North Korea has not responded to South Korea’s June 9th proposal for
the quarterly general meeting of a bilateral committee established to oversee the
development of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) to be held on June 19th.
Therefore, Seoul has abandoned
plans for the meeting.
The Ministry of Unification issued the decision earlier
today following the 4pm shutdown of an inter-Korean communications line at
Panmunjom. North Korea did not respond in any way to the proposal, either through the
communications line or via the Kaesong administrative structure itself. As a
result, the first half of 2014 is unlikely to see a general meeting of the North-South Joint Committee.
When the committee was initially formed in late August last year, North and South
Korea agreed to hold quarterly general meetings in order to coordinate concrete
steps for the “developmental normalization” of the Kaesong Industrial Complex.
This followed a tumultuous early 2013, during which it seemed possible that the
KIC would close down completely.
There are a further four distinct committees under the joint committee
structure, which are also meant to meet once a month. However, since a
January meeting of one such committee dealing with issues of transit, communications
and customs, none of these has met in accordance with the agreement. This means
that there has been little or no progress on plans to
introduce the Internet and international telecommunications capacity within the
KIC.
