Seoul court orders North Korea to pay $32.5m for blowing up office

What the report says

A court in Seoul has ordered North Korea to pay the South Korean government 44.6 billion won, or about $32.5 million, over the destruction of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong. According to Al Jazeera’s report, the ruling was issued by the Seoul Central District Court and concerns the building North Korea demolished in June 2020 after a period of rising border tensions.

The liaison office had been set up in 2018 as part of efforts to improve ties between the two Koreas. It was located in the dormant Kaesong Industrial Complex, where South Korean firms once operated with North Korean labor. The article says the office had been closed in January 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic before the explosion later that year.

Al Jazeera reports that the destruction followed anger in Pyongyang over anti-North Korea leaflets sent across the border by activists in the South. The North described the office as useless before blowing it up. The lawsuit filed by Seoul in 2023 was the first time the South Korean government directly sought damages from the North Korean state over the incident.

The report notes that South Korea plans to review follow-up steps, but analysts quoted in the article consider payment unlikely. The case also reflects the broader deterioration in inter-Korean relations after a brief period of rapprochement in 2018 and later setbacks in diplomacy.