SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea expressed a desire to keep a joint industrial
complex in operation, South Korean officials said Monday, while the South indicated that it might reconsider its decision to revive psychological warfare against the North.
The developments showed that the two Koreas were carefully weighing the option of easing their confrontation, analysts said. Tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula have deteriorated to their worst point in years after a South Korean warship sank on March 26. South Korea blamed a North Korean torpedo attack for the blast.
“Neither side can afford to keep building up tensions,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul. “Both sides have been raising tensions the way you blow into your balloon, and now they need an excuse for each other to stop blowing so that the balloon won’t burst.”
After it formally accused the North on May 20 of having responsibility for the
sinking, South Korea cut off nearly all trade with the North and began a diplomatic campaign to bring it before the United Nations Security Council for punishment. The South also vowed to resume psychological warfare against the North, after a six-year hiatus, by rebuilding loudspeakers along the border for propaganda broadcasts and by dropping leaflets over the North using balloons.
If the psychological war resumes, the North has warned that it would shut down a joint industrial complex at the North Korean border town of Kaesong — the last
remaining symbol of inter-Korean ties. The North also warned that it would shoot
artillery shells across the border to blast the loudspeakers.
The South would certainly have to respond in kind, officials said, raising the
possibility of a major skirmish along a border guarded by nearly two million troops on both sides.
“We want to continue to develop the Kaesong project,” the North Korean authorities said in a message delivered through South Korean businessmen at Kaesong on Sunday, according to a senior South Korean government official who briefed reporters Monday on the condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, Jang Gwang-il, a senior policy maker at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, said that the South Korean military was still reviewing when to send leaflet balloons over the North. His remark was seen as a step back from the military’s earlier vow to send the balloons as soon as the weather permitted.
Mr. Jang said that the South would “make a comprehensive review of the situation” before deciding whether and when to start launching leaflet balloons
or broadcasting propaganda across the border.
The apparent pause in inter-Korean tensions came a day after Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China declined to join South Korea and Japan in publicly condemning North Korea at a three-way weekend summit meeting, instead urging both Koreas to defuse tensions.
On Monday, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama of Japan told Mr. Wen that he
supported Seoul’s plans to bring North Korea before the Security Council for
sanctions or condemnation, The Associated Press reported. The two countries also agreed to start negotiations over a treaty to develop natural gas resources under the East China Sea, said Osamu Sakashita, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office.
South Korea remains determined to force North Korea to apologize and punish those responsible for the sinking, which killed 46 South Korean sailors. The North denies any involvement and warns of war if new sanctions are imposed.
But analysts say that neither Korea can benefit from sustained tensions. Public
denouncements of the North may help candidates of President Lee Myung-bak’s
governing party in local elections in South Korea on Wednesday, but prolonged
tensions will hurt its economy, they said.
While most South Koreans condemn the North for the sinking and support Mr. Lee’s handling of the crisis so far, many also blame his tough stance toward the North for fueling a military provocation, surveys here show.
The North Korean threat to shut down the border raised some concern in South
Korea that hundreds of South Korean workers who commute to Kaesong on a typical workday might be trapped there as hostages.
But South Korean officials say that if Kaesong is closed, North Korea will suffer more than the South. About 43,000 North Koreans would lose some of the best-paying jobs available for workers in the impoverished country, and the resulting discontent could spread out of Kaesong, they argue. The complex also provides the North with $40 million in workers’ wages, most of which goes to the government.
The Kaesong complex, where 121 South Korean factories hire cheap North Korean labor, has been both praised as a testament to inter-Korean cooperation and denounced as a source of cash for the North’s nuclear weapons program.
Of the several measures the South has taken, the possible resumption of
psychological warfare has raised the most hackles in the North, which strives to keep its population isolated from outside news. Last week, the South resumed its “Voice of Freedom” radio broadcasts, which do not directly criticize North Korean leaders but promote the capitalist lifestyles of the South.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/asia/01korea.html?_r=1&sq=kaesong&st=nyt&scp=2&pagewanted=print#
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