South Korea court orders North to pay for Kaesong liaison office blast
A South Korean court has ordered North Korea to pay 44.6 billion won (USD 32.5 million) for blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office in 2020, in a symbolic ruling that comes amid a prolonged freeze in relations between the two sides.
The Seoul Central District Court delivered the ruling on Wednesday, but South Korea has no clear way to make the North comply. The case relates to the destruction of the joint office in Kaesong after ties worsened following the collapse of nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington.
South Korea filed the suit in 2023, calling the demolition an unlawful and violent act that violated previous agreements and badly damaged "mutual respect and trust" between the two Koreas. It was the first time the South Korean government had sued Pyongyang, although individuals have previously taken legal action against the North over human rights abuses and other issues.
North Korea blew up the South Korean-built office in June 2020 after accusing Seoul of failing to stop North Korean defectors from sending anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets across the border by balloon. The office had already been shut in January that year when North Korea closed its borders over coronavirus concerns, and the building was empty when it was destroyed.
At the time, the demolition was widely seen as a calculated show of anger aimed at pressuring Seoul over stalled nuclear diplomacy with the United States. Former South Korean President Moon Jae-in, a liberal, had met Kim Jong Un three times in 2018 and helped arrange Kim's first summit with then US President Donald Trump in June that year. But the diplomatic push fell apart after the second Kim-Trump summit in 2019, when the United States rejected North Korea's demand for major sanctions relief in return for only a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
Kim has since halted all meaningful diplomacy with the South, called it his most hostile enemy and pushed ahead with his nuclear weapons programme while building closer ties with Moscow and Beijing as part of what he has described as a "new Cold War". In recent years, he has also expanded the North's missile and nuclear arsenal and deepened ties with Russia, including by sending thousands of troops and large quantities of weapons to support President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine.
South Korea's Unification Ministry said it respects the court's ruling and called for inter-Korean dialogue to resume so that "all issues between the South and North can be resolved through dialogue and cooperation". North Korean state media did not immediately comment on the decision.
The lawsuit was brought when Seoul was led by a conservative government that had taken a hard line on North Korea's nuclear and missile activities, its support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and had also strengthened security cooperation with the United States and Japan. Under current liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who took office last year after predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol was removed over his brief imposition of martial law in December 2024, South Korea has adopted a softer tone, but Pyongyang has not responded to Lee's calls to revive diplomacy.
Trump, now in his second term, has said he wants to restart talks with Kim and last month ordered the Pentagon to "substantially reduce" a major military exercise with South Korea, citing what he called a "good relationship" with the North Korean leader. But Kim's government has so far rejected Trump's offers of dialogue and demanded that Washington drop its insistence on denuclearisation before any talks resume.
The ruling marks a rare legal step by the South Korean government over the 2020 demolition, even though it remains unclear how the compensation order can be enforced while diplomacy between Seoul and Pyongyang remains stalled.
