EDITORIAL from the Korea Herald on March 17)

Hostage blackmail

North Korea's ban on border crossings by South Korean workers traveling to and
from the Gaeseong Industrial Complex is nothing but a hostage situation -
intolerable between any two civilized states, and even more so between the two
Koreas.

That such a thing happened indicates that the joint inter-Korean industrial
estate project was a premature venture, considering the volatile and fragile
relations between the South and the North. Previous administrations built the
complex with the belief that it would help improve ties with the North, but the
GIC has turned out to be a plaything of the North Korean military.
The only guarantee that the North would not dare to close the complex was the
substantial U.S. dollar income Pyongyang gets from more than 100 South Korean
manufacturing firms operating in the compound. However, if the North decides to
give up the $3 million it collects each month through its 40,000 workers at the
industrial complex, the fate of the facility will be up in the air. Yesterday,
they allowed the return of some 450 South Korean personnel but did not permit the
entry of their replacements.
Pyongyang had first forced more than a half of the South Korean management
personnel out of the joint facility. It then cut off the military hotline between
the two Koreas and shut the gates to the North in the Demilitarized Zone on March
9. These actions followed a series of protests by its party and military against
southern civic groups' flying anti-Kim Jong-il leaflets into the North and the
"Key Resolve" annual joint military exercise of Korean and U.S. forces. The North
Koreans reopened the border briefly and then closed it again on Friday. Only two
men - one who became sick and another who to get married - were allowed to leave.

About 270 South Koreans have been virtually detained in the complex for nearly a
week now. In the compound, most factories will have to stop operation if raw
materials are not transported on time through the border. Food supplies cannot
last more than a few more days and even petrol tanks will become empty if no fuel
trucks are allowed through the border. Businesses that buy goods from the firms
in the industrial complex cannot send their inspectors for on-the-spot quality
checks. Orders are being canceled because buyers feel uneasy about the future
status of the manufacturers.
Most of the South Korean firms in the complex are small businesses that cannot
survive if their investment in the joint facility fails because of the North
Korean ban. "Shrimps are being crushed to death caught in a fight between
whales," the poor investors complain to the government for allowing the situation
to develop in such a way, reporting already irrevocable losses. They are ruing
their own "naivete" of trusting government authorities' assurances that their
businesses in the complex would have ample incentives and little risk.
North Korea's linking the operation of the complex to the South Korea-U.S. joint
military exercise or any political development between the two Koreas has no
justification at all. Pyongyang has threatened "grave consequences" for what it
called the two allies' provocations against the North, but their choice of
civilians, who have engaged in peaceful industrial activities inside their
territory, as the target of retaliation amounts to sheer inhumanity.
International condemnation is called for. Seoul should make the strongest
protests against the North's strangulation of these hapless South Korean
businesses.
(END)