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| Korea rebuffs N Korea threat to seize assets |
| 22-MAR-2010 Intellasia | AFP |
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| 22 Mar, 2010 - 7:05:00 AM |
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South Korea Friday rebuffed North Korean pressure to lift a tourism ban which has cost Pyongyang millions of dollars, and a Seoul official said trade worth millions more dollars could dry up unless ties improve.
The shutdown of the Mount Kumgang resort has intensified an acute hard currency shortage in the impoverished North, which was also hit by tougher UN sanctions following its missile and nuclear tests last year.
A bungled revaluation of its domestic currency has also hurt the communist state's economy, worsening already severe food shortages and sparking rare public unrest.
Media reports Thursday said senior financial official Pak Nam-Ki has been executed in Pyongyang to take the rap for the currency chaos.
In a new bid to reopen Kumgang, the North this week threatened to seize South Korean assets at the Seoul-funded resort unless the owners show up for a meeting there next Thursday.
"All assets of those who do not meet the deadline will be confiscated and they will not be able to visit Mount Kumgang again," it said.
The tours to Kumgang have earned some 487 million dollars in fees for the North since they began in 1998. They were suspended after North Korean soldiers shot dead a Seoul tourist in July 2008.
South Korea's unification ministry rejected the assets threat and reiterated Friday it would only resume tours if Pyongyang provides firm safety guarantees.
It said it was up to other parties whether to visit Kumgang by March 25, but the Seoul government had no plans to do so.
The North's main export to South Korea -- sand for construction -- may also be in jeopardy because of strained relations, a ministry spokeswoman said separately.
The shipments earned the North 73 million dollars in 2008. But the South banned them after the North's rocket launch and nuclear test in April and May last year.
The ban was lifted last November at the request of the buyers. "But there have since been no new contracts to import sand from North Korea because of worsening inter-Korean relations," spokeswoman Lee Jong-Joo told AFP.
"It's premature to say whether sand imports will stop when current contracts expire," she said. "It's up to relations between the two Koreas."
The North's threat to seize assets at Kumgang -- site of a luxury hotel, golf course and other facilities -- indicates it is now taking extreme measures, said Yang Moo-Jin of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies.
"Such measures indicate the regime is now in a desperate situation especially after its failed currency reform," he told AFP.
The currency revaluation was widely seen as an attempt to reassert state control over the economy and crack down on burgeoning free markets.
But it backfired disastrously, according to numerous accounts, fuelling inflation and exacerbating shortages by disrupting distribution networks.
"The relationship between the (ruling party) and the North Korean people has probably been damaged irreversibly, which has serious implications for the long-term survival of the regime," the International Crisis Group said in a report this week.
The North "is facing several domestic problems that in isolation would each be manageable but together could threaten regime survival," said Daniel Pinkston, the think-tank's northeast Asia deputy project director.
The North's economy fell deep into trouble in the 1990s after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the loss of its crucial aid.
In the mid- to late-1990s it suffered a famine which killed hundreds of thousands and it still relies on foreign aid to feed millions.
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100320/tbs-nkorea-skorea-politics-economy-0a37ea7.html
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