Posted on 02/27/2006 3:48:29 AM PST by Flavius
KAESONG, North Korea (AP) -- Officials from the divided Koreas on Monday showed off a joint industrial zone, a key project they hope to dramatically expand in coming years in a sign of faith that relations between the two states are moving further toward reconciliation.
"We will bring peace and prosperity to the Korean Peninsula through the Kaesong Industrial Complex," Kim Hyo-jeong, a North Korean official serving on the Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee, told foreign journalists.
It marked the first time that non-South Korean reporters from foreign news organizations were allowed to visit the facility, one of the key fruits of a budding detente between the two Cold War rivals.
The communist North and capitalist South have been politically divided since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a truce instead of a peace treaty, leaving them technically at war.
Tensions have eased considerably in recent years, however, particularly after a historic summit between North Korea leader Kim Jong Il and then South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in 2000 fostered increased exchanges and more business deals.
Construction on the Kaesong complex began in June 2003, three years after the summit, and it began operating the following year.
So far, a total of 15 South Korean companies have set up shop here, shipping manufactured goods ranging from kitchen pots to semiconductor parts to the South, utilizing cheap North Korean labor.
Clothing, footwear and containers for cosmetics are among other products manufactured in the zone, where North Korean workers earn about $57 a month.
The zone played a major role in boosting inter-Korean trade to historic levels last year.
Trade surged 51.5 percent in 2005, topping $1 billion for the first time, the Korea International Trade Association, or KITA, said last month.
The value of trade at the Kaesong zone more than quadrupled in 2005 to $176.7 million last year from $41.7 million in 2004, KITA said.
Plans are for zone to host as many as 300 companies by the end of next year.
The nearby city after which the complex takes its name, was once the capital of all Korea and has a long history as an economic center.
Though steadily rising, the amount of trade with North Korea remains minuscule for South Korea, the world's 11th largest economy and the home to industrial behemoths like Samsung Electronics Co. and Posco, the world's fifth-biggest steelmaker.
It's also far less than that between two other divided political rivals, China and Taiwan, who have fostered intense economic exchanges. Two-way trade across the Taiwan Strait totaled 91.23 billion yuan ($11.3 billion) in 2005, according to China's Commerce Ministry.
North Korea's economy grew an estimated 2.2 percent in 2004, the sixth straight year of estimated expansion, as good weather boosted the agricultural sector, according to the Bank of Korea.
South Korea's central bank has issued an annual estimate of the North's economic growth since 1991.
North Korea sank to its lowest point in the 1990s as a series of poor harvests caused by bad weather, combined with economic mismanagement, led to a famine that killed an estimated 2 million people.
Was there - in fact - any bad weather? Or is this the same bad weather that always hovers above communist countries?
I'm with you.
Yup it's time. 50 years is plenty. The south has 10 times the industrial capacity and GDP of the North. they can take of themselves.
In South Korea we have enabled a perpetual adolescent who constantly whines about US soldiers. Every car accident involving a US soldier is front page news. It is ridiculous.
We need the troops elsewhere. Plus the tripwire strategy is limiting our options. Let the South Korean forces be the trip wire. The South Koreans can attrite the North Korean forces before we decide to intevene.
Let's put all these issues aside and do some business.
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Hey genius, ROKs are the "trip-wire" and have been for years. US troops are further south than nearly half the civilian population so wtf are you yammering about?
The older generation loves Americans. They make really good movies also. Oldboy, Brotherhood of War (very pro-American and anti commie), Symathy for Mr. Vengeance, Bittersweet Life (awesome flick).
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So does much of the younger generation. They just don't get the press coverage that a few loud-mouths do, but that's the same everywhere. Korea will re-unite and after a decade or two of the South investing in the North they will become a power in the region. The real fun will be in watching the Chinese and Japanese trying to deal with it.
btw...check out "JSA"...
I've seen a lot of Japanese and Korean flicks over the last few years and I've noticed that Korea seems more advanced than Japan. Their apartments, appliances, clothes, cell phones, cities etc.. are all gleaming. Japan seems rundown in comparison. If it was just a few flicks I would chalk it up to circumstance but it seems pretty consistent.
pong
I agree, the plan to move our forces from Seoul to the
South was a good start. Also, about a third of our troops are coming home. My daughter (in the Army) came back from a year in Korea last summer. She said that the older people love the USA and remember what we did for them in the War. She said that the young people (many of them) have a blind spot for N. Korea and want reunification.
Let's hope S. Korea doesn't wake up with fleas.
There are fewer than 300 US troops in the entire DMZ and it's been that way for years. the large majority of US troops are not in Yongson (in Seoul) but much further south and even the size of the post at Yongson is being reduced.
Roughly 35% of all South Koreans (men, women and children) live within range of NK guns. The majority of US troops are further south.
The trip-wire theory (US troops at the first line) you cling to is decades old and long abandoned.
There are some anti-American young in South Korea but no more than there are here. They get the cameras spinning when they make noise. The purpose, as always, is to create the impression that the noisy few are the majority. Did they fool you? Looks like it.
"From what I've seen recently, the South Koreans would welcome North Koreans as their cousins and turn on the US."
What did you see, where did you see it? Your vision means that the ROKs would welcome a giant step backwards. And btw...they are cousins.
My daughter says that Koreas are very bad about running out into traffic. Also, that the US soldiers were not at fault in that accident.
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Hard to argue with somebody who uses un-named foreign opinion polls as the basis of his position. btw...did you know that Kerry was going to cream Bush? I heard that a bunch of opinion polls said so.
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