Kaesong Absurdities
[W]e have signs to believe that there are certain incentives for North Korean laborers working at the Kaesong complex, such as there are no complaints from workers who are asked to work overtime.
As long as the UniFiction Ministry speaks, this blog will never lack for exquisite fisking material. With the White House standing firmly behind Human Rights Envoy Jay Lefkowitz’s concern that Kaesong fails to comply with international labor standards, (I would also raise U.S. law) the Labor Minister is joining the fray, speaking in tones you’d expect from a maitre d’ during a surprise health inspection:
South Korea’s labor minister urged the international community on Monday not to hastily conclude that the inter-Korean industrial complex in Kaesong is vulnerable to labor rights abuse.
Speaking to a group of Seoul-based foreign correspondents, Lee Sang-soo stressed that North Korea’s working conditions cannot be compared blindly with those seen in other nations.
“Some foreign nations are showing sensitive responses to the wage level at the Kaesong industrial complex, claiming it is too low,” Lee said. “Taking North Korea’s unique system and its community into account, however, different interpretations are available. Making a hasty judgment should be restrained.”
Lee is saying that the world’s most repressive totalitarian regimes should be judged by different, more permissive labor standards, and North Korea is almost certainly the most repressive and totalitarian of all. This is no way to incentivize borderline nations like China, Vietnam, or Indonesia to liberalize their labor markets. Nor has North Korea earned such special dispensation through improved treatment of its own people (the massive “military first” famine, gulags, infanticide), its neighbors (abducting their citizens, dope dealing, regular military provocations), and the world (proliferation and counterfeiting). The South Korean policy does not ask the North to end even one of these outrages. Instead, it rewards them.
Worse, South Korea has thrown away what could have been the Sunshine Policy’s first tangible accomplishment after years of rapproachement and billions in aid: a test of the regime’s openness to a modicum of transparency and individual freedom. If labor conditions in Kaesong are as satisfactory as advertised, why not permit private interviews of the workers on neutral ground? If the economic potential is as great as advertised, why not let outside observers inspect the books? If Kaesong really is the harbinger of reform in North Korea, why not make it a testing ground for a semi-free microeconomy, where workers can keep their wages, shop among the various employers for the best wages and conditions, and even bargain collectively? Why not eventually let them buy food and other goods at market-driven shops inside the zone, where South Koreas will be able to shop next to them, or even strike up conversations in the checkout line? Why not select workers through interviews, applications, and performance evaluations — as workers are selected everywhere else on earth? Contrast those surrendered possibilities with the dreary Orwellian reality that North Korea instead feels free to impose at will. If Kaesong really does serve a higher purpose than enriching the North Korean regime and South Korean stockholders at the expense of the workers, not one of these modest steps is too much to ask to show that North and South Korea are sincere.
With the Kaesong project now in crisis and creating a widening rift with the United States, the UniFiction Minister has hurriedly scheduled a visit to the industrial park and sent his minions out to assuage the world’s rising concerns. Instead, they make more material for me:
Officials at the Unification Ministry, which handles Seoul’s policy toward Pyongyang, hit back at Lefkowitz’s criticism, saying it was misplaced.
Each worker gets an average of $67 a month, considerably more than the communist country’s average monthly wage of $14, they pointed out.
That’s a first. The previous position had been that the workers earn either $57.50 or $58 a month, minus some undetermined amount that the regime keeps for itself. Per the LA Times report I quoted here, the workers keep a paltry $8 a month, which would make the wages at Kaesong less than the North Korean average. Of course, the $14 average is highly suspect for more obvious reasons than I need point out; North Korea’s 6.5 million malnourished people probably don’t figure in that total, and it seems implausible that Kaesong’s handpicked loyal workers (read: discrimination) earn a below-average wage. Flub or embellishment? A new figure that includes possible overtime pay? Probably the former, but in any event, a good illustration of why the world needs better information than the assurances of the UniFiction Ministry.
The South Koreans thus make an excellent point — quite unintentionally — about making conclusions without having a command of the most basic facts about labor conditions in North Korea in general or Kaesong in particular. The South Koreans cannot even tell us what Kaesong workers are earning; they deflect all other questions with Maoist-sounding obfuscation that Kaesong’s potential customers are meddling in South Korea’s “internal affairs” and punctuate their defense with such absurdities as the one at the top of this post. The blind pursuit of this project in a factual, logical, and ethical vacuum doesn’t make for a very convincing argument.
Photo: Satellite picture of a North Korean prison camp.
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Arbeit macht frei?