Seoul Should Join in Constricting North Korea’s Palace Economy

OFK favorite Sung-Yoon Lee, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review, presses a point that the South Korean government ought to be ready to hear by now. After a sophisticated recitation of the U.S. Treasury Department’s own constriction of the North, he argues:

The current ROK government now has its own chance to play a crucial role in determining the future of the Korean nation. As the self-professed sole legitimate government representative of the Korean people, Seoul must pursue a vigorous, coordinated policy of clamping down on North Korea’s financial transactions and illicit activities within its jurisdiction and in the territories surrounding the Korean peninsula.

At the very least, constricting Pyongyang’s palace economy would give Seoul leverage in managing the comprehensive North Korea problem that appeasement demonstrably did not. [Sung-Yoon Lee, Far Eastern Economic Review]

And from here, it gets better, but I’ll let you to Lee’s piece yourself to see the rest of it. I’d pressed this same point on two of President Lee’s advisors during lunch several months ago, but that was on Inauguration Day, when people probably weren’t listening to that sort of crackpot idea.

Change certainly has come, though thankfully, not in the ways that some had expected.