Seoul court orders North Korea to pay $32.5 million for 2020 liaison office blast

A South Korean court has ordered North Korea to pay 44.6 billion won ($32.5 million) in compensation for the destruction of a joint inter-Korean liaison office in 2020, a ruling that carries little practical force given the absence of any enforcement mechanism between the two states.

The Seoul Central District Court issued the order on Wednesday. The case marked the first time the South Korean government itself had sued Pyongyang, although private individuals have previously brought cases against the North Korean state over human rights abuses and other matters.

Seoul filed the suit in 2023, arguing that North Korea's decision to blow up the building in the border town of Kaesong amounted to an unlawful and violent act. The government said the detonation violated earlier agreements between the two countries and caused serious damage to mutual respect and trust.

The office, built with South Korean funding, had been shut since January 2020, when the North closed its borders over coronavirus concerns. It was empty when North Korean personnel used explosives to destroy it in June 2020. At the time, the demolition was widely read as a calculated display of anger aimed at pressuring Seoul amid stalled nuclear negotiations with Washington.

Those talks had unravelled after a second summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and then U.S. president Donald Trump in 2019, where the American side rejected North Korean demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities. The liaison office episode followed a period in which Pyongyang had criticised Seoul for failing to stop defectors from sending anti-North Korean propaganda leaflets across the border by balloon.

The lawsuit was brought under a conservative South Korean government that took a hard line on the North's nuclear and missile programmes and on its military support for Russia's war in Ukraine, while deepening security cooperation with the United States and Japan. South Korea has since shifted to a softer approach under liberal President Lee Jae Myung, who took office last year after his predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol was removed over a brief imposition of martial law in December 2024. North Korea has so far not responded to Lee's calls to resume diplomacy.

South Korea's Unification Ministry, which handles relations with the North, said it respects the court's decision and urged a return to inter-Korean engagement so that outstanding issues could be settled through dialogue and cooperation. North Korean state media had not commented on the ruling at the time of reporting.

In recent years, Kim has suspended meaningful diplomacy with the South and described it as his most hostile enemy, while expanding his nuclear and missile arsenal and building closer ties with Moscow and Beijing, a posture he has framed as part of a "new Cold War." Trump, now in his second term, has expressed interest in reviving dialogue with Kim and last month ordered the Pentagon to substantially reduce a major joint military exercise with South Korea, citing what he described as a good relationship with the North Korean leader. Pyongyang has dismissed those overtures and continues to insist that Washington drop denuclearisation as a precondition for talks.