Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-6-16-1
6/16/2009
The amount of inter-Korean exchange has shrunk considerably this year, as tensions between the North and South continue to mount. According to the ROK Customs Administration’s inter-Korean trade office, cross-border transactions between January and April of this year fell 24.8 percent from 2008; trade amounted to 426.35 million USD, down from 566.92 million USD during the same period last year. South Korean imports were down only 9.5 percent, at 260.19 million USD, but exports to the North amounted to a mere 59.4 percent of the amount sent last year, recording 166.17 million USD. 54.9 percent of these goods (by value) traveled across the border by passing through Dorasan Station; 32.8 percent went through Incheon Harbor; 6.4 percent through Busan Harbor, 1.6 percent through Sokcho Harbor; and 1.1 percent passing through Goseong.
In April, with the North’s launch of a long-range missile in spite of the opposition of the international community, inter-Korean trade dropped to 69.2 percent of last year’s level, falling to 105.53 million USD. In fact, inter-Korean trade fell relative to the same month in the previous year eight months straight, beginning in September of last year.
With last month’s sudden nuclear test and South Korea’s subsequent joining of PSI, inter-Korean trade is expected to continue to wither in the latter half of the year. The amount of trade seen from January to April of this year is equivalent to 23.4 percent of the total trade for last year (1.82078 billion USD), and even if the current level of trade is maintained for the rest of the year, it is expected to amount to a mere 70 percent of what was traded in 2008.
Inter-Korean trade had previously been recording significant growth; in 1999, during Kim Dae Jung’s ‘People’s Government’, inter-Korean trade was worth only 328.65 million USD, but began to climb, growing more than five-fold by 2008, topping out at 1.82078 billion USD last year. However, after the launch of the current government, the amount of goods imported by the North from the South began to fall; exports to North Korea in 2008 were worth 883.41 USD, 145.15 million less than in 2007.
North Korean companies involved in processing-on-demand, agriculture and fisheries work have been part of Pyongyang’s trade ambitions, and these companies have also been hurt by the freeze in inter-Korean relations, with dozens of businesses facing closure, and many more severely hit by the North’s shrinking trade.
