[More broadly, the Trump administration did not want its South Korean ally to push ahead with inter-Korean projects too quickly without concrete progress on denuclearizing North Korea. Last month, President Trump forced South Korea to walk back a proposal to lift some of its unilateral sanctions against North Korea, asserting that Seoul could “do nothing” without American approval.]
By Choe Sang-Hun
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A South Korean rail
station near the North Korean border. The United Nations
Security Council has
given the green light to a joint field study of the
South’s proposal to
connect the Koreas’ rail networks,
exempting it from
sanctions imposed on the North.
CreditAhn
Young-Joon/Associated Press
|
SEOUL,
South Korea — The United
Nations Security Council has approved a plan by North and South Korea to
conduct a joint field study on connecting their railways, exempting the project
from the extensive sanctions it has imposed on the North over its nuclear
weapons program, officials said on Saturday.
During his three summit meetings this year
with the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has
offered to help renovate North Korea’s decrepit railway system and link it with
the South’s, dangling the project as one of the biggest economic benefits the
North could expect should it denuclearize.
To whet the North’s appetite, South Korea
offered to send a train and engineers across the border to conduct a joint
field study on the conditions of the North Korean rail system. North Korea
quickly accepted.
But plans to conduct the study were thwarted
in August, and again last month, because of American concerns that it might
violate United Nations sanctions, which include severe limits on shipments of
fuel and other goods to the North. South Korea would have to bring fuel and
equipment into the North to conduct the study.
More broadly, the Trump administration did
not want its South Korean ally to push ahead with inter-Korean projects too
quickly without concrete progress on denuclearizing North Korea. Last month,
President Trump forced South Korea to walk back a proposal to lift some of its
unilateral sanctions against North Korea, asserting that Seoul could “do
nothing” without American approval.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
said the allies needed to make sure that “we don’t talk past each other, that
we don’t take an action or the South Koreans don’t take an action that the
other is unaware of or hasn’t had a chance to comment on or provide their
thoughts.”
“We do want to make sure that peace on the
peninsula and the denuclearization of North Korea aren’t lagging behind the
increase in the amount of interrelationship between the two Koreas,” he said.
“We view them as tandem, as moving forward together.”
The apparent discord raised fears of a rift
in the seven-decade United States-South Korean alliance.
This week, the allies moved to dispel such
concerns by launching a joint working group to coordinate their interactions
with North Korea. Lee Do-hoon, a South Korean official who attended the group’s
first meeting this week, later indicated that any misunderstanding between the
allies about the joint field study had been removed, saying Washington had
expressed strong support for it.
“As we pursue key projects between South and
North Korea, we have maintained that we will do so within the framework of
sanctions against the North and cooperate closely with the international
community,” the South’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday after the Security
Council exempted the railway field study from United Nations sanctions.
The Council’s decision only covers the field
study, however, and does not mean that South Korea is allowed to start the
major investments that would be needed to renovate the North Korean railways.
Washington insists, and Mr. Moon agrees, that such large investments can begin
only after international sanctions are lifted.
Mr. Moon has been eager to improve ties with
North Korea, opening the first inter-Korean liaison office in September and
demolishing 11 military guard posts this month within the
two-and-a-half-mile-wide Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas. The
North dismantled the same number of guard posts along the border. Mr. Moon has
urged Washington to ease sanctions once North Korea takes significant steps
toward giving up its nuclear arms. Doing so would encourage North Korea to
speed up denuclearization, he says.
But there is deep concern in Washington that
North Korea might renege on its commitment to denuclearize once sanctions are
eased. So despite North Korea’s push for relief, Mr. Trump says Washington will
keep “maximum” sanctions in place until the North denuclearizes.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim have agreed in
principle to meet again to follow up on their first summit talks in Singapore
in June, at which Mr. Kim made a vague promise to “work toward the complete
denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” in return for new relations with
Washington.
But subsequent talks have stalled over the
time and place of a second summit meeting, and over the details of how North
Korea would disarm.
South Korea has long dreamed of building a
trans-Korea railroad that could connect its trains to China and to the
Trans-Siberian Railway. The North lies between the South and China, and such a
rail connection would give the South a faster way to send exports that are now
shipped by sea to China and Europe. It would also provide a shortcut for
bringing in Russian oil and other natural resources.
But analysts say creating such a rail link
would be an enormous task, requiring extensive confidence-building talks
between the North and South and billions of dollars to renovate the North’s
decrepit rail system, not to mention the lifting of international sanctions.
The two Koreas briefly connected short
stretches of railway across their border in 2007, but further efforts to
reconnect the systems were suspended as the countries’ relations soured over
the North’s nuclear pursuits.
