By Choi Yearn-hong

SEOUL South Korea is planning to send electric power to the Hyundai-created industrial complex at Kaesong, North Korea. Everyone knows that South Korea is an energy-poor nation on Earth. All its petroleum is imported. About 40 to 50 percent of all electric power comes from the nuclear power plants. The Korea Electric Power Company is planning to build 14 more nuclear power plants in the near future to cope with the increasing energy consumption of South Korea, not including the Kaesong industrial complex. Can South Korea help North Korea in the energy field? My answer is an emphatic ?o!

The nation? sunshine policy is becoming reckless, in the sense that it is not concerned about the cost-side front anymore. South Korea does not have unlimited resources. However, the government acts as the richest nation on Earth with unlimited resources. Whatever North Korea wants, South Korea provides. I have never seen such a Santa Claus on any Christmas eve in my whole life. Does South Korea have unlimited resources such as rice and other grains, fertilizer, cement, medicine, cash? The millions of U.S. dollars are the basic unit of South Korean aids to North Korea.

The Hyundai corporation has been paying $8 million monthly for the northern Mt. Kumgang hiking project. No wonder the Hyundai? financial difficulties! South Korea has paid several million dollars to the North Korean musical and circus performers in the year 2000. It paid billions of won for the three-day family reunions in hotel rooms (not free to visit relatives homes). Now, the South Korean government attempts to import one million tons of rice in order to give it to North Korea. I have never seen this generous government in the case of the South Korean poor.

Is this fair to South Koreans? My answer is No! Hyundai has been rescued by the government? loan guarantee. If the Hyundai fails to survive, the tax payers will have to bear the brunt of the loss. The South Korean government has already guaranteed more than 100 billion won in order to rescue the dying business organizations and banking organizations during the 1997-1998 years. Many prominent economists are predicting that only 30 percent of the government loan guarantees will be OK. Therefore, 70 percent of the government loan guarantees will become the burden of the taxpayers. How innocent the South Korean people are! The most recent Hyundai difficulty to pay the debt will cost 20 billion won that the government guaranteed.

Foreign countries have praised the sunshine policy, but they don? pay anything to North Korea. So foreigners are neglectful of the South Korean people? agonizing burden. If I were a foreigner, I would praise the sunshine policy as President Clinton did. Can the U.S. send million tons of grain to North Korea? U.S. farmers want to be paid for exporting to North Korea. The U.S. can afford to send one million tons of grain, but it does not, as much as South Korea does.

Returning to electric power needed at Kaesong, I would like to propose to North Korea the construction of a light-water nuclear power plant there, with the money they receive from the Hyundai corporation? Mt. Kumgang hiking project.

My basic reason is very simple: South Korea failed to find even low-level radioactive waste disposal sites in the last 10 years due to the ?ot in My Back Yard! syndrome. South Korea will appreciate North Korea? offering of a low-level radioactive waste disposal site from South Korea. The depleted coal mine such as Aoji may be a good spot.

Once North Korea offered the disposal site for Taiwan-produced nuclear waste. Why not for South Korean waste then? South Koreans have been helping North Korea. North Korea should reciprocate similarly. This will serve as a fair gesture. Before South Korean President Kim Dae-jung asks for this kind of fairness, I hope and wish North Korean leader Kim Jong-il offers a North and South Korean nuclear waste disposal site voluntarily. I also hope and dream North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to come down to Seoul with his white flag next Spring.

Shilla? last king Kyongsun made the right decision in his demise from his kingdom one thousand years ago. I hope Leader Kim is as smart as King Kyongsun. North Korea has already demonstrated humiliatingly the demise of an independent nation. It has become a dependent nation of South Korea. Helping North Korea is good and desirable. However, the policy makers of the sunshine policy should know South Korea? limit, as South Korea has very limited resources even for the South Korean people. Smart policy makers should base the policy on cost-benefit analysis. Benefit may not be measurable exactly by monetary values. But the cost-benefit analysis should always be in their minds. The sunshine policy is nevertheless a unique public policy.


The writer is a professor at the University of Seoul Graduate School of Urban Sciences.