Lee Hyo-sik is Finance Desk editor at The Korea Times. He manages finance-related stories on macroeconomics, banks, stocks, bonds, crypto etc. He is passionate about covering what's happening in Korea's financial industry and explaining it to both Korean and non-Korean readers. You can reach him at leehs@koreatimes.co.kr. Your insights and feedbacks are always appreciated.
Inter-Korean ties hit all-time low
By Lee Hyo-sik
An index gauging the degree of inter-Korean integration has declined for the second consecutive year, reflecting the heightening tension between the two Koreas since the inception of the Lee Myung-bak administration.
The Institute for Peace and Unification Studies (IPUS), affiliated with Seoul National University, said Tuesday that the Inter-Korean Integration Index (IKII) stood at 198.6 out of a total of 1,000 in 2009, down from 209.5 in 2008.
The index rose to an all-time high of 272.7 in 2007 when the late former President Roh Moo-hyun met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. But since the former Seoul mayor took the nation’s highest office the following year, the index has dropped for the second straight year, reflecting the worsening inter-Korean ties.
The institute said the inter-Korean relations in 2009 were at their lowest in years as a result of the North’s nuclear bomb test, the North’s detention of a South Korean worker at the Gaesong complex and the Lee administration’s tough stance against the communist state.
“A number of unfavorable incidents drove inter-Korean ties to their lowest level in 2009. Due to its growing internal instability, the North was extremely hostile toward South Korea and other Western countries,” IPUS senior researcher Jeong Eun-mi said. “Also, the South largely abandoned its rapprochement policies toward the communist state, aggravating the inter-Korean relations.”
She expected the integration index for this year to decline further, following the North’s sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan and the two Koreas’ hostile policies toward each other.
“The deteriorating political ties have strained social and economic relations between the two,” she said. “If South and North Korea don’t ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula, they will sustain huge economic costs and risk losing momentum for unification permanently.”
By category, the two Koreas earned 71.7 out of 330 in the inter-Korean economic integration index last year, down from 72.9 in 2008. The indicator of social integration between the two came to 76.4, down sharply from 84 over the one-year period, with that of political integration falling to 51.1 from 55.3.