Save Industrial Park

Both Koreas Are Losers If Gaeseong Closes Down

The only thing that's even more outrageous than North Korea's take-it-or-leave-it notification on the Gaeseong Industrial Complex Friday is Pyongyang's logic.

In pressurizing South Korea to unconditionally accept its unilateral demands, the Stalinist regime said, ``It is a self-evident truth we can no longer provide the benefits of 6.15 (June 15, 2000 joint declaration) to those who deny 6.15," a reference to what it regards as ``special favors'' given to South Koreans on land use, wages and taxes.

This is nothing but a threat that Pyongyang is ready to shut down the joint industrial park, unless Seoul sharply raises rewards for using its land and labor, or, more importantly, goes back to the inter-Korean policy of the previous liberal governments, marked by economic aid to the North with no strings attached.

To hear the Communists say, however, most South Koreans must be doubting who's benefiting from whom ― or who needs whom more, economically. The South Korean firms operating there may benefit somewhat from cheap wages, but it was never free and was due to the South Korean government's massive investment in constructing the complex, the cost of which will take many more years to be retrieved.

North Korea also called for the raising of wages paid to its workers to levels of Chinese or Vietnamese laborers. This, if it materializes, will certainly drive almost all South Korean companies out of the industrial park in the North Korean border city, which is far worse than Chinese and Vietnamese complexes in many ways ― mostly in freedom of activities ― except for wages.

Nothing would illustrate this better than the North's detention of a South Korean worker for one and a half months while offering no plausible reasons nor giving him any access to his company officials. North Korea has even turned down the South's proposal for resuming working-group talks for normalizing the operation of the joint industrial complex, by using Seoul's calls for discussing the fate of the Hyundai employee as an excuse.

The North Koreans said their notification was made ``with the entrustment from above,'' making it clear this is Kim Jong-il's intention. In other words, Kim is pressuring his South Korean counterpart to drop Seoul's hard-line policy against Pyongyang, or let the joint industrial cooperation come to a close.

This editorial board has called for President Lee Myung-bak numerous times to more positively engage North Korea, because the winner in an inter-Korean relationship is the one who is more capable of making reconciliation and cooperation, not confrontation. And the South Korean President has recently shown his willingness to talk and respect the agreements made at two inter-Korean summits.

From the standpoint of Kim, both the new South Korean and U.S. governments might seem to be pressurizing him while giving little in return except for some vague promises. Kim should know that in democratic countries, even top leaders cannot do everything on their own but follow the majority of public opinion. If there are more South Koreans and Americans supporting a hard-line policy against North Korea than those who don't, Kim must take the biggest responsibility for it.

If Gaeseong closes down, South Korea and the companies operating there will likely be the immediate losers, but the eventual and biggest loser will be North Korea and its leadership, not just economically but politically.