Despite South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s eagerness for inter-Korean reconciliation, North Korea’s demolition of the joint liaison office in June showed how little Pyongyang has grown to care about relations with Seoul.

For Kim Jong Un, the inter-Korean summits of 2018 resulted in little more than lofty goals and flowery rhetoric. Large-scale infrastructure projects, massive South Korean tourism projects and significant inflows of finance never became more than ink on paper.

Seoul’s adherence to sanctions was ultimately much stronger than many observers anticipated, killing the majority of projects before they even began and imposing delays on even some of the most benign exchange projects imaginable.

But while the comprehensive web of United Nations and U.S. unilateral sanctions restricted inter-Korean relations from the outset, was there really nothing more that Seoul could have done to keep momentum going in the wake of the 2018 summits?

SANCTIONS RELIEF NECESSARY

Moon Jae-in knew from the outset that he’d have to help North Korea with sanctions relief in order for inter-Korean engagement to stand a chance of delivering tangible results.

That’s why, in the wake of his September 2018 visit to Pyongyang, Moon conducted a tour of European capitals to see if he could negotiate support for conditions-based sanctions relief.

But diplomatic sources told NK News that Moon’s calls for sanctions flexibility appeared tone deaf given the perceived absence of progress towards denuclearization.

As a result, the trip fell flat — Seoul’s efforts to tone down the European Union’s position on North Korea ended in a notable absence of any joint statement.

But faced with the challenge of convincing partners in both North America and Europe, Seoul could have, theoretically, taken things into its own hands and unilaterally relieved the sanctions within its control.

In fact, there are several sanctions, rules, and laws that Seoul could repeal by itself.

These include the so-called May 24 Measures imposed by the Lee Myung-bak government in 2010, along with two sets of unilateral sanctions designations imposed by the Park Geun-hye government in March and December of 2016 and the South Korea’s 1948-era National Security Act.

TAKING CONTROL

With the Blue House controlling unilateral sanctions and laws that could have been axed in Pyongyang’s favor, it’s somewhat strange that a government desperate to push ahead with inter-Korean cooperation would have left so many roadblocks in the way.

The May 24 Measures may have been left in place because of an overlap with other sanctions regimes and an absence of overriding political will.

“For the ROK to officially suspend the May 24 measures in the aftermath of the Moon-Kim summit in April or [the] Trump-Kim summit in June 2018, [it] would have required [a] delicate balancing act vis-a-vis the U.S. and the UN,” Sung-yoon Lee, a professor of Korea studies at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, told NK News.

The May 24 Measures were implemented due to North Korea’s sinking of the ROK’s Cheonan corvette in 2010, effectively shutting off all inter-Korean trade. The measures also prevented all new ROK investments in the North and forbade North Korean vessels from traversing South Korean waters.

By that logic, repealing the measures could have contradicted “U.S. and UNSC sanctions, both [of] which progressively got tougher through 2016 and 2017,” Lee said.

For example, the “ban on additional investment in Kaesong later [factored] in UN sanctions that banned joint ventures with North Korea,” said Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul.

Allowing inter-Korean trade in any form would have triggered a wide range of U.S. unilateral sanctions and — depending on cargo and North Korean vendors involved — could have potentially breached wide-ranging UN sanctions.

As a result, Go said that “the reversal would have had no practical impact” back in 2018, when summits with North Korea were in their prime.

Basically, Seoul “didn’t see the need to lift them unilaterally when inter-Korean dialogue was proceeding smoothly,” Go said.

“Back in 2018, the ROK government’s strategy was to [quickly] proceed with a denuclearization agreement between the U.S. and North Korea and use that to relax sanctions,” he added. “So, it wasn’t paying attention to the May 24 measures.”

Wang Son-taek, a veteran North Korea analyst and diplomatic correspondent for Seoul’s YTN Network, agreed that Seoul was much more focused on trying to reverse the UNSC sanctions against North Korea.

“They were distracted by the bigger missions, so they could not touch on the small points like the May 24 Measures,” he said.

Nevertheless, a repeal of these measures would be far from meaningless.

“One measure North Korea would have liked South Korea to lift was to allow its ships to use the Jeju Strait,” Go said, referring to a strip of sea that would have been a faster route between the peninsula’s east and west coasts.

