From Yonhap:
Suspension of inter-Korean business only hurts S. Korea: official
10/13/2006
Suspending South Korea’s joint business projects with North Korea would do more harm to the South than the North while doing little to convince the communist state to halt additional nuclear tests, a ranking South Korean official said Friday.
“Cutting off (inter-Korean economic projects) now would only show our firm will (to retaliate against North Korea for its claimed nuclear test) by inflicting wounds on parts of our own body,” the official told reporters, asking not to be identified.
“The damage North Korea would suffer would be very insignificant compared to the damages we would suffer,” the official added.
The remarks came amid calls from here and abroad for the Seoul government to immediately halt cross-border business projects with the North in retaliation for the North’s claimed nuclear test on Monday.
The main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) claims the country’s economic cooperation for the impoverished North has helped the North’s missile and nuclear weapons program.
“In the current situation, (South Korea) must strengthen its alliance with the United States and actively participate in U.N. Security Council sanctions on the North while cutting off all of its cash assistance to the North,” GNP floor leader Kim Hyong-o said Friday at a party leadership meeting.
An average of 40,000 South Koreans travel to a scenic resort on North Korea’s Mount Geumgang every month, paying about US$1 million in admission fees to the North, according to Hyundai Asan, the South Korean developer of the resort.
Fifteen South Korean companies also pay about $600,000 a month on average to North Korea in wages for the 8,700 North Korean employees at an industrial complex being developed by the two Koreas near the North’s border town of Kaesong, according to the Unification Ministry.
The government official, however, said the government had no immediate plans to scrap the inter-Korean projects, claiming the money paid to the North through the projects is not aimed at assisting the North’s weapons program and that the amount is insignificant.
He said the country would align its North Korea policy and economic cooperation with a U.N. Security Council resolution when one is passed, but claimed a U.S. draft of the resolution, even if approved by the Security Council, would not call for a suspension or reduction of inter-Korean economic cooperation.
“Vice Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said at the National Assembly Thursday that there is nothing in the U.S. draft resolution” that would call for a suspension of the two cross-border projects, the official said.
