S. Korea offers economic cooperation with North
The proposal includes joint zones on border and linked rail network
SEOUL, South Korea — The president of South Korea proposed a bold expansion of economic cooperation with North Korea on Wednesday, a more assertive stand than the United States has taken in offering inducements for the North to begin relinquishing its nuclear weapons.
The proposal by President Moon Jae-in included joint economic zones along the NorthSouth border, a linked rail network and other steps.
If implemented, it could significantly
ease tensions along the world’s most heavily fortified frontier, which has divided the two Koreas for more than seven decades. But Moon’s proposal, dangled as a lure for the North to start denuclearizing, also raised the risk of going well beyond what his country’s most important ally, the United States, is prepared to do.
Despite the goal of denuclearization pledged at the June summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, Kim has taken no meaningful steps toward that goal, an increased source of friction with the United States.
Moon announced his proposal during a speech commemorating National Liberation Day, the end of Japan’s colonial rule over a
then-unified Korea with the Allied victory in World War II. He framed the proposal as a way for both Koreas to move forward.
“We must overcome division for our survival and prosperity,” Moon said. “Even though political unification is still far away, building
a single economic community first by settling peace and freely traveling back and forth between the two Koreas will become genuine liberation for us.”
He also suggested that South Korea should be a leader, not a spectator, in resolving the dispute
between North Korea and the Trump administration over the North’s nuclear weapons. That appeared to be a subtle but contentious shift in South Korea’s role in the diplomacy around the North’s nuclear weapons. The South and the United States have both said that their relations with the North will develop at roughly the same pace.
But Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said there will be no sanctions relief on North Korea until denuclearization is complete. U.S. officials also have said the signing of a peace treaty with North Korea to replace the armistice that halted the 1950-53 Korean War — a basic demand of Kim’s — will not happen before the North denuclearizes.