With the end of the Cold War on the back of reduced tension and peaceful coexistence between East and West, the world entered into a new order on the strength of reconciliation and cooperation. East Germany and West Germany that started conducting exc...
With the end of the Cold War on the back of reduced tension and peaceful coexistence between East and West, the world entered into a new order on the strength of reconciliation and cooperation. East Germany and West Germany that started conducting exchanges in earnest in the early 1970s were unified in the last century, and China and Taiwan that initiated active exchanges in the private sector in the 1980s are improving relationships based on enhanced exchanges and cooperation.
However, Korea still maintains an armistice agreement that ended the Korean War that left a serious wound to Korean people half a century ago, and the two Koreas that are still heavily armed are confronting each other. Various efforts have been made to reduce tensions between the two Korea at national and global levels, and 4-party talks aimed to settle permanent peace on the Korean peninsular were held from 1997 to 1999.
Although they were suspended without any tangible results, there are still a lot of reasons to be optimistic.
In particular, with the inauguration of the 6th Republic, the policy toward the North has been more facilitated, and Sunshine Policy implemented by the Kim Dae-jung administration brought in drastic changes in relationships between the two Koreas. And the changes led the two Koreas to facilitate exchanges. However, despite a great deal of achievements, there are still many institutional and legal stumbling blocks to physical and manpower exchanges between the South and the North.
Recently, the North nuclear issue and our internal problems caused by illegal transfer of money to the North temporarily pressured bilateral relationships. However, even under the difficult circumstances, the two Korean exchanged ratifications on August 6, 2003 officially enforcing Agreement on Economic Cooperation between the South and the North heralding a new future in bilateral exchanges and cooperation.
In addition, the Roh Moo-hyun administration that was inaugurate in 2003 put forward the establishment of a peace regime on the Korean peninsular as the most important task in diplomacy, unification and security sectors in an effort to end insecure armistice situation and lay the foundation for developing into the hub of Northeast Asia.
Recently, the bilateral relationships went through difficulties in the wake of North Korea’s nuclear tests, but as inter-Korean economic cooperation was facilitated and inter-Korean roads were re-connected, visitors to the two Koreas numbered as many as 100,000 and inter-Korean trade recorded as muchas $1.35 billion.
However, the inter-Korean relationships have been mostly concentrated on political and diplomatic sectors, and sufficient legal and institutional systems have not been in place. In order to push for systematic and stabilized inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation, it is necessary to be equipped with legal and institutional systems, and toward this end, in-depth research needs to be conducted.
In this regard, laws on inter-Korean economic cooperation such as Act on Inter-Korean Exchanges and Cooperation established in the early 1990s need to go through drastic revisions and new laws need to be enacted in consideration of experiences in inter-Korean trade and legislative environment.
In the meantime, efforts need to be made to facilitate inter-Korean economic exchanges on the back of legalism by inducing separate laws and regulations on inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation to harmonize with basic laws on inter-Korean exchanges and to keep abreast of the times through continuous revisions.
In addition, it is necessary to establish Special Unification Economic Area Act according to which Special Unification Economic Area that can be comparable to Gaeseong Industrial Complex in the North is installed in the bordering area in an effort to help successfully implement the current Gaeseong Industrial Development Project, expand inter-Korean economic cooperation and establish an economic community maximizing mutual economic complement between the two Koreas and operating a unified economic zone connecting the Gaeseong Industrial Complex to the Unification Economic Area as a neutral tax free area independent of the authorities of the two Koreas that can contribute to realizing an economic community on the Korean peninsular.