hankyoreh

Vehicles leaving the Kaesong Industrial Complex drive across Unification Bridge in Paju

Following North Korea’s fourth nuclear test, the Park Geun-hye administration has been taking a number of measures against the North that are more likely to increase inter-Korean tensions than to keep the situation under control. The administration seems bent on making a stern response.

When the government announced on the morning of Jan. 7 - the day after the nuclear test - that it would be placing restrictions on the South Korean workers allowed to visit the Kaesong Industrial Complex, it emphasized that this was an “initial response” designed to ensure the safety of citizens. But that same afternoon, the government took a harder line with its decision to resume psychological warfare against North Korea through propaganda broadcasts from loudspeakers stationed at the DMZ.

On Jan. 11, just four days after its initial response, the government took additional measures to limit the number of visitors to Kaesong. Despite the fact that the North Korean military had not made any serious response since the South resumed the loudspeaker broadcasts, the South reduced the number of visitors to Kaesong to the minimum required. This measure, the government predicted, would bring the number of South Korean workers staying at Kaesong from about 900 before the nuclear test to around 650.

Compared to actions the government has taken in the past, the restriction on South Korean workers visiting Kaesong to “the minimum required” is a comparatively strong measure. Such a restriction has taken place several times in the past - along with the resumption of loudspeaker broadcasts and an artillery exchange with North Korea following the landmine incident in the DMZ in Aug. 2015, after North Korea’s second nuclear test in 2009, and following North Korea’s bombing of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010.

During the military tensions in Aug. 2015 and the Yeonpyeong bombing in 2010, there had been an actual military clashes; at the time of the second nuclear test in May 2009, North Korea had closed the land route to Kaesong three times in protest of the US-ROK “Key Resolve” joint military exercises before the South Korean government took this measure.

In contrast, after North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006 and its third test in 2013, the South Korean government did not take any such measures. To explain this discrepancy, Seoul emphasized that the measures were “preemptive” in nature.

Though there were no noticeable signs of North Korean military action in response to the resumption of the loudspeaker broadcasts, the government “took measures of this sort with a view toward providing a stronger guarantee of personal safety for South Korean citizens, in a situation where North Korea is expected to take or at least consider such action,” South Korea’s Ministry of Unification spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee said on Jan. 11.

Seoul’s brush with an actual artillery exchange during the military crisis in Aug. 2015 was also a motivation for the measures, sources say.

But the biggest factor of all is the hard line taken by the Blue House. As late as the morning of Jan. 7, the time that the government made its “initial response” to the nuclear test, there were no immediate plans to turn the loudspeakers back on. The decision was made abruptly that afternoon, spearheaded by the Blue House.

While government officials say nothing else has been planned for the Kaesong complex, some officials in the Blue House are reportedly discussing the necessity of taking additional measures related to the complex as part of sanctions against the North.

“Officials seem to intend to use a variety of measures related to Kaesong as a means of imposing sanctions on North Korea,” a senior government source said.

But most experts think Kaesong must not become a means of putting sanctions on North Korea, not only because the complex is the apex of inter-Korean economic cooperation, but also because suspending activity at the complex or shutting it down for good would hurt South Korean companies even more than it would hurt North Korea.

This is why Kaesong was exempted from the so-called May 24 measures (sanctions against North Korea imposed by the administration of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak after the sinking of the Cheonan corvette in 2010). This is also why no restrictions were placed on visitors to Kaesong after North Korea’s third nuclear test on Feb. 12, 2013, immediately before the Park Geun-hye administration was launched.

Then Minister of Unification Ryu Woo-ik stated that the government had no plan to use the Kaesong complex to impose sanctions.

North Korea could allege that the South’s restriction on visitors to Kaesong violates the agreement that the two sides reached to normalize operations at Kaesong on Aug. 14, 2013, early in the administration of President Park Geun-hye. That agreement ended a shutdown at the complex - arbitrarily initiated by North Korea - with the North accepting Seoul’s request for normalization.

After the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on North Korea after the third nuclear test in Feb. 2013, [the late] Kim Yang-gon - then director of the North’s Worker’s Party of Korea United Front Department - issued a statement in which Pyongyang demanded that South Korea remove all of its workers from the Kaesong complex, declared a temporary shutdown of operations at the complex, and announced a review of its continuing existence.

After then South Korean Minister of Unification Ryoo Kihl-jae proposed talks to normalize the complex, the two sides at last managed to reach an agreement on the issue that August.

The first clause of the Aug. 14 agreement states that “North and South Korea will ensure that there is no reoccurrence of a shutdown at the Kaesong complex (such as restricting passage or withdrawing workers), and they will also guarantee the ordinary operation of the complex (including stable passage for South Korean staff, regular work hours for North Korean workers, and the protection of company assets) in all cases and regardless of the circumstances.”

“We can’t rule out the possibility that North Korea could claim that these measures violate the agreement,” a government source acknowledged.

By Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporter

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