As Congress prepares to consider the pending trade agreements when it returns this September, it’s desperation time for the protectionists who oppose these job-creating deals.  In a last-ditch effort to undermine support for the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS), opponents are circulating the bogus accusation that the agreement will allow North Korean goods into the United States. Specifically, they charge that KORUS will allow goods made in the special industrial zone in Kaesong, North Korea, to enter the U.S. market and even allow such goods to benefit from tariff cuts under KORUS.

Is there any truth in these charges? None. Zip, zilch, nada.

Here are the facts:

• It is illegal to import anything from North Korea, and KORUS will not change that. In fact, President Obama on April 18, reaffirmed by means of Executive Order the standing policy of the United States that “the importation into the United States, directly or indirectly, of any goods, services, or technology from North Korea is prohibited.”   By the way, it is not true, as opponents claim, that Hyundai Motors has leased land that is “located in North Korea.”   In fact, an entirely separate company known as Hyundai Asan has an investment deal in North Korea – and with KORUS, no company, including Hyundai Asan, will be allowed to export anything from North Korea to the United States.
• Opponents also claim that KORUS FTA rules of origin would surreptitiously allow North Korean goods from Kaesong to be imported into the United States. Rules of origin are far more technical and complicated than a simplistic “100 percent minus 35 percent equals 65 percent” allowable North Korean content. Virtually any product exported under the KORUS FTA would be far more than 35 percent South Korean in origin.  Moreover, U.S. sanctions against North Korea always trump the KORUS FTA. As long as U.S. sanctions against North Korea remain in place, the allowable percentage of Kaesong content in South Korean goods is zero.
• North Korea has attacked South Korea twice in the past 18 months, so why on Earth would Washington or Seoul do the North any favors? North Korea’s unprovoked artillery attack on South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island less than a year ago (November 23, 2010) hit both military and civilian targets, killing four South Koreans and injuring 19. Just eight months before that, on March 26, a North Korean torpedo sank the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, killing 46 seamen and wounding 56. North Korea launches wild threats at South Korea on a daily basis, regularly promising to “turn Seoul into a lake of fire,” for example.
• In these circumstances, South Korea and the United States have no interest in rewarding North Korea’s behavior. Even before these latest attacks from the North, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak had definitively ended the “Sunshine Policy” of engagement with North Korea set in motion a decade earlier by one of his predecessors. South Korea has banned new investment in Kaesong under any circumstances.
• One chief goal of KORUS is to strengthen our already robust alliance with democratic South Korea in the face of North Korean threats. The U.S. alliance with South Korea is “the linchpin of not only security for the Republic of Korea and the United States but also for the Pacific as a whole,” as President Obama has said. The democratic South Korean government has repeatedly said the same.

In sum, these bogus charges are just that — bogus.