For the first time in 10 years, Kong Ji-ye’s chocolate-making machines sit idle in Paju, near the demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates the two Koreas.
Not because of shelling, nuclear tests or general saber-rattling from the North. Her business is at a standstill because an outbreak of a virus that kills pigs, but cannot harm humans, triggered a ban on tours that bring hundreds of thousands of South Korean and foreign visitors to the border with the North.
Kong, 47, makes souvenir chocolates for tourists on their way to the DMZ.
However, four months ago Seoul halted all DMZ tours in a bid to stop the spread of African swine fever from the North — the disease can be transmitted by human traffic and has decimated pig herds in the South and across Asia.
The chocolate maker is just one of tens of thousands of people in thousands of businesses whose livelihood depends on tourism in Paju, a city of about 460,000 about an hour north of Seoul.
With revenue down to a trickle, Kong has had to borrow money to keep staff on her books — though two have already quit — and the future looks bleak unless the ban is reversed soon.
“The tours were suspended following North Korea’s shelling on Yeonpyeong Island [in 2010] for safety reasons, but since then this is the first time the tours were completely suspended,” said Kong in an interview at her DMZ Dreamfood factory, methodically folding empty chocolate boxes.
The extreme response by Seoul is because South Korea suspects the fever spread from the North: The South’s first confirmed case in September last year was at a pig farm in Paju, less than four months after North Korea’s own outbreak.
No new cases have been reported at farms in South Korea since Oct. 10, but infected wild boars still roam the DMZ, with more than a third of those that have been found dead discovered inside Paju’s city limits, data from South Korea’s National Institute of Environmental Research showed.
To try to cut risks, Paju has set up fences to try to block wild boars from crossing into tourist spots as well as stepping up efforts to hunt the animals, an official at Paju City Hall said.
Early last month, Kong joined hundreds of Paju residents ranging from restaurant owners to tour operators in a protest demonstration urging Seoul to lift the tour ban and provide measures to support them.
A South Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs official said Paju must continue to hunt wild boars through this month before swine fever-related ministries decide whether it is safe for tours to resume.
Park Sung-jun, executive director of Cosmo-Jin Travel Agency in Paju, also said the fever has taken a heavy toll on business, since DMZ tour packages typically account for 40 percent of revenue.
“The swine fever hit tourism and that’s caused a direct blow to the wrong industry,” Park said.
For Kong, there is little left to do for now but fold boxes for the chocolates she hopes to start selling to tourists, at about US$10 apiece, as soon as the ban is lifted.
“I thought it would be for a week, not four months and it’s really hard because not once has this ever happened,” she said.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion