Diplomatic efforts underway to deal with NK

By Yi Whan-woo

After pulling the plug on the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC) in North Korea, South Korea is making strong diplomatic efforts to put pressure on North Korea to pay the price for its latest nuclear and missile tests.

The measures appear to be in line with international efforts to block the flow of hard currency to the Kim Jong-un regime and put pressure on China for being reluctant to exercise its leverage on Pyongyang despite international demands, analysts said Friday.

“I’d say Seoul’s actions are seen as a move to set an example on the international stage while urging its neighbors to take similar sanctions against Pyongyang,” said An Chan-il, head of the World North Korea Research Center.

Park Won-gon, an international relations professor at Handong University, said “Seoul is making sure it is a key player in international sanctions placed on North Korea, especially the secondary boycott.”

Seoul shut down the inter-Korean industrial complex, Wednesday, although it was foreseeable, as claimed by a Cheong Wa Dae official, that Pyongyang would retaliate by expelling South Korean workers and freezing all assets there. North Korea did so, Thursday.

The Park Geun-hye administration suspects the industrial park in Gaeseong has been a major source of income for the reclusive state to pursue U.N.-banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

South Korea has also indefinitely suspended participation in the Rajin-Khasan logistics project, involving the two Koreas and Russia. The U.N. has been discussing imposing tougher sanctions against North Korea for its long-range rocket launch on Feb. 7, which is considered a ballistic missile test. The launch also comes after the secretive state’s latest nuclear test on Jan. 6.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a bill for a secondary boycott of North Korea while Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga also announced restrictive measures.

The U.S., Japan and South Korea, three members of the six-party talks on Pyongyang’s denuclearization, have sought to more effectively counter North Korea’s growing military aggression. The remaining three are North Korea and its two Cold War allies ― China and Russia.

The U.S. Senate bill would sanction anyone who “engages in, facilitates or contributes to North Korea’s proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, arms-related materials, luxury goods, human rights abuses, activities undermining cyber security and the provision of materials for such activities.”

Penalties would include the seizure of assets, visa bans and denial of government contracts.

Japan’s measures include a ban on money transfers of more than 100,000 yen, or $870 to North Korea.

“As a country with a capitalist democracy, it must have been challenging for the Park government to take economic risks and force all 124 South Korean enterprises at the GIC to suspend their operations,” Park Won-gon said.

Citing that the GIC was the only remaining channel for inter-Korean economic cooperation, he added that “South Korea clearly showed the world, especially China, that it now has no choice but to fight against North Korea with its back to the wall.”

China cited the GIC in its argument to oppose a joint demand made by South Korea, the U.S. and Japan to cut off its trade with North Korea.

According to U.S. Senator Bob Corker (Rep.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, China has blocked the U.N. Security Council from taking sanctions against North Korea although it is “the very entity that could do something about this.”

Meanwhile, analysts speculated that Seoul-Moscow ties would not be strained even if the Rajin-Khasan project is suspended.

‘In my opinion, Russia would assess such a possible suspension as South Korea’s strong determination against North Korea despite diplomatic risks involving Moscow,” An said.