This is why no rational person would invest in 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 unification ministry official told reporters on background. The government will soon deliver the position to the North in writing, he added. He pointed out that wages are an important element of the complex’s competitiveness. [….]

The two sides have a 49-point agreement on the working conditions for them. The North abruptly informed the South of its plan to revise 13 of the stipulations last week. The measure includes the scrapping of a 5-percent cap on the annual increase rates in their minimum wages and hikes in overtime payment. [Yonhap]

Remember, these are the people our State Department expects to make and keep a nuclear freeze deal.

I can’t imagine why any sensible investor, lured by the promise of low wages and taxes, would plow his money into one of the world’s most politically risky places, knowing full well that those low wages can unexpectedly turn not-that-low, that the taxes can unexpectedly turn high, and that the products can’t legally be imported into the United States. Knowing all that, doesn’t choosing Kaesong over Thailand or the Philippines seem rather irrational?