Inter-Korean trade surges 36% this year

Despite rising cross-border tension, the trade between South and North Korea surged 36 percent from a year ago to $320 million in the first two months of this year, government data showed Friday.

The data provided by the Korea Customs Service indicated that the trade via the inter-Korean industrial complex has not been affected by tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea slapped sanctions on the North in May 2010 in retaliation for the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship earlier that year, though it keeps intact the complex in the North‘s western border city of Gaeseong.

The complex, a key outcome of the inter-Korean summit in 2000, marries South Korean capital and technology with cheap labor from the North. It is now home to more than 120 South Korean small and medium-sized companies.

Tensions have flared anew in recent weeks as the two Koreas traded militaristic rhetoric against each other over Seoul’s defamation of the dignity of North Korea‘s new leader Kim Jong-un and his late father, former leader Kim Jong-il. (Yonhap News)