation for the visit by members of National Assembly‘s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee to the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which is scheduled for Oct. 30.

However, North Korea indicated that it would not permit lawmaker Cho Myung-chul to cross the border. Pyongyang’s decision means that Cho, a North Korean defector and Saenuri Party (NFP) lawmaker, will be unable to visit the Kaesong complex.

“By choosing not to allow me to visit the Kaesong Complex, North Korea has shown that it has not changed, and that it has no intention of changing,” Cho said in an Oct. 27 press release.

“This is an opportunity to draw attention to the flaws in Pyongyang‘s management of the complex, which is not designed to better the lives of the North Korean people, but rather to keep an unjust regime in power. I will keep working to resolve these problems.”

“If North Korea truly intended to demonstrate to those at home and abroad that it is committed to refraining from errors such as shutting down the complex, it would have shown the international community that it has changed and that it is capable of communication by granting me permission to visit the North.”

“If Pyongyang had done so, it would have reaped 100 times the propaganda effect both domestically and internationally that it hoped to achieve through holding an investment briefing for overseas corporations,” Cho said in the press release.

Cho defected to South Korea in 1994. He had been teaching in the economics department at his alma mater of Kim Il Sung University.

After coming to South Korea, Cho served as the director of the Center for International Development at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy and as the head of the Institute for Unification Education at the Ministry of Unification.

Cho joined the National Assembly as a proportional representative after the 2012 general election.

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