Disharmony and re-militarisation
North Korea has always been provocative. Since 2006, it has detonated four nuclear devices, inviting widespread skepticism. On 6 January, it tested a hydrogen nuclear device and on 7 February, it launched ballistic missile into the orbit.
Since 2006 nuclear and missile launches have severely deteriorated inter-Korean relations. South Korea is always a direct and immediate victim of North Korean provocations. Seoul has vowed to make the North “pay the price” for its nuclear and ballistic missile provocations.
The United States would defend the South in case of a North Korean attack. South Korea thinks that the North Korean action brings the already divided peninsula to the ‘brink of war’. South Korea observed falling of an object in the Yellow River when the ballistic missile was launched.
North Korean nuclear and missile launching is a setback to reunification efforts too. Already troubled relations between the two Koreas were further worsened. North Korea ordered for military takeover of the joint Industrial Complex at Kaesong, built by South Korean investors in 2004 to overcome North Korean economic woes under South Korea “Sunshine” policy adopted by President Kim Dae-jung in the late 1990s.
The military takeover of a commercial complex is like imposing martial law and in North Korea it like “martial law within martial law” and “militarisation with militarisation”. Seoul suspects that the complex might be used for military purposes by Pyongyang.
The Kaesong Industrial Complex was a symbol of reunification, linking Kaesong with Seoul by road, remembering the Korean War of 1950-3. It is only 10km from border with South Korea and inside North Korea’s de-militarised zone,which sprawls over 10 hectares of land. Over 300,000 North Koreans are supposed to live in Kaesong.
South Korean assets were also frozen by North Korea on 11 February and all sort of communications including military hotline were cut-off. Seoul was of the opinion that freezing of assets of companies and personnel by Pyongyang was illegal.
North Korea killed the chicken instead of taking a gold egg every day. The annual output of the Kaesong Industrial Complex accounts for just 0.04 percent of South Korea’s annual gross domestic product, according to the finance ministry.
The Complex was also a great source for North Korean earning, employing 54,000 workers in 123 South Korean owned-factories, producing more than US$515 million worth of textiles, electronic parts and other labour-intensive goods last year, according to the South Korean government.
Jaeyoung Solutec Co, Good People Co, and Hyundai Merchant Marine Co, were a few but notable South Korean Chaebols (multinationals) producing goods at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. South Korea also supplied power and water utilities to the complex, which now have been cut-off.
As relations deteriorated after continuous nuclear actions being undertaken by North Korea, South Korea believed that Kaesong’s earnings were spent on nuclear and long-range missile testing.
Analysts believe that Kaesong seizing is the latest miscalculation by Pyongyang and it has to pay the price. The action is illegal and South Korea has the right to take up the matter to the International Court of Justice. North Korea should prevent from converting Kaesong into a military base.
The latest episode is the example of inter-Korean disharmony and re-militarisation of the border between the two Koreas. The Kaesong Industrial Complex’s misfortune illustrates that if there are divergent strategic differences, commercial measures to defuse tensions could not work at the end. There is a need to correct strategic imbalance. Economic solutions to strategic imbalance just not work. They are failures.