Though the May 24 Measures wouldn’t have generated significant ROK investment into the North, repealing them would have shown Pyongyang that Seoul was willing to make a good-faith effort to transform the inter-Korean relations.

That might explain why, in October 2018, South Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha said that Seoul was “looking into” the possibility of lifting these measures.

Kang’s suggestion was quickly met with concerns both domestic and abroad. Seoul quickly walked back from Kang’s statement and clarified that the ROK in fact had no plans to lift the measures.

Nevertheless, the issue came up again in 2020 — close to the 10-year anniversary of the measures  — with the ROK suggesting that the May 24 sanctions no longer pose practical barriers to inter-Korean relations.

“Previous governments have allowed ‘flexibility’ and ‘exemption’ [of the May 24 Measures],” South Korea’s Ministry of Unification spokesperson, Yoh Sang-key, said at the time. “A large part of the [sanctions] have lost their effect.”

But just like when foreign minister Kang hinted of a similar change two years prior, the minister of unification was forced to clarify the next day, stating that Seoul was not actually considering a reversal of the measures.

LOWER HANGING FRUIT?

If Seoul lacked the political will to reverse the May 24 Measures, what stopped the abolition of some of South Korea’s other unilateral measures against the North?

Lee told NK News that reversing the dozens of Park Geun-hye-era designations would not make a practical impact.

For example, heavily-sanctioned individuals like Kim Yong Chol, Kim Yo Jong and Choe Hui traveled to South Korea and even the United States without much objection. Lee said it’s therefore a “reasonable assumption” to believe that the Moon administration to saw the “designations of individuals as mostly symbolic.”

“Therefore, there was no compelling need to remove designated persons from the list,” Lee said.

North Korea didn’t seem to object much, either.

“I am not certain how the ROK allows the removal of names from the sanctioned individuals and entities list, but if the U.S. case is of any guidance, [then] you’d need to go through an administrative process to clear your name,” Go said.

“I don’t think any of the sanctioned North Korean entities and individuals bothered to do so, nor did the regime pressure the government,” he added “So, why do it?”

Meanwhile, another missed opportunity to improve inter-Korean relations may have been the 1948 National Security Act, which effectively prevents South Koreans from consuming North Korean propaganda.

“I’ve never understood why the National Security Act couldn’t be eased,” said Aidan Foster-Carter, a long-time observer of inter-Korean relations at Leeds University.

UNILATERAL VALUE

After the demolition of the inter-Korean joint liaison office, Seoul quickly moved to pass rules and regulations that would complicate life for defector-activists who regularly send propaganda leaflets to North Korea.

Though it’s still unclear how these changes were received in Pyongyang, the crackdown on defector-activists may have contributed to Kim Jong Un’s sudden decision to “suspend” a raft of forthcoming anti-South Korea military moves on June 24.

Nevertheless, South Korea could have implemented the same legal changes in wake of the September 2018 inter-Korean declaration, which would have potentially removed the trigger for all of Pyongyang’s June 2020 anger.

So, even if the unilateral sanctions within South Korea’s control have limited value, would reversing them in better times have helped Seoul avoid confrontation with the North?

“No,” Lee said. “What North Korea seeks is wholesale lifting of UN sanctions and U.S. sanctions since early 2016, not the piecemeal delivery of aid by the South.”

Others agreed that reversing ROK sanctions would be of little concern to Pyongyang.

“North Korea believes their problems can only be solved by reaching an overarching agreement with the United States,” Go said. “South Korea is, at best, an intermediate step — at worst, a distraction.”

Even if Seoul had reversed the May 24 measures during the peak of summit diplomacy, Pyongyang would have found other reasons to display anger, Go said.

“Had the Moon administration dealt with them in 2018, then North Korea would have found new excuses [to justify the June tensions], such as having the National Security Law still in place,” he said.

Foster-Carter agreed.

“To be honest, I don’t think anything Moon could do would have made a blind bit of difference,” he said. “North Korea always wants hard cash, or hard stuff. Once it became clear that was not on, Kim Jong Un unceremoniously dumped Moon.”

Until wide-ranging UN sanctions against North Korea begin to be chipped away, it seems South Korea will have little appetite for reversing measures within Seoul’s control.

Edited by Kelly Kasulis and Oliver Hotham