It took 91 days, continuous petitions and one ultimatum for the South Korean businessmen of the North-South joint Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) to go back to the industrial park they were kicked out in April empty-handed.

After mutual threats of withdrawal, the North and South Korean governments finally met Saturday and "agreed in principal" to resume the park, where business has been suspended since April 9, just less than two months before the KIC's 10th-year mark.

While the exact date for the resumption of business has not fixed yet, the Kaesong businessmen were allowed to visit the KIC on Wednesday to maintain their facilities which they insist are being damaged in the monsoon season. 

Even if the promise by the two governments to resume business is fulfilled soon, the damage caused by being "a political hostage," as one KIC businessman described his situation, is hard to heal.

The Corporate Association of Kaesong Industrial Complex (CAKIC), representing 123 South Korean companies in the KIC, estimates their losses as exceeding as least 1 trillion won ($875 million) while the South Korean government calculates around 700 billion won of loss.

Yoo Chang-guen, vice president for the CAKIC and president of IT company SJTECH, described the losses to his company as "enormous," saying  losing clients and North Korean IT workers he spent three years to train has left his company teetering on the edge of a cliff.

 "It's really unpredictable how longer my clients are willing to wait and what will happen to my company," Yoo told the Global Times. "I might have to train new North Koreans workers again, if my previous workers do not come back."

High risks

Lost clients may be unwilling to resume the risk again. Kaesong, often cited as "the last bastion" in the South-North partnership, was once the only safe bet, which survived even two deadly inter-Korean clashes in 2010. 

But as the impasse grows longer, demoralization has grown among Kaesong's companies, whose cumulative production hit $2 billion as of January this year.

Seventy-six out of 96 insured South Korean companies have already applied for insurance payments as of June 27, according to the Export-Import Bank of Korea. Korean media speculates that this could mean a permanent exit from the KIC considering they have to return insurance funds and must reinvest in equipment that they claim is being damaged.

Chung Dong-young, South Korea's unification minister when the Kaesong Complex was established, told the Global Times that the KIC standoff would be  resolved one way or another but at the cost of participants in the inter-Korean cooperation. 

"More than 6,000 small and big companies are involved in the KIC in direct and indirect ways and their livelihood is being destroyed," Chung said. 

 "As this goes on, around 60 or 70 percent of our employees have left the company already, and those who stayed are enduring salary cuts or taking unpaid leave," said Choi Dong-nam, who entered the KIC in 2008 to run a garment factory. 

The KIC is not the only area hit.  Mt. Kumgang tourism, which allowed South Koreans to visit the North Korea's scenic mountain through a road route through Kosung county in Kangwon province, changed lives of many villages and thousands of people after it began in 1998, but was suspended in 2008 after the shooting of a South Korean tourist by a North Korean soldier. 

Lost shops

About 40 small businesses operating in the Mt. Kumgang tour resort were kicked out. 

Park Gi-bok, who runs a supermarket located in the route to the Unification Observatory and the Mt. Kumgang, was relatively lucky.

"There used to be 10 supermarkets who served Kumgang tourists back then; now there are only two - mine and the other one next door," said 77-year-old Park.

"That (the incident) turned the whole village upside down."

Throughout the towns and villages, many restaurants, lodgings, souvenir shops stand empty with furniture and even remaining some products piled in dust.

In the course of the last five years, the number of tourists visiting Kosung country decreased to 2 million people from 7 million and around 400 restaurants, stores and hotels were shut down, forcing many into debt and effectively wiping out thousands of jobs.

In the motherland's name

With inter-Korean relationships tense and complex, economic hardship usually takes a back seat when things turn hostile.

Petitions as well as lawsuits against the South Korean government have  failed. A business owner, who became a garbage collector after going bankrupt, filed a lawsuit against the government demanding compensation for the closure of the Mt. Kumgang tourism. But the court ruled that the government fulfilled its fundamental duty of protecting its people by pulling out the workforce from Mt.Kumgang.

But the two sides seem to want to seek a compromise over the KIC.

"North Korea is losing more than 50,000 job opportunities, with its poor foreign currency reserves decreasing, while South Korean company owners were forced to close their companies and fled from the industrial park," Cai Jian, deputy director of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times.

The two governments, which will meet again on Wednesday to further discuss the details and conditions over resumption of the complex, are likely to reconcile despite the acute tensions and different demands they have for each other, according to many experts. 

"I believe that the industrial park will reopen," said Cai. "The KIC is a very important communication channel connecting North and South: Both sides wouldn't hope to cut it."

 "The core issue (for the South) is how to prevent the recurrence of suspension, so it would be difficult to just reopen the park,  as North Korea is demanding," Park Hyung-joong, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said according to South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.   

With reconciliation around the corner, Yoo and other KIC businessmen can finally draw breath, at least for a while. However, a repetition of this kind of tug-of-war could jeopardize future economic partnerships, according to Chung and many observers.

"If their livelihood is at stake, no one would want to participate in any kind of inter-Korean cooperation in the future," Chung noted, adding that "even if that's for the greater purpose of peace and unification."

"So the government shouldn't be so ignorant of people's needs under the name of political principles. They are the actual participants for the bilateral economic ties," Chung said.

Liu Yunlong contributed to this story