Brinkmanship often works in inter-Korean negotiations, as it does in other settings. This time, however, it is not Pyongyang but Seoul that has given the ultimatum. And the brinkmanship has worked.
On Wednesday, South Korea authorized 280.9 billion won ($250.1 million) in insurance payments to its companies that had been forced to suspend manufacturing in the North Korean border town of Gaeseong during the past four months. The decision to make insurance payments was a thinly veiled ultimatum toward Pyongyang, which had broken up the talks on the future of the industrial complex. It was a follow-up to Seoul’s earlier threat of “grave measures,” diplomatic speak meaning a pullout of all companies from the complex for good, unless Pyongyang returned to the negotiating table soon.
The warning did not fall on deaf ears. It did not take many hours until Pyongyang broke an eight-day silence, accepted Seoul’s final offer made on July 28, and agreed to resume talks next Wednesday. It apparently dawned on Pyongyang that Seoul started the process of withdrawing its companies when it decided to make insurance payments to them.
The past rounds of talks had centered on who must be held accountable for the suspension of operations in the complex and what must be done to prevent a recurrences. On July 25, Pyongyang had walked out of the sixth round of talks, in which the South Korean delegation had told its counterpart that the companies would be pulled out unless they were guaranteed no stoppage in factory operations in the future.
In protest against joint South Korean-U.S. maneuvers, Pyongyang had banned South Korean company officials from crossing the Demilitarized Zone into the industrial complex on April 3 and withdrew 53,000 workers from the assembly lines on April 9. It had since threatened to turn the site of the industrial complex into military bases, claiming that Seoul must be held accountable and demanding that it promise to refrain from doing anything detrimental to the complex’s normal operations. In particular, it had called on Seoul not to make military threats to North Korea and to desist from supposedly slanderous remarks, such as the description of the complex as a “dollar box for the Kim Jong-un regime” by the South Korean news media.
Pyongyang became more accommodative this time when it issued a special statement on its decision to return to the talks on Wednesday. Instead of making any mention of South Korean military threats and slanderous comments, it proposed both Seoul and Pyongyang give assurances against any stoppage in factory operations. It also proposed a joint guarantee that normal operations would be affected by no political development under any circumstances.
This is not to say that the change in Pyongyang’s stance was fully satisfactory for Seoul. To its chagrin, the North Korean statement still implied the South was partly responsible for the suspension of operations in the complex.
But Seoul would be a fool if it wanted to take all in negotiations with Pyongyang. It will have to give Pyongyang room to save face if the negotiations are to produce any desirable results.
