News Summary
China and North Korea have a new treaty on the processing of refugees . . . as something other than refugees. Thanks to Chinese concepts of open government, opaque writing from the Chosun Ilbo, and a generous ladle-full of South Korean government doublespeak, I have almost no idea what the agreement would actually do, which probably means, “nothing good.”
A new poll finds that 67% of people are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with President Roh Moo Hyun, who gets no credit for what is very nearly an honest admission of his incompetence on national television. Here ends the good news. Most of the dissatisfaction seems related to economic factors, and the plurality candidate preferred as a replacement is the living personification of the authoritarian right’s realpolitik, Park Geun-Hye. OK, some more good news: Chung Dong-Young came in last in the straw poll, at 10%.
From the Kaesong Industrial Park, where South Korean corporations dream of a future in which North Koreans’ prison blues are embroidered with their logos, the Joongang Ilbo reports that involuntary servitude can be hazardous to your heath:
In January, four people were injured in separate accidents. Three among them lost fingers. In June, a worker suffered a burn, and the accidents have continued. The ministry said 10 accidents have occurred so far, including the deadly fall of last year.” North Korean workers are unfamiliar with the South’s machines and equipment on the production lines,” said a ministry official. “They also lack safety awareness. Because they are paying social welfare insurance to North Korea, worth about 15 percent of their wages, South Korea is not providing separate compensation.”
Can we assume that the 15 percent figure is supplied by the North Korean government–meaning that it’s understated? I went to law school because I can’t do math, but take $58 a month and subtract out a 15% gratuity (and don’t expect anyone to serve you food). Now try to feed your family.
Still on the subject of unethical business dealings with North Korea, we have a curiously vague follow-up to last week’s report of a new scandal at Hyundai Asan, which books those pricey Mt. Kumgang trips where the only North Koreans you’ll ever meet are government minders. It now seems that North Korea is so upset over the firing of Hyundai Asan’s Vice Chairman that it’s cut back on the number of visitors it allows in. That suggests that North Korea was a beneficiary of whatever “corruption” the deposed executive was engaged in. This will get more interesting.
Even North Korea’s privileged few have to face industrial hazards. North Korea’s Air Koryo apparently has such an atrocious safety record that it’s been banned from French airspace. Those falling sacks of crystal meth can leave a mark, n’est pas?
But one North Korea specialist said the performance was merely “an opiate to make the people forget about their tiresome lives.” A government official said, “It’s an event that seeks to show North Korea’s internal unity in the current domestic and international situation.”
South Korea is taking a page from the North and creating lists and classes of collaborators, presumably so that it can root them out for three generations. Japan’s occupation of Korea ended in 1945, but it’s still the subject of ferocious anger by Koreans. That’s partially because the occupation was brutal, but it’s also because a political movement that lacks a coherent vision of the present or plan for the future must dwell in the past. Note that the ruling party neatly gerrymandered the definition of “collaborator” to exclude the fathers of some of its own Big Men.