By Park Ji-won
South and North Korea are likely to speed up the process of restoring their economic exchanges amid signs of thaws in relations between the North and United States.
South Korea will cooperate closely with the U.S. for inter-Korean rapprochement programs because these could violate international sanctions against North Korea, according to South Korean officials.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S President Donald Trump signed a joint document that includes complete denuclearization of the North during a historic summit held in Singapore Tuesday. The two countries vowed to commit to “establish new US-DPRK relations.” Based on the agreement, the U.S. may ease its sanctions against the North _ previously a major hurdle for inter-Korean economic cooperation.
South Korean ministries are also set to promptly start cooperation with North Korea following the results of the summit, according to ministry officials and reports.
“If the Kim-Trump talks produce good results, we can see a new opportunity for the economy,” said Kim Dong-yeon, finance minister and deputy prime minister, during a keynote speech at the 24th International Conference on the Future of Asia in Tokyo, Monday.
The finance minister also mentioned a multilateral “rehabilitation” fund to financially support North Korea led by South Korea, China and Japan.
Recently, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance reportedly reshuffled key positions that deal with budgets in inter-Korean economic exchanges. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy also established a special team for the exchanges.
In April, the leaders of South and North Korea initiated the exchanges based on the Panmunjeom agreement, holding high-ranking talks agreeing to take steps to modernize inter-Korean railways and roads that penetrate the Korean Peninsula. Since the April summit, South Korean ministries launched taskforces, mainly in the field of infrastructure and transportation, to speed up the materialization for the agreements.
Linking its rail network to Russia's Siberian rail system via North Korea, a project that would cut shipping times and costs for South Korea's Europe-bound exports.
The discussions of connecting the railways have been carried out for more than a decade, although no major progress has been made recently due to international sanctions against the North's nuclear and missile programs.
Also, the Gaeseong Industrial Complex (GIC), the symbolic inter-Korean economic cooperation, will likely be operated sooner. Gaeseong is the border city in North Korea where the two Koreas had been running a joint industrial complex beginning in 2004. South Korea, however, closed its operations in February 2016 and brought its officials and workers back to the South in protest of the North's missile and nuclear provocations.
Meanwhile, in the private sector, firms are also gearing up for the cooperation with the expectations of resuming relations with the North.
Hyundai Group began preparing for the possible beginning of projects such as a joint tour program at Mount Kumgang, a mountain resort on North Korea's east coast. Hyundai Group launched a taskforce for the inter-Korean exchanges last month.
The Mount Kumgang tour project, which attracted more than 1 million tourists since its operation began in 1998, was suspended in 2004 after a female South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean guard in the North.