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

A court in Seoul has ordered Pyongyang to pay roughly $32.5m for blowing up an office in North Korea in 2020 that was intended to foster better relations between the two neighbours.

“The court has ruled the North should pay the South Korean government 44.6 billion won in damages,” a spokeswoman for the Seoul Central District Court told the AFP news agency on Wednesday.

The lawsuit over the destruction of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office marks the first time the South Korean government has sought damages directly from the North Korean state, media reports said.

The office building was constructed in the dormant Kaesong Industrial Complex, where South Korean companies once employed North Korean workers.

However, Pyongyang blew up the building in June 2020 after days of rising tensions when activists in the South sent balloons carrying anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border, with the North denouncing the office as “useless”.

South Korea said it would “review the necessary follow-up measures”, though experts consider it unlikely that Pyongyang would ever pay damages over the demolition of the building in the North Korean city of Kaesong.

The case was filed in 2023 under the government of then-South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol, who took a hard line on North Korea before he was ousted following his disastrous martial law declaration.

The office opened in September 2018, days before then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in travelled to Pyongyang for his third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

About 20 officials from each side were stationed at the office in the following months until operations were suspended in January 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inter-Korean relations reached a high point in 2018, when Moon and Kim held three summits. But ties deteriorated after a meeting between Kim and United States President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, collapsed in February 2019.