Australia-Korea FTA causes Kaesong backlash

I couldn’t have said it any better than this, and Jay Lefkowitz may be the last person who did:

“We can’t see how the Australian government in good conscience could bring such goods into the country,” he said. “It’s absolutely appalling, it basically would make the Australian government and Australian consumers complicit in the exploitation of North Korean workers by their government, and would ensure that Australian dollars are going directly into the pockets of the North Korean regime. Let’s be clear: it’s aiding and abetting exploitation.”

Mr Robertson said conditions in the GIC were “nowhere near basic international standards for labour rights or human rights”.

“They’re not free at all. What is happening in the Gaesung Industrial Complex is you essentially have workers who are controlled by North Korea being provided to the South as cheap labour.

“The payment doesn’t even go to the North Korean workers — it goes to an intermediary and the North Korean government takes a cut. Any sort of expression or effort to demand more rights from the workers would of course face retaliation. The only reason they stand for this kind of thing is because they’re from North Korea and they’re getting access to foreign currency.” [news.com.au]

Fortunately, that’s not going to happen without another negotiation and Australia’s agreement, and given the recent influence of Justice Kirby’s report on Australia’s public opinion and foreign policy, the obstacles to such an agreement seem considerable, to say the least.

The Australian deal on “outward processing zones” sounds a lot like the arrangement that was worked out in the U.S.-Korea FTA. Years later, Kaesong products still can’t be sold in U.S. markets … at least not legally. That isn’t likely to change anytime soon, because Kaesong remains intensely unpopular in Congress.