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ELUSIONS

By

WILLY STERN

T

oday none of Korea's
major companies will
trade openly with
Israel. The Korean govern-
ment has refused to allow
Israel to reopen its embassy
in Seoul, which was shut in
1979 due to budget
considerations.
The Koreans even reneged
on a promise made last May
to host an Israeli trade mis-
sion to the Far East, after
Saudi Arabia protested be-
hind the scenes. And official
Korean trade statistics inex-
plicably do not include Israel.
These facts have been made
known to the American
Steering Committee on Free
Trade with Israel, which was
set up in 1985 specifically to
encourage Korean and
- Japanese companies to trade
with Israel. So far the com-
mittee has focused on Japan,
where pressure has started to
bring results. A committee
spokesman in New York said
attention in 1988 will turn to
Korea.
There are three reasons for
Korea's overt commercial and
diplomatic discrimination
against Israel. The first is a
Korean reliance on Arab oil
and Arab business.
With the "unofficial" sup-
port of the Korean Foreign
Ministry, every major Korean
firm 'has submitted to Arab
blackmail and complied with
the Arab economic boycott of
Israel, which states that any
company that trades with
Israel cannot also trade with
an Arab company. The United
States passed laws in the
1970s making it illegal to
comply with the boycott, and
most European nations
subsequently followed suit.
The second reason for
isolating Israel is an unwill-
ingness in Korea to under-
take any sensitive diplomatic
initiatives that might upset
plans for the Seoul Olympic
Games - scheduled for this
summer.
South Korea also is worried
that Soviet-backed' North
Korea might pre-empt its
precious export markets. As
in Japan, Korea has a strong
pragmatic attitude of acting
in what Koreans see as their
commercial and political best
interests, in which morality
seldom plays a role.
Meanwhile, the Korea
Times, Seoul's English-

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Israel and Korea
At Trade Stalemate

12ayctiance-

Willy Stern is Tokyo
correspondent for the Israeli
newspaper Maariv.

language newspaper, reported
in February that anti-
Semitism had spread from
Japan to Korea. Leading
Koreans, according to the
newspaper, are blaming the
ongoing trade war with the
United States on an America
dominated by "Jewish Mafia
in control of business; press
media and even the CIA."
And works by Japan's
leading anti-Semitic authors
— who blame a Jewish con-
spiracy for everything from
trade friction to engineering
the Wall Street crash of 1929
— have now been translated
into Korean.
Korean businessmen say
the government here
pressures the private sector
not to trade openly with
Israel. Korean Foreign
Ministry officials naturally
deny this. They imply there
might be an improvement in
relaions with Israel, but not
until after the Olympics.
Korea has long initiated
that pressure from the United
States or Israel before then
would 'be counterproductive.
Israeli officials suspect this is
just a ploy to counter un-
wanted pressure. Meanwhile,
Korea continually refuses to
take any action against com-
pliance with the boycott.
Trade between Korea and
Israel remains negligible in
comparison with the total
foreign trade of the two coun-
tries. Last year, Israel sold
$19 million of goods to Korea,
of which 80 percent was fer-
tilizers and chemicals.
Although every major
Korean firm, including
Daewoo, Hyundai, Gold Star
and Samsung, refuses to sell
goods directly to Israel, Israel
still managed to import $73
million worth of products
from Korea in 1987.
Long ago, major American
firms called the Arabs' bluff
and quickly learned that the
boycott was, for all practical
purposes, a "paper tiger."
Every nation in the Pacific
Rim except Korea and, in-
cidentally, Japan, is now ac-
tively trading with both Arab
nations and Israel.
Korean business leaders say
they are ready to trade with
Israel on an "unofficial and
quiet" basis, often through a
third party, if there are profits
to be made. Still, Korean of-
ficials readily admit that fear
of Arab pressure has put a
damper on Israeli-Korean
trade. Trade with the Arab
world is so important for
Korea that the fall in oil
prices in 1985 depressed the
Korean construction industry.

