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Category: Sunshine

December 17, 2014

Max Fisher’s criticism of the Sunshine Policy is spot-on

Washington Post alumnus Max Fisher, now writing at Vox, presents a graph and data showing how, despite all of its abhorrent behavior, North Korea’s trade (most of it with China and South Korea) has grown, and how that leads to more abhorrent behavior. The way it’s supposed to work is that North Korea’s belligerence, aggression, and horrific human rights abuses lead the world to isolate it economically, imposing a punishing cost and deterring future misdeeds. What’s actually happening is that North...

Categories Appeasement/Kaesong/Sunshine
December 12, 2014

This is why no rational person would invest in Kaesong

North Korea has unilaterally raised those “wages” that South Korean companies pay the North Korean regime for labor at Kaesong—wages that the workers probably never see, and that for all the Unification Ministry knows, are used to buy iron maidens, centrifuge bearings, and 300-millimeter rocket fuses. The Unification Ministry isn’t happy, but only because wage hikes are bad for business: “Our firm position is that it’s impossible to revise the wage system without consultations between the South and North,” the...

Categories Kaesong
November 26, 2014

Oh, so this is what pissed the North Koreans off.

Speaking at the International Democrat Union last Friday, Park said this: In a luncheon meeting with the party leaders, President Park Geun-hye said North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons had resulted in the country’s isolation and dire human rights conditions. “Now the North Korean people are faced with hunger and a tragic humanitarian situation as the North sticks to the path of… isolation by developing nuclear arms,” Park said during the luncheon at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae. “I...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
November 14, 2014

Suki Kim recalls a “good student” in Pyongyang

Writing in The New York Times, Kim recalls a young North Korean student who made her uncomfortable with his risky questions about government in America: What I had just described was, more or less, democracy. I could not read his expression, but he thanked me and excused himself. That evening, I discussed my growing fears about the student’s motives with my teaching assistant. There was nowhere we would not be overheard, so we took a walk around campus, hoping it...

Categories Foreigners in N. Korea/Subversion/Sunshine
November 4, 2014

Another Kaesong firm folds

An unidentified small manufacturer for watch and mobile phones cases on Wednesday submitted an application for dissolution to the committee handling affairs at the joint park, according to officials from Seoul’s unification ministry. It marked the second case since June 2009 that South Korean firms operating at the Kaesong Complex have closed their businesses. It also marked the first time since the operation of the park had been halted briefly last year. The company, which had employed about 100 North...

Categories Kaesong
October 6, 2014

I’d tell you what I think of North Korea’s sudden mini-summit …

but Robert Koehler has already told you roughly what I think, so I can save most of the keystrokes. North Korea has had more false rehabilitations than Linsday Lohan, Robert Downey Jr., and the entire membership of Grateful Dead, combined. It would take nothing less than the announcement of a coup d’etat for me to take this at all seriously. I wonder if Pyongyang’s Southern Wind ploy means that its Hostage ploy with Japan is about to blow up, as predicted....

Categories North-South/Sunshine
October 6, 2014

Prediction: the Kaesong worker safety inquiry will be a whitewash.

You may recall that several weeks ago, some North Korean workers at Kaesong fell ill with symptoms of benzene poisoning. The bad news is that we still haven’t heard a peep of protests on the workers’ behalf from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, for some reason. The good news is that the Korean government cares enough about appearances to have ordered a safety inquiry: The South Korean government began a two-month probe Thursday into the working conditions at 33 factories in the...

Categories Kaesong
October 3, 2014

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...

Categories Kaesong
September 25, 2014

Seoul to Pyongyang: Let’s talk about human rights.

“Not only in high-level talks but also in any occasions of inter-Korean dialogue in the future, (Seoul) expects to have comprehensive discussion on all sorts of humanitarian issues including human rights,” unification ministry spokesman Lim Byeong-cheol said in a briefing. “If high-level talks are held (between Seoul and Pyongyang), I think it is desirable that they discuss all the issues they want to discuss including this (human rights) issue,” Lim said. [Yonhap] I’m not terribly impressed with Park Geun-Hye’s attention...

