Tag: Kaesong Industrial Complex

Good luck trying to get any reimbursement from North Korea with this lawsuit:

South Korea’s unification ministry said Wednesday it lodged a damages suit against North Korea over Pyongyang’s 2020 demolition of an inter-Korean liaison office in the North’s border city of Kaesong.

The government filed the lawsuit with the Seoul Central District Court against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea over 44.7 billion won (US$35 million) in damage incurred on the South’s state properties, according to the ministry.

On June 16, 2020, the North blew up the joint liaison office in Kaesong in anger over Seoul’s failure to stop North Korean defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.

It marked the first time that the South Korean government has sued North Korea.

The legal action came as the statute of limitations for damages to property related to the case is set to expire Friday. Under the civil law, the statute of limitations for the right to claim compensations for damages runs out three years after damage occurs.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Someone must have told KEPCO to keep the lights on, the question is who:

South Korea’s state-run electric company supplied power to Kaesong in North Korea for several months after all South Korean personnel withdrew from an industrial complex in January 2020, according to documents obtained by the JoongAng Ilbo on Monday.  
   
The documents from the Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco), which were given to the newspaper by People Power Party (PPP) lawmaker Yoon Young-seok’s office, show that electricity to the city was not cut off after the withdrawal — raising questions as to whether power was supplied even after North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office last June. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

President Moon must be feeling pretty confident that in the short term the Kaesong Industrial Complex will reopen:

President Moon Jae-in vowed Friday to invite foreign companies to set up affiliates at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC) in North Korea if operations there are resumed.

“If operations at the Gaeseong complex resume, I will try to make it a place that houses multinational companies,” President Moon said at the start of a luncheon with businesspeople at Cheong Wa Dae, according to press pool reports.

The President appeared to be responding to remarks by Kim Ki-mun, head of the Korea Federation of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), calling for the complex to be reopened to help small local businesses. Many of these are in a dire financial straits due to their investment in the complex, and a lack of new growth engines.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but Moon is probably betting that if large multinational companies set up shop in Kaesong that the Kim regime will be less likely to exhort South Korean businesses operating there like they have in the past.

For multinational corporations they will have to make a decision on whether they want their products built by near slave labor or not?

It appears there is momentum moving towards reopening the Kaesong Industrial Park:

Nuclear negotiators of South Korea and the United States are set to discuss the possible reopening of now-shuttered Gaeseong Industrial Complex in North Korea through the upcoming working-level talks on North Korea’s denuclearization, officials at the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), said Sunday.

“South Korea unofficially sent a message about the normalization of the Gaeseong joint border industrial park to North Korea. The North has yet to respond. However, Seoul will be working on how to come to an agreement on conditions, terms and other differentiations with the United States about reopening the complex,” a DPK lawmaker who is involved with the matter said by telephone.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this report comes on the heels of another recent report that the Trump administration is now looking at making a “Small Deal”. It appears the small deal could be reopening Kaesong for little to nothing in return which what has been tried before and failed to lead to any North Korean denuclearization.

If it reopens, the Kim regime will be able to use the estimated $110 million a year from the Kaesong Industrial Complex to help maintain the lifestyle of the regime elite and further develop their nuclear and missile capabilities. In return they may give the Trump administration a “cooling tower moment“. I guess we will see if this is what the Trump administration decides to sign up before.

They have “boosted nuclear talks” in the past for NK, funneling into #DPRK coffers about $100M/year for NK’s WMD dev’t. NK’s 1st nuclear test was on Oct 9, 2006, during the Roh Moo Hyun admin, when Moon Jae-In was Roh’s right hand man in the Blue House. https://t.co/Lid0khrjlW

— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) June 27, 2019

The so called experts are again weighing in and recommending that President Trump reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex to create “momentum” in the denuclearization talks whatever that means:

North Korea raked in more than $120 million a year from a symbolic cross-border industrial zone that Pyongyang and Seoul are pushing to re-open as part of nuclear negotiations, a report said Monday.

The Kaesong Industrial Complex — where around 55,000 North Korean workers churned out products ranging from watches to clothes for some 125 South Korean companies — was one of the most visible signs of reconciliation that followed the first inter-Korean summit in 2000.

But it was shuttered by the South’s then-conservative government in 2016 in response to a nuclear test and missile launches by the North, saying profits from Kaesong were funding Pyongyang’s provocations.

The South’s current President Moon Jae-in has dangled re-opening the complex as an incentive for Pyongyang to engage in denuclearisation talks, but doing so is complicated by the web of international sanctions imposed on the North over its weapons programmes.

At their Pyongyang summit in September, Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to “normalise” operations at Kaesong when conditions were “ripe”, but negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington are now deadlocked and Northern media have pressed the South to implement joint economic projects.

The International Crisis Group called on Monday for the complex to be reopened with “a modest deal involving sanctions relief”.

Doing so would create “much needed momentum for stalled peace talks and serve as a reminder to both North and South Korea of the benefits of building a sustainable peace on the peninsula”, it added in a statement.

AFP

You can read more at the link, but this is just more “pretend denuclearization” and something that the expert class has been calling for now for decades. These concessions to the Kim regime never work and I believe it actually makes it harder to reach a denuclearization deal because they use the funding to further their weapons programs.

It looks like President Trump’s decision to not implement new sanctions on North Korea has caused them to respond by sending back some of the Joint Liaison Office workers:

South Korea expressed hope that planned inter-Korean projects will proceed smoothly after some North Korean officials at the inter-Korean liaison office in the North’s Gaeseong went back to work Monday.

A meeting between the representatives of the liaison office from the two Koreas was held and the office will operate normally, according to the unification ministry.

North Korean officials were quoted by the ministry as saying they came to work “as usual.”

On March 22, North Korea withdrew its staff from the inter-Korean liaison office saying the measure reflected “instructions from a superior authority,” without giving further details.

While the North Korean side has yet to explain the withdrawal and partial return of officials at the liaison office, Seoul remained hopeful about keeping the momentum for talks. 

“We still have to watch the situation as the North’s officials have yet make a full return, but it could be that the North felt pressure after breaking the momentum of talks with the South,” said Oh Gyeong-seob, a researcher at the Sejong Institute.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Predictably the North Koreans have stormed out of the joint liaison office at Kaesong:

North Korean officials withdrew from the inter-Korean liaison office in the border city of Gaeseong on Friday. 

Seoul’s Unification Ministry said that North Korean officials held a meeting with their South Korean counterparts in the morning to announce the decision. 

The North Koreans are said to have cited what they called an order from the upper levels of leadership. 

The 15 or so North Korean officials left with only their documents, while leaving behind equipment, noting they didn’t care whether South Korea continues to maintain its office and that they would be in contact with the South to resolve working-level matters. 

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link, but remember that this is the liaison office that the ROK government spent $8.5 million to renovate.

South Korea's new nominee to replace Cho Myoung-gyun as unification minister, Kim Yeon-chul, wrote this for @nknewsorg back in 2017: "Why reopening the Kaesong Industrial Complex won’t violate sanctions" 👇https://t.co/EfaU5bnbUO

— Oliver Hotham (@OliverHotham) March 8, 2019