Anju Links for 3/25: N. Korea Threatens to Do Us a Favor, Money We Can’t Follow, the FTA Circus, and S. Korea’s Slavery-Loving Unions

*   No.Please.Stop.   North Korea is threatening to pull  out of the  dreadful (for us) February 13th Agreed Framework 2.0 over  the RSOI / Foal Eagle exercises.

“This may entail such serious consequences as escalating the tension between the DPRK (North Korea) and the US and scuttling the six-party talks for the settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, arranged with so much effort.”  [Channel News Asia]

A KCNA statement wouldn’t be complete without a reference to its “self-defensive deterrence,” which is code for the nuclear weapons North Korea has supposedly agreed to give up. 

U.S. and South Korean forces have been  holding these exercises  together  annually for years.  Back in 1994, the North Koreans pressured President Clinton into permanently cancelling another annual exercise, Team Spirit.  They may be trying  for a similar accomplishment this year. 

*   Sorry, Mr. Felt, We Can’t Follow It.   North Korea’s perception that we’re delinquent on  our blackmail  payments may also have something to do  with this.   Starting in February, State pushed Treasury to  bring  its money laundering investigation of Banco Delta Asia to a quick conclusion.  Enter the law of unintended consequences:

On Friday, Bush administration officials insisted that the Chinese authorities were holding up the transfer and that the Chinese were looking to U.S. officials for guidance on how to return the funds without violating regulations against money laundering that required the money to be frozen in 2005.

The impasse has puzzled and frustrated those involved in the North Korea negotiations, and some public comments in the past week have led to an appearance of finger-pointing between the U.S. State and Treasury Departments.  [IHT, Steven R. Weisman]

Speaking as a complete amateur and outsider, it’s apparent that if you don’t know whose money it is, your investigation was concluded prematurely.  In our rush to give North Korea something that wasn’t rightfully its own, all we’ve done is get a lot of people pissed off at each other, and at us.

*   7,000 Koreans Protest U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement.  If you ask me, they may as well be protesting against joining the Holy Roman Empire.  For some thoughtful analysis, we turn to those who have owned this debate for the last year — the sociology majors.  Says one:   “I think (the) the FTA will make it easier to fire workers.   And he bases that on absolutely nothing.

The two governments need to wrap up an agreement by March 31 because of the approaching end of U.S. President George W. Bush’s trade promotion authority, which allows him to send trade agreements to Congress for straight yes-or-no votes without amendments.

Even if a deal is struck this week, votes to ratify it are not expected for months. South Korean lawmakers would also need to approve any final deal. 

While I favor a U.S.-Korea FTA in the longer term, I think  we’ve done Roh Moo Hyun enough favors this year.  Roh has portrayed the FTA as a humiliating burden to be borne rather than what it is —  something that would be far better for Koreans than Americans (page 130).   Roh has  failed to sell the FTA, or  his country’s relationship with the United States, to his people, but Roh does want the economic and political benefits of landing this deal.   America should not reward Roh  and his cohorts with a  legacy and a political boost in an election year, which they’d only use to further damage bilateral relations in the end.  If an FTA is a sound idea for both countries, and I think it is, there will be another opportunity to negotiate a “free trade” agreement worthy of the name.

*   Because  South Korea has  so much to thank Kim Jong Il for,  it’s bulldozing ahead with expanding  the Kaesong slave-labor complex, despite the fact that it  almost certainly provides income for North Korea’s WMD programs in direct violation of UNSCR 1695 and 1718.  No one in South Korea asks questions like this, because Kaesong is part of the unquestioned  nationalist orthodoxy, like Tokdo and Hwang Woo-Seok. 

The construction project aims to build a 20-million-pyeong industrial base in three stages for South Korean companies by 2012. The complex, if completed, is expected to employ as many as half a million North Koreans to work for about 2,000-3,000 South Korean manufacturers.  [Yonhap]

Consumer warning:  Yonhap reports  that contain the word  “Kaesong” are almost always misleading.

The state-owned Yonhap even  takes a  page from the Rodong Sinmun with a dig at “U.S. hardliners.”  It also  continues to report the long-discredited claim that North Korean workers there earn $60 a month.  The truth may be  closer to $8 a month, or less,  after reconversion of the inflated “official” exchange rate and so-called “voluntary” payments to Kim Jong Il.  Or,  since the wages are paid to the North Korean government — not the workers — the workers may receive nothing at all except a food ration.  That’s about as traditional a definition of slavery as you can get.  What is undisputed is that the workers have no right to organize, strike, or demand better wages or working conditions, meaning that Kaesong violates ILO standards. 

*   So Where Are  Those Unions?   Funny you should ask.  While their members’ jobs are being outsourced to slave camps, they’re forfeiting their tiny reserve of credibility to North Korea’s puppet trade union, for a big May Day bash.

The labor unions of the two Koreas have agreed to celebrate this May Day together in Ulsan, South Korea…. Key leaders of South Korea’s two unions including Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) chairman Lee Yong-deuk and Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) president Lee Seok-haeng on Saturday met with their North Korean counterparts, including General Federation of Trade Unions chairman Yeom Soon-gil in Kaesong, North Korea….  The three plan a rally marking the 20th anniversary of South Korea’s pro-democracy uprising in 1987. They plan a football game between South and North Korean workers and cultural performances.

Oddly enough, they’ve never commemorated a pro-democracy uprising in North Korea (the graves are all unmarked).  Pity South Korean workers.  Their only choices are a union that’s notoriously corrupt and another that’s little more than a North Korean puppet.

*   To all of  the soldiers at my former home,  Camp Humphreys has a brand new Web site  fully loaded with what everyone is watching this year:  human-trafficking propaganda and lists of off-limits areas.  Suddenly, the dreariness of life at the Hump comes back to me, although I’m sure the place bears little resemblance to its quonset-studded condition of 2001.

*    Two South Korean surveillance systems, designed to give the South a capability of watching the North without relying on U.S. intelligence, have fallen substantially short of the design specifications once deployed.