On July 11, 2008 Pak Wang-Ja, a 53 yr-old wife/mom/tourist from SK, while out on a walk, was shot in the back & killed by NK guards at Mt. Geumgang resort in #NorthKorea, funded by SK's Hyundai, allegedly for having walked into a no-entry zone. NK never apologized. #Engagement
— Sung-Yoon Lee (@SungYoonLee1) July 10, 2019
Alternative headline: 6150 South Korean citizens want to give their money to an enemy regime that enslaves millions of their fellow kinsmen because they want to take selfies at a mountain. https://t.co/dBk6hsUvmg
— John Lee (The Korean Foreigner) (@koreanforeigner) June 14, 2019
The responses on these surveys are dependent on what the question is. What do people think the response would have been if they respondents were asked if South Korea should restart the Kaesong Industrial Park and Gumgang Mountain tours if the money is used by North Korea to develop their nuclear and missile programs?:
More than 60 percent of South Koreans are supportive of the resumption of two suspended cross-border projects, saying they could contribute to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, a survey of a presidential consultative body showed Tuesday.
Yonhap
According to the survey conducted by the National Unification Advisory Council on 1,000 adults, 62.4 percent said that restarting an industrial park in the North’s border town of Kaesong and a tour program to Mount Kumgang on the North’s east coast will help achieve denuclearization and boost the local economy.
South Korea closed the Kaesong park in 2016 in retaliation for the North’s nuclear and missile provocations. The tour program to Mount Kumgang was halted in 2008, when a South Korean tourist was killed by a North Korean soldier.
Seoul is seeking to resume the two symbolic projects on the belief that more cross-border exchanges could create a peace mood and help move the stalled denuclearization talks forward following last month’s summit breakdown between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Their resumption, however, requires sanctions relief on North Korea and Washington has balked at it, worrying that the global sanctions regime could be undermined at a time when the denuclearization process remains stalemated.
The survey showed 54 percent supported easing sanctions in association with progress in nuclear talks, with 41.6 percent saying that sanctions should remain in place until complete denuclearization.
You can read more at the link, but this is clearly just another attempt by the Moon administration to shape public opinion to support their efforts to restart the two cross border projects. They need the public support in order to pressure the US to allow their “ethnic exemption” to sanctions.
As Professor B.R. Myers predicted, the Moon administration is quickly pushing the Kaesong Industrial Park and Mt. Kumgang tours on the Trump administration as some kind of “ethnic exemption” to sanctions:
South Korea will talk to the United States about preparatory work for the future resumption of two key inter-Korean economic projects and about waiving sanctions on North Korea if necessary, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said Tuesday.
Yonhap
Cho made the remarks a day after he reported to President Moon Jae-in that the government will discuss with the U.S. ways to resume a long-suspended tour program to the North’s Mount Kumgang and reopen an industrial complex in the North’s border city of Kaesong.
South Korea is considering these measures as part of efforts to keep the dialogue momentum alive and create better conditions for negotiations after last week’s breakdown of the second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump.
You can read more at the link.
Unsurprisingly South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, one of North Korea’s useful idiots, has sided with North Korea over the current controversy between Hyundai and North Korea’s joint tourism projects:
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young met with Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun on Sunday to discuss a spat between the company and North Korea over a tourism project Hyundai Asan operates in the Kumgang Mountains.
A source connected to the matter said Wednesday the two discussed North Korean demands to reinstate Hyundai Asan vice chairman Kim Yoon-kyu, who was ousted over corruption charges, but the differences in opinion were wide. That suggests Chung asked for the disgraced executive to be reinstated.It was the following day that Hyun posted a statement on the Hyundai Asan homepage saying that Kim had been removed due to corruption and rejected calls to reinstate the man who had for many years coordinated the tourism projects with the North.
I am beginning to like Chairwoman Hyun more and more. It is about time someone stood up to the Norks and blew off Chung.
It appears that the Hyundai tours to different North Korean locations may end:
Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun on Monday publicly rejected a North Korean demand to reinstate Kim Yoon-kyu, the disgraced vice chairman of Hyundai Asan who had dealt with the North for many years in arranging their joint tourism projects. “I now seem to stand at a crossroads of whether to continue or quit our North Korea projects,” she said. Since Hyundai’s ouster of Kim, Pyongyang has applied pressure on the group by slashing the quota for the Asan’s Kumgang Mountains tours and blanking requests for negotiations on stalled projects to Kaesong and Mt. Baekdu. When Hyun visited the Kumgang Mountains, she says, authorities forced her to open her handbag, a gesture she interpreted as contempt, and she concluded, I’ll choose honest conscience rather than opportunistic servility.”
It is standard practice in inter-Korean economic cooperation to put up with Pyongyang’s demented behavior. That makes Hyun’s statement all the more significant. Her resolve not to allow North Korean pressure to meddle in her corporation’s managerial rights is the natural choice for a top executive, but in the reality of inter-Korean relations things rarely take their natural course.
I think this is great that someone is finally taking a stand and not kissing the North Koreans butts continuously. The Korean government can learn something from Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
