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A ceremony on Thursday marked the test run of the Gyeongui and Donghae rail lines crossing the border between North and South Korea. It was just a one-off test and the distance covered was just 27.3 km for the Gyeongui line and 25.5 km for the Donghae line, but the significance of the event was far greater. It was the first time since the 1950-53 Korean War that a train crossed the Demilitarized Zone, opening a new chapter in inter-Korean relations. It took 15 years to get here after the two Koreas agreed in 1992 to reconnect severed rail lines and roads.
But the road ahead is even longer. It cost South Korean taxpayers W545.4 billion (US$1=W928) to reconnect the railways, including construction on the North Korean side. It would be a shame to have spent all of this money for one test run. For regular services, South Korea needs to get a permanent guarantee of safe passage from the North Korean military, to which the North has already agreed in non-military inter-Korean talks. In other words, South Korea has to ask for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il¡¯s approval twice for the same matter. Due to this absurd demand, it¡¯s impossible to tell when the reconnected rail lines will really open.
For the rail project to deliver both political and economic benefits, it must be linked with the Trans China Railway and Russia¡¯s Trans Siberia Railway. North Korea¡¯s rail system is obsolete. They say it is difficult to reach speeds beyond 40 km an hour, while it will take at least W3 trillion to modernize North Korea¡¯s rail system. In reality, nobody knows how much more it will cost. This is the task we are faced with.
From the day¡¯s ceremony, it may look as if peace has finally arrived on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea¡¯s unification minister, who attended the test run ceremony, said, ¡°The (South Korean) public must reflect about just how much they really did to uphold peace.¡± It¡¯s as if he¡¯s scolding the South Korean public for doing nothing while North-South Korean relations warmed all by themselves.
Zhang Liangui, a senior expert on North Korea at the Communist Party's Central Party School in Beijing, says, ¡°Kim Jong-il has not given up on nukes.¡± Zhang added, ¡°He will hold the South Korean public hostage and maintain firm control over North-South Korean relations.¡± That is the reality facing South Korea. It¡¯s a crisis and a tragedy that cannot be changed by any number of ceremonies however well packaged. And if rail connections, summits or any other event should obscure that reality and delay the nuclear dismantlement, then they are actually bad for the people in the Korean Peninsula.
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