By Kim Yoo-chul
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.
The GIC was once at the heart of South-North rapprochement during the “sunshine policy” of former President Kim Dae-jung. It was opened in 2014, but was forced to shut down following Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test.
The comments come against the backdrop of the U.S. and North Korea resuming working-level denuclearization talks in Sweden that may eventually yield results and a third Trump-Kim summit. Earlier, reports surfaced that Washington was willing to allow “low-level” sanctions relief including the partial resumption of tours to Mount Geumgang in order to facilitate the nuclear disarmament talks.
Cheong Wa Dae refused to comment on President Moon's remarks.
Previously, Moon Chung-in, a presidential adviser on unification and diplomacy affairs, said in forum that a resumption of the Mount Geumgang tourism project and other frozen inter-Korean economic projects was possible.
But he remained negative on restarting operations at the GIC “soon,” saying PCs and other electronic devices there were categorized as “strategic assets,” and therefore a violation of United Nations sanctions.
The government said reopening the GIC would only take place with the agreement of the United States. North Korea has listed the resumption of operations there as one of the prerequisites for better inter-Korean ties.
At Friday's luncheon, Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) Chairman Park Yong-maan asked the President to speed up the reform on lax regulations so that investment decisions could be made more rapidly. Sohn Kyung-shik, head of the Korea Employers Federation and Kim Young-ju, chief of the Korea International Trade Association, also attended the luncheon.
The luncheon was held amid concerns that Asia's fourth-largest economy is losing steam on decreasing exports and weak domestic demand. The country's exports, one of its main economic pillars, sank 11.7 percent year-on-year in September, due to weak memory chip prices and the continuing trade row between the United States and China. South Korea is the global powerhouse in memory chips being home to the world's largest and second largest memory chip suppliers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
Cheong Wa Dae said the meeting also discussed firms' response to Japan's export restrictions against them. The companies have been grappling with restrictions on exports of high-tech materials crucial to the manufacture of semiconductors and displays since July.