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 political interests. People go into North Korea full of promises to change its system. North Korea’s system always changes them instead.

The natural default candidate to advocate for these workers would be South Korean unions. Sadly, South Korea’s largest labor group behaves like Pyongyang’s wholly owned subsidiary.

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Update: More here, via AFP. And according to this article, Kaesong is suffering from deteriorating facilities, nervousness by potential investors, and (surprisingly) labor shortages. Why? Despite the high premiums the regime extracts from South Korean investors, the regime is increasingly renting out its workers to Chinese factories instead. According to the article, however, the regime can’t raise those premiums even more because Kaesong labor already costs more than it does in Southeast Asia. Interesting.