South Korea is still sending tourists to a mountain resort in North Korea and maintaining a joint economic zone, despite pressure to cancel the projects after the North's nuclear test.
The country has its reasons for refusing to shutter key projects that help keep Kim Jong-il's regime afloat, including competition with China for influence over the nation.
South Korea and China together account for two-thirds of overseas trade for the North, and the South Korea hopes to one day reunite the two Koreas.
PHOTO: AFP
The US has scoffed at the tourism venture at the North's majestic Diamond Mountain resort, saying the project simply hands money to the North's government. Washington also has questioned labor practices in a joint economic zone where northern workers provide cheap labor for southern firms.
But Seoul has been reluctant to enrage the North as it pursues its policy of reconciliation that has led to unprecedented cooperation between the two countries.
Totally cutting off the joint projects also would mean Seoul would lose influence in the North, leaving the nation wide open for China -- the North's No. 1 trade partner and a key source of aid.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said she will not presume to tell South Korea or China how to enforce UN sanctions imposed against Pyongyang after its Oct. 9 underground blast.
But she has called on all nations to cooperate and pointedly noted in a South Korean TV interview on Friday that the North ``set off a nuclear weapons test right here in South Korea's backyard.''
``It is important to use whatever leverage a country feels that it can use to get the North Koreans to make the right choice'' to rejoin arms talks and disarm, Rice told KBS in Seoul.
Seoul is keen to maintain stability and not let its unpredictable neighbor spoil its hard-won prosperity built from the ruins of the Korean War. Today's South Korea is a high-technology mecca and cultural trendsetter for Asia, proudly proclaiming itself as ``Dynamic Korea'' in its main tourism slogan.
The inter-Korean projects are part of Seoul's strategy to use trade and exchanges to ensure that success is not wiped out by a war or a chaotic collapse of North Korea. The North has needed foreign assistance to feed its 23 million people since the mid-1990s, when its state-run farm system collapsed after the loss of Soviet subsidies.
But in the wake of the North's first-ever nuclear test, Seoul has faced new calls to cancel the landmark reconciliation projects.
On Tuesday, the US envoy on North Korean human rights, Jay Lefkowitz, warned that unmonitored assistance to the North could prop up a "criminal regime."
China has made increasing economic inroads in the North in recent years, and South Korea has expressed concern that North Korea could become a de-facto Chinese province.
Chinese goods are the dominant products in what passes for markets in the North, and Chinese tourists visit regularly.
A state-supported Chinese think tank has claimed that two ancient Korean kingdoms were actually Chinese, including the Koguryo dynasty that reigned from 37BC to 668 in an area that stretched from the Korean Peninsula to Manchuria in northeast China. Koguryo is viewed by Koreans as the origin of their nation, and its name forms the root of today's "Korea."
China had its fingers in Korean politics going back centuries, under the tributary system in place across east Asia.
The idea that China is staging a shadow campaign to maneuver for position after a North Korean collapse rattles intensely nationalistic Koreans, who have seen their tiny peninsula survive as a nation despite being surrounded by massive powers.
Despite appearing to vacillate in the face of US demands to comply with UN sanctions, Seoul's reluctance to back out of its projects with North Korea could be a way of signaling strength -- and ensuring that Koreans will have a land to call their own for centuries more.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the