Categories Diplomacy/Human Rights/North-South/Sunshine
September 3, 2014

What if the capitalist North Korea is just as bad as the communist North Korea?

There are many reasons why the Sunshine Policy failed, most of them rooted in the character of the men who rule in Pyongyang, and in the character of the men in Seoul who conceived and executed it. And in that conception, the flaw that was obvious to some of us from the very beginning was that Sunshine — and its surviving derivatives — invested its monotheistic faith in economic reform, yet in practice (and to a large extent, in theory,...

Categories Capitalism/Engagement/NK Economics/Sunshine
August 27, 2014

North Korean workers at Kaesong show symptoms of exposure to toxic chemicals …

including benzene. If you wonder why people such as myself rail against slave labor and the lack of labor rights at Kaesong, this is why. A real independent union would have stood up for the workers and raised this issue long ago. I can’t say I have much confidence in the desire of either of the governments involved — much less the employers — to tell the truth about the exposure of help the victims; after all, that wouldn’t serve the financial or...

Categories Kaesong/Sunshine
July 2, 2014

RFA: N. Korea tells overseas trade reps not to use the internet

In our latest of edition of North Korea Perestroika Watch, Radio Free Asia, citing identified sources speaking on condition of anonymity, reports that Pyongyang has instructed its overseas money-men to stop using the internet. The regime is even threatening to seize their work and personal laptaps to enforce the order. The trade workers tell RFA that the order, which even includes the use of e-mail, is impeding their ability to do their jobs and earn foreign currency. A source living in China along...

Categories NK Economics/Sunshine
April 5, 2014

If Kaesong “wages” aren’t used to pay workers, what are they used for? (The Unification Ministry won’t comment.)

In yesterday’s post about Kaesong, I argued that by any reasonable definition, its North Korean workers are forced laborers, and that the best evidence we have suggests that the vast majority of their “wages” are probably stolen by the Pyongyang regime, through a combination of direct taxation and confiscatory exchange rates. My argument relied heavily on a recent study by the economist Marcus Noland, who has done an excellent job researching questions that most journalists have overlooked, addressing the ethical...

Categories "United" Nations/Appeasement/North-South/Sunshine
March 31, 2014

Dear President Park: He’s not that into you (updated with N. Korea’s rejection)

In every successful relationship, there are certain things one must not ask the other party to the relationship. No matter how much you may desire it, the answer will never be “yes.” The request itself will not be received well. Depending on the request, the special equipment it would require, and the identity of the other participants, it may even lead to the destruction of property or violence. In the relationship between North and South Korea, it is apparently no...

Categories North-South/Sunshine
February 25, 2014

Royce goes to Seoul, calls for cutting off Kim Jong Un’s cash

So Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was in Seoul last week, and sat down for an interview with Yonhap to talk North Korea: “It seems that the strategy that slows down North Korea the most is not allowing them access to the hard currency which they use in order to create their offensive nuclear weapons capabilities,” said Royce in an interview with Yonhap News Agency in Seoul.  Royce is now in Seoul along with a delegation...

Categories Sanctions/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Politics
February 4, 2014

Post-Sunshine South Korea is sober, pragmatic, and grouchy.

In this post last week, I cited polling data showing how South Koreans’ views of North Korea have hardened in recent years, representing a dramatic swing since the fervent anti-Americanism and pro-appeasement sentiment of the Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun years. I reckoned that the 2010 Cheonan and Yeonpyeong attacks were the tipping point in this shift, but a wealth of polling data from the Pew Global Attitudes Project changes my mind about this. I wish the data...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Sunshine/U.S. & Korea
November 7, 2013

Kaesong running at half-capacity as investors trickle away

When Kaesong reopened after a five-month shutdown, I speculated that the shutdown would have lingering adverse effects on some of the operations there — that some of the manufacturers would have lost suppliers and customers, experienced workers would not return, credit would be overextended, and machinery and materials would have degraded. Sure enough, Kaesong still hasn’t recovered from the shutdown. Contrary to South Korean government claims that it’s running at 80% capacity, the true figure is just 50%. That may be as good...

Categories North-South/Sunshine