New reports describe that the South Korean government requested a waiver of sanctions on North Korea ahead of the summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, but the U.S. rejected the request.
According to the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun, citing diplomatic sources from South Korea, South Korean officials asked their U.S. counterparts to waive sanctions that restrict inter-Korean economic exchanges ahead of the May 21 summit. The two leaders’ joint statement released after the summit said, “We also agree to coordinate our approaches to the DPRK in lockstep.” The newspaper argued that the purpose of the sentence was to prevent South Korea from unilaterally pushing for inter-Korean exchanges.
After the summit, Park Jie-won, director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), visited the United States from May 26 to June 1 and met with U.S. officials, including William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Park also asked Burns to relay his message asking to ease sanctions on North Korea.
Recently, South Korean senior officials have been publicly calling for a resumption of the Mt. Kumgang tourism program. South Korean Unification Minister Lee In-young met with Sung Kim, the American special envoy to North Korea, on June 22 in Seoul and proposed the idea of resuming the tourism program.
“We have to be more proactive and swift to resume talks with North Korea,” said Lee. “I think that South Korea and the United States can cooperate closely and move together in areas that our government has been preparing for, including cooperation on humanitarian aid, the reunion of separated families, and the Mt. Kumgang tourism program.” Lee argued that this kind of cooperation can bring North Korea back to the negotiation table and create a fitting environment to discuss denuclearization. Sung Kim reportedly said that the U.S. government looks forward to cooperating with the South Korean government when they present definite ideas.
On June 21, Im Jong-seok, former Chief of Staff to President Moon Jae-in, who is considered a prominent presidential candidate from the ruling Democratic Party, said reopening an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong and resuming the Mt. Kumgang tourism program are a priority. He acknowledged that these issues can be considered violations of the UN Security Council sanctions on North Korea. Yet, he stated that, “It would be very meaningful for us to proactively persuade the United States and the international community to waive sanctions.”
North Korea demolished the liaison office in June 2020, a few days after Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean dictator’s sister, threatened defectors in South Korea for sending items across the border. The Mt. Kumgang tourism program was shut down after a North Korean soldier opened fire on a 53-year-old South Korean tourist who reportedly crossed over into a restricted zone in 2008. Unification Minister Lee has continuously called for the resumption of the tourism program despite this incident. “There are so many South Koreans who wish to visit Mt. Kumgang, and I will work on resuming the tourism program once the Covid-19 issue eases.”
Many commentators and experts are concerned over the South Korean government’s approach to North Korea because no progress has been made on Pyongyang’s denuclearization. Sanctions on North Korea were put in place because of Pyongyang’s provocations, including nuclear weapons testing and missile launches. They emphasize the fact that the legal grounds for the sanctions have not been resolved.
Also, there are no signs that North Korea is willing to talk with the United States or South Korea. Kim Yo-jong warned on Tuesday that the United States is in for a great “disappointment” after White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called Kim Jong-un’s recent remarks about preparing for dialogue and confrontation an “interesting signal.” Kim’s comments at a recent party congress were considered to be the North Korean leader’s first direct message to the Biden administration.
“It seems the U.S. may interpret the situation in such a way as to seek a comfort for itself,” she said in a statement reported by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). “Their expectation, which they chose to harbor the wrong way, could plunge them into a greater disappointment.”
Sullivan said that Washington is waiting for Pyongyang to send a clear message as to “whether they are prepared to sit down at the table.”
In her statement on Tuesday, while commenting on Sullivan’s remarks, Kim Yo-jong referred to a Korean proverb, “In a dream, what counts most is to read it, not to have it.”
International sanctions experts argue that the resumption of the Mt. Kumgang tourism program, as well as the Kaesong Industrial Complex, would violate UN and U.S. sanctions.
William Newcomb, a former member of the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea sanctions, told Voice of America, “I do not believe they can be reopened and run as in the past without running afoul of UN and U.S. sanctions. Remotely possible they could be significantly and carefully restructured to stay in compliance but I’m skeptical Pyongyang would be receptive to such scaled-back projects.”
Katsuhisa Furukawa, another former member of the Panel of Experts on DPRK sanctions, said, “It is very difficult to resume these projects without violating the UN and U.S. sanctions which prohibit the opening of new joint ventures or cooperative entities with the DPRK [UNSCR 2371, article 12] or the provision of public and private financial support for trade with the DPRK [tourism is categorized in the service trade] [UNSCR 2321, article 32].”
He added that, “The entire DPRK government and the Workers’ Party of Korea are also sanctioned by the U.S. government. So it is imperative for the ROK to obtain pre-approval for exemptions from these sanctions measures by the UNSC and the U.S. Government.”
Joshua Stanton, an attorney and former congressional staffer on North Korea issues, told Voice of America that President Moon Jae-in’s administration has caused conflict with the United States because of their misconceptions on how sanctions work.
“The reason why Moon’s North Korea policy failed is because he ran for office making promises to Kim Jong-un that he couldn’t keep. He hadn’t bothered to read the UN or U.S. sanctions that prohibited most of his proposals. He never got UN authorization to begin work before he announced them. He never won support from the U.S., whose banks he just assumed would clear all these dollar payments to Pyongyang. He never read the new U.S. laws that blocked those payments.”
Meanwhile, it was revealed that South Korea’s state-run electric company supplied power to Kaesong in North Korea for several months after all South Korean personnel withdrew from an industrial complex in January 2020, according to documents obtained by JoongAng Ilbo on June 22.
Documents from the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) show that electricity to the city was not cut off after the withdrawal, raising questions as to whether power was supplied even after North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office last June. It was reported that KEPCO supplied a total of 898 megawatts of electricity to the Kaesong Industrial Complex between January and June 2020. According to KEPCO, South Korean electricity was used in 14 locations in Kaesong during this period, including four industrial sites, one residence, and nine commercial facilities. The average monthly consumption of electricity in Kaesong supplied by KEPCO was approximately 150 megawatts, which is equivalent to the energy usage of 640 households in Seoul for a month.
People Power Party (PPP) lawmaker Yoon Young-seok, who obtained the documents from KEPCO, said, “As a public corporation, KEPCO cannot make decisions about supplying power to the North by itself.” He added that the government “must make it clear why the North was allowed to continue using South Korean power.” He argued that the electricity could be used for other purposes. Electricity is not included in the banned export list, but the UN Security Council Resolution 2270’s “Catch-All” clause could be applied if the electricity was used for military purposes.
