Category: 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...

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...

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...

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...