SEOUL: Every weekend, tens of thousands of candle-bearing students turn up across 40 major cities in South Korea to protest a US military court’s acquittal last month of two US soldiers who ran over two 14-year-old schoolgirls on their way to a birthday party.
“I feel humiliated by the United States’ high-handed attitude,” said Kim Young-Chull, a 15-year-old student who joined one such demonstration in this country long touted as a US ally. “My peer friends, (Shim) Mi-sun and (Shin) Hyo-sun, were killed by US solders but our nation was unable to try them in a Korean court.”
This was so because the soldiers were among the 37,000 US troops stationed in South Korea under a Status of Forces Agreement that gives US officials jurisdiction over crimes committed by troops while on duty.
Similar angry sentiments have been coming from North Korea in radio broadcasts monitored by South Korea media. “So do we share the outrage of South Korea against US arrogance who let go of the US soldiers who killed our students and should be punished,” said North Korea’s state-run broadcaster.
In short, the rising hostility against the United States in South Korea has been warming its ties with the North.
Of late, North and South officials have been talking amiably about opening a special industrial zone in eastern Gaesung in the north, some 70 kms north of Seoul.
If the plan goes ahead, both Koreas hope that, by early 2004, about 300 South Korean companies would be employing 250,000 Northerners and 360,000 Southerners working together at textile, leather and metal factories in Gaesung.
This warmth in North-South ties comes at a crucial time for North Korea, the object of international suspicion after it admitted that it is undertaking a secret nuclear weapons programme in breach of international commitments.
As a result of that admission, Pyongyang’s two Cold War-era “big brothers” — Japan and China — have been putting pressure on it to drop its nuclear programme.
Japan has been giving less food aid to the Stalinist state that is one million tons short of food to feed its 22 million people.
China recently arrested flamboyant flower magnate Yang Bin on charges of fraud and other commercial crimes.
But despite these setbacks in international diplomacy, North Korea says it would push ahead with all joint projects with South Korea, including plans to reconnect rail and road lines across their border.
Analysts say that there is a limit to how much results the current North-South warmth can bring to Pyongyang’s crippled economy in the wake of its nuclear admissions.
Luring capital into the North Korea remains elusive as long as the US remains hostile to international trade with North Korea, they point out.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.