hankyoreh

“You do hear people in South Korea talking about a railway connecting with continental Asia through North Korea, but North Korea is obviously going to see that as a very South Korea-centered plan.”

Mitsuhiro Mimura, a researcher at Japan’s Economic Research Institute for Northeast Asia (ERINA), argued on Nov. 20 that North Korea no longer views the South as a partner in economic cooperation.

Mimura, who has visited North Korea and interacted with academics there nearly 30 times over the past two decades, was in Busan this week to participate in the Hankyoreh-Busan International Symposium.

“If you look at things from North Korea’s perspective, any kind of long-term economic cooperation program is basically impossible because the South’s North Korea policies change every five years [with the change of governments in South Korea],” he said.

“Things like support have been left out of the basic components in South Korea’s economic development plans,” Mimura added. “People basically see it as something they can get if South Korea decides to do it.”

The situation with Seoul stands in stark contrast to Pyongyang’s relationship with Tokyo, Mimura added.

“Leaving aside the matter of South Korea being part of a ‘regime competition,’ North Korea sees Japan as the only capitalist power in Asia that it can depend on for technology and capital,” he explained.

But Mimura also predicted it would take time for North Korea to open its economy to the outside.

“North Korea is at the point now where it’s concerned mainly with addressing survival issues and supplying enough daily essentials,” he said. “For the next three years, we can expect its policies to be focused on things like encouraging domestic agricultural production and trade with China.”

“If it’s successful, then it’s going to need to trade and interact with other countries while it’s trying to figure out which industries to develop,” he added.

“In the long term, it’s going to focus on openness over ten to twenty years.”

Mimura played down the economic repercussions of Tokyo’s intensifying political conflicts with Seoul and Beijing over historical and territorial issues, since Shinzo Abe took office as prime minister.

“Political conflicts aren’t really having a major impact on immediate economic relationships,” he argued

He went on to explain that because all three countries are members of the World Trade Organization, any politically motivated restrictions on imports or exports involving specific countries would lead to legal issues and hurt credibility with the international community.

By Kim Oi-hyun, staff reporter in Busan

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