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The U.S. State Department on Monday attempted to smooth Korean feathers ruffled by disparaging remarks about the joint-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex from Washington¡¯s North Korea human rights envoy. But the department said, "The world knows little about what actually goes on at Kaesong," -- the same words Special Envoy Jay Lefkowitz used in a Wall Street Journal article on Friday that incensed officials in Seoul, not least by its insinuation that South Korean firms there exploit their North Korean workers.
A State Department official said President George W. Bush was in favor of President Roh Moo-hyun¡¯s overall strategy to bring North and South towards reconciliation, adding he understood Kaesong to be a manifestation of this strategy.
Another U.S. government insider also said the controversial piece by Lefkowitz had not gone through normal advance review procedures. That implies that Lefkowitz's harsh critique of South Korea's little-monitored aid to the North and suggestion that North Korean workers at the complex are exploited would not have gone into the paper unchanged.
The damage being done, however, the department chose to use the same phrase as the envoy: "The world knows little about what actually goes on at Kaesong.¡±
Meanwhile, at the Seoul-Washington Forum held on Monday, Michael Green, who until December was the senior director for Asia policy at the White House, said South Korean concerns about the U.S. attacking the North were based on a myth. Green said high-ranking officials in the U.S. are fully aware that the country cannot start such a war. The forum was co-hosted by the Brookings Institute and the Sejong Institute with support from the Korea Foundation.
Green said the bigger problem was that progressive groups in South Korea nonetheless see the U.S. as a threat. He also said souring relations between Korea and Japan over the Dokdo islets can be attributed to the fact that progressive factions in Korea are driving conservative groups into a corner by citing their collaboration with Japanese colonizers in the past. The Japanese, meanwhile, are downplaying the issue as a matter for ¡°domestic use¡± of Korean politicians but not a serious diplomatic concern, Green added.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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