By Yi Whan-woo
North Korea’s new standard time is making it difficult for some South Korean firms operating in the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC) to transport their goods on time to their customers in the South, officials here said Thursday.
The two Koreas have been missing hotline calls from each other since Saturday when the North’s regime unilaterally pronounced its new standard time by turning their clocks back 30 minutes behind the time zone in the South.
“The 30-minute time difference is making us late in transporting our goods produced at the GIC to our customers although we’re working under a schedule as usual,” a manager at a garment manufacturer in Seoul said, declining to be named.
The firm is one of 124 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that hire some 53,000 North Koreans at the inter-Korean industrial park in Gaeseong. The border city is about 53 kilometers northwest of Seoul.
According to the company, it has shipped products from the GIC via trucks every day at 11:50 a.m. This is one of the daily time slots set by the two Koreas for the South Koreans to enter or exit the joint industrial complex.
“The problem is that it’s 12:20 p.m. in South Korea. And we’ve seen that the 30-minute time difference can cause a significant delay in delivering the goods to our sub-contractors in Gyeonggi Province and those in the outer regions,” the manager said.
He added his company, which only operates factories in Gaeseong, may re-open a plant in the South, which was closed in 2004 when the GIC opened, if the government fails to settle the time-related issues.
“We decided to close our plant in the South to capitalize on cheap labor of skilled North Korean workers. Now is time to give a second thought,” the manager said.
Some other firms said the so-called “Pyongyang Time” does not have any impact on their business.
“We ship all components to assemble paragliders to our inventory in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province and we don’t see any difference before and after Pyongyang Time,” said a staff at Gin Gliders.
A public relations official for Good People, an underwear manufacturer, said only 20 percent of the firm’s products are from the GIC while the rest are made in Jeonju and Cambodia.
“We used to make 35 percent of our products at the GIC, but not any longer since 2013,” said the official, who has asked not to be named.
The operation hours of the Seoul-Pyongyang hotline have been from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays since 1992 when the two enemies set up the direct communication system using non-dial phones across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)
The Ministry of Unification said the North Koreans have not been picking their hotline phone set up at their side of Panmumjeom, the inter-Korean truce village at the DMZ, until 9:30 a.m. from Monday.
The unification ministry also said North Koreans have asked its officials to stay at Panmunjeom until 4:30 p.m. instead of pulling out at 4 p.m.
“We still begin work at 9 a.m. and call it a day at 4 p.m. in accordance with the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)+9 time zone,” a ministry official said on condition of anonymity.
“And we obviously wouldn’t know how North Koreans will handle things in case of emergencies after our officials left for home.”