Return of Martyr

Are Koreas Serious in Resuming Cross-Border Tours?

North Korea is pumping up threats to scrap the Mt. Geumgang tour project unless the South resumes it sometime soon. Pyongyang's anxiety is understandable, but its tactic is dead wrong, especially since Seoul knows it is just another expression of begging.

The North's leadership should know the impoverished regime can never win in this kind of tug-of-war with its wealthier rival.

Pyongyang is threatening to take an ``extraordinary step'' if Seoul fails to make a positive response by April 1, meaning it would freeze the South's properties, kick out people, abrogate contracts and start all over, probably with a Chinese company. This is not just the breach of inter-Korean agreements but ignorance of internationally-accepted norms and practices.

If the isolationist regime effectively takes private firms hostage for diplomatic reasons, which foreign investors would jump into the unknown land braving huge political risks? In an extreme scenario, the cash-rich South Korean government can give 360 billion won ($300 million) to South Korean investors, including Hyundai Group, and terminate the project. Seoul will thus suffer some financial losses, but these will be nothing compared with damage to Pyongyang's credibility as a reliable business partner.

That said, the South's attitude also leaves much to be desired. Seoul sticks to its calls for ``three preconditions'' concerning the safety of South Korean tourists, which itself is not asking too much. But it went a little too far when the Southern officials demanded an investigation of North Korean soldiers who allegedly shot a South Korean tourist to death in July 2008, which could appear as an infringement on sovereignty to their Northern counterparts.

It is all but an open secret in this regard that the suspension of the cash-producing project for Pyongyang is actually due to Seoul's suspicion about the money's ultimate destination especially with respect to the North's nuclear development programs.

If the Lee Myung-bak administration suspects all the money the South gives to the North is used for military purposes, no inter-Korean economic cooperation projects will be able to survive. The Lee administration's ``time-is-one-our-side'' waiting tactics, when combined with the Obama administration's de facto ``outsourcing" the solution of North Korean nuclear problems to China, will only end up deepening Pyongyang's reliance on Beijing as well as expanding the regional and global influence of the Middle Kingdom to an immoderate level.

What makes these assumptions all the more gloomy is this year is the centennial of Korea's forced annexation by Japan, which said it freed the Joseon Kingdom from a tributary status to China. What would martyr Ahn Jung-geun ― who died a century ago yesterday for fighting for a united and independent Korea ― say if he saw foreign powers intervening due to both Koreas quarreling with each other?