Kaesong Updates

A bus accident, apparently caused in part by bad weather, has killed 10 North Korean workers and injured 40 others at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which, by the way, subsidizes Kim Jong Il to the tune of $50 million per month.

Give a thought to the poor families of the dead … and the wounded as well. I’m not sure how much of that substantial sum goes into providing suitable medical care for the North Korean people, but my best information about health care in North Korea falls short of the expectations U.N. apparatchik Margaret Chan raised last May Day.

Meanwhile, we all eagerly await angry calls by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions for an investigation into the safety of the North Korean workers.

The complex itself continues to persist as an artificial, subsidized entity despite a growing consensus that it’s a failure as a business model.

[T]he managers’ biggest difficulty has been a decline in orders from South Korean buyers, who they said had stopped buying from Kaesong factories for fear the complex might suddenly be closed down for political reasons. They also said they were worried that the North would close the complex if the South resumed its political broadcasts.

“We are being used as bargaining chips in a political game,” said Jimmy Bae, director of strategic planning at Cuckoo Electronics, a South Korean electronics company that has a $10 million factory in the complex. [N.Y. Times]