This week, S. Korea to announce its own sanctions of North Korea

Posted on : 2016-03-07 16:50 KST Modified on : 2016-03-07 16:50 KST
New sanctions and stepped-up enforcement could be the end of Rajin-Hasan project with Russia
North Korean Rajin port
North Korean Rajin port

Early this week, the South Korean government is reportedly going to announce further sanctions of its own against North Korea. One result of the new sanctions is expected to be the wholesale suspension of the Rajin-Hasan Project, a trilateral logistics project involving South Korea, North Korea and Russia.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Unification and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries are involved in these independent sanctions,” a South Korean government official said on Mar. 6. “It was decided that they would be announced by the Office for Government Policy Coordination, under the Prime Minister’s Office, at the beginning of this week.”

In addition to more strictly enforcing the existing May 24 Measures and toughening them by controlling the flow of material into North Korea, Seoul is expected to add maritime sanctions that would ban ships from other countries that have called at North Korean ports from entering South Korean ports.

These maritime sanctions in particular could spell the end of the Rajin-Hasan project. Since this logistics project involves transporting Russian bituminous coal by rail to the North Korean port of Rajin and then by ship to the South Korean ports of Pohang or Busan, it would be affected by a ban on ships from other countries that have called at North Korean ports. Furthermore, the project has been considered an exception to the May 24 Measures, but it would come under the ax if those measures were more strictly enforced.

The problem is that this project has moved ahead with the approval of the leaders of Russia and South Korea.

President Park Geun-hye and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to go forward with the project during a summit in Seoul in 2013. Immediately after that, South Korean companies POSCO, Korail and Hyundai Merchant Marine signed a memorandum of understanding to participate in the project. As of the end of last year, test shipments had taken place on three occasions.

The three South Korean firms joined the project - which was unlikely to be profitable - with assistance from the government’s inter-Korean cooperation fund. Around the end of last year and the beginning of this one, the South Korean government had basically decided to draw money from the fund, reports said.

Scrapping a project that had been pursued with the agreement of the leaders of Russia and South Korea is likely to cause considerable harm to their bilateral relations. For the government to announce the cancelation of the program just three months after Park and Putin met in Paris in early Dec. 2015 and reconfirmed that the project was moving ahead would be tantamount to breaking that agreement.

In addition, while the UN Security Council was adopting a recent sanctions resolution against North Korea, the Russian government officially confirmed on a number of occasions that the Rajin-Hasan project would not conflict with those sanctions.

Most significantly, Russia has long devoted attention to this project as part of its policy for East Asia, not only for economic but also for strategic reasons.

For this reason, if Seoul decides to ditch the project, there is expected to be considerable pushback from Russia.

“Dropping the project will inflict a major blow on Russia’s East Asia policy. The backlash from Russia will be considerable,” said Je Seong-hun, a professor of Russian language at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

“Russia is in a position to cause trouble for South Korea, but the South Korean government doesn’t seem to be paying enough attention. Dissatisfaction will increase with Seoul’s pro-US foreign policy,” said Park Jong-su, director of the Global Economics and Peace Institute

By Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporter

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