Having a lump surgically removed from your head turns your mind to things other than the Korean Peninsula, but the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex has helped me refocus. Lots of things are puzzling about this development.
Why now? Kaesong has been operating since 2002 and calls within the ROK and from some other quarters for its closure have been strident. Yet it survived the DPRK’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty, nuclear tests, rocket tests, a major shift in ROK politics in 2008, attacks at sea, the shelling of ROK territory, closure by the DPRK – the list is not exhaustive. Why react to a failed rocket test, rather than earlier to the alleged hydrogen bomb test? And if Kaesong was really critical to funding the DPRK’s nuclear and missile program, as was briefly claimed by the minister for unification last week – long a vociferous charge in some quarters – was not the ROK evading the very sanctions that some of those vociferous voices have helped to establish?
Having a lump surgically removed from your head turns your mind to things other than the Korean Peninsula, but the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex has helped me refocus. Lots of things are puzzling about this development.
Why now? Kaesong has been operating since 2002 and calls within the ROK and from some other quarters for its closure have been strident. Yet it survived the DPRK’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty, nuclear tests, rocket tests, a major shift in ROK politics in 2008, attacks at sea, the shelling of ROK territory, closure by the DPRK – the list is not exhaustive. Why react to a failed rocket test, rather than earlier to the alleged hydrogen bomb test? And if Kaesong was really critical to funding the DPRK’s nuclear and missile program, as was briefly claimed by the minister for unification last week – long a vociferous charge in some quarters – was not the ROK evading the very sanctions that some of those vociferous voices have helped to establish?
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After Britain and North Korea re-established diplomatic relations in 2000, Hoare was appointed British Chargé d'affaires in Pyongyang; and his work laid the foundation for the establishment of a full embassy in the North Korean capital.
Previously, Hoare had been head of the Foreign Office's North Asia and Pacific Research Group. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1969 and was stationed in Seoul in 1981 1984 and in Beijing in 1988-1991.