North opening is genuine, say experts, asking U.S. to respond

"It's Washington's turn now," a South Korean government official said Friday as news flooded in about the changes on the Korean Peninsula. The two Koreas agreed to link their roads and railroads; Tokyo and Pyeongyang made a surprising announcement that their leaders will meet for the first time ever.

"It is hard to keep up with the sweeping changes in the North," the official said. "North Korean officials are probably as surprised as we are."

Pyeongyang's recent decision to open up is no cautious experiment. North Korean military authorities long blocked any decision that would permit work inside the Demilitarized Zone. That the inter-Korean economic cooperation committee has now taken such a decision means the country has been "unlocked."

The reconnected railroads between the two Koreas will restore the severed link between the Korean Peninsula and Russia. Thus, North Korea will become an important junction connecting Europe, Russia and China with South Korea and Japan. North Korea will soon emerge as a logistics hub for trade between east and west, North Korea watchers predict.

The decision to build an industrial complex in Gaeseong is also a sign that Pyeongyang intends to end its reclusiveness. "About 100 South Korean firms will do business there, and a labor force of 500,000 North Koreans will be employed for the next decade," the Seoul official said. There is no doubt that Pyeongyang is aware that such exposure will have an impact, but it still decided to build the industrial complex in the border city.

Pyeongyang's decision to expand its diplomatic reach is also a part of its open-door policy. This month's North Korea-Japan summit will pave the way for normal diplomatic ties. Compensation from Japan for its past aggression will also provide the North with cash for the enormous expense of the economic reform it undertook in July.

"Pyeongyang's willingness to normalize its relations with Tokyo signals that Pyeongyang is ready to improve relations with Washington, too," a South Korean Foreign Ministry source said. He added that Pyeongyang was mindful that Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi plans to meet the U.S. president before his visit to North Korea.

The North signaled its willingness for talks in July, when its foreign minister met the U.S. secretary of state, Colin Powell, at a regional security forum. Its approaches to Seoul, Washington and Tokyo are backed up by the confidence gained in restoring its traditional alliances with Beijing and Moscow, observers noted. China sees the stability of the peninsula as a precondition to its development in the next decade; Russia is determined to engage North Korea aggressively in order to open its road to Asia by linking the Trans-Korean and Trans-Siberian railroads.

The diplomatic offensive and economic reform are two sides of the same coin, experts said. "North Korea's recent changes are clearly distinguishable from its partial reforms in the past," Professor Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University in Seoul said. "Pyeongyang will soon come up with a new ideology to justify the changes."

by Oh Young-hwan