• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Kang: North Korean Trade Potential

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: David C. Kang, Professor of Government, Dartmouth College and Adjunct Professor, Tuck Business School
Interviewer: Lee Hudson Teslik, Assistant Editor

December 17, 2007

On December 11, North and South Korea opened limited cross-border freight rail, connecting the countries for the first time in over fifty years. South Korea will use the service to send materials to the Kaesong Industrial Region, a North Korean special economic zone where several South Korean companies are already active. More generally, the two Koreas have pushed for deepening their trade relations, particularly following a historic inter-Korean summit in October 2007. David C. Kang, a professor of government at Dartmouth College and an adjunct professor at Tuck Business School, discusses the potential for North Korean trade. He says South Korea’s immediate interests lie mainly with improving ties and fostering growth and seeds of economic change in North Korea. But longer term, he says the North offers real economic potential, particularly as a long sought-after rail byway connecting Japan, South Korea, China, Russia, and Europe.

For the first time in over fifty years, cargo train service recently opened between North and South Korea. Right now it’s fairly limited, basically one train a day carrying goods to and from a specific industrial complex in North Korea. Is this mostly symbolic, or do you think it has much economic significance?

It doesn’t have huge economic significance in the overall GDP [gross domestic product] of North Korea. But it does have major economic significance in the fact that what North Korea had to do in order to let a train go through was an awful lot of adjustment. Legally, militarily, and in terms of how they’re going to set up a regularized system of exchange for getting people back and forth across the border. So that, actually, is fairly significant. It’s not like they just opened the door, in comes the train, and out it goes.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.