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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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 Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 6:36 am Post subject: NK Workers in Kaesong get $2 a month? |
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http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200610/kt2006102417060011980.htm
Some day I predict a lot of angry North Koreans telling southerners after reunification, "Nice of you to profit from our forced labor in those complexes back then!" Or do others disagree?
Ken:>
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How Much Do N. Korean Workers in Kaesong Complex Actually Get?
By Lee Jin-woo
Staff Reporter
South Korean companies in an inter-Korean industrial complex in Kaesong, North Korea, paid $57.50 per month to their North Korean workers. But controversies have been stirring over how much these workers actually bring home. Some people contend it's as little as about $2.
Of the $57.50, a sizable monthly salary by North Korean standards, workers from the communist state are supposed to get paid $35. Their government deducts $22.50 to pay for programs including social welfare programs and labor insurance, according to the Ministry of Unification in Seoul yesterday.
Experts here pointed out that the impoverished North pays their workers in Kaesong not with the greenback, but with their own currency, following their official, but not internationally accepted, currency ratio of $1 to 143 North Korean won. Currently, the North Korean authorities first take the U.S. dollars from South Korean firms, citing their strict regulations on foreign currency.
North Korean workers in Kaesong get 5,000 North Korean won per month, but there is a debate about the payment's true value. In the North's black market, one U.S. dollar is reportedly exchanged for some 3,000 North Korean won.
The Chosun Ilbo, a conservative Korean-language newspaper, has claimed that the North's workers in Kaesong earn less than $2 and the rest of the money has gone to the Stalinist government, which carried out its first-ever nuclear test on Oct. 9.
However, the ministry rebuffed such claims, asking reporters to understand the North's wage and social system, which is different from the capitalist South.
``I hope you understand that the communist state has a different system in which the government carries out various social programs for its people without levying taxes,'' the ministry's spokesman Yang Chang-seok told reporters. ``Besides, considering the average college graduates' monthly income is around 3,000 to 4,000 won there, workers in Kaesong are not getting underpaid.''
The number of North Koreans working at the Kaesong complex surpassed 8,000 last September, according to the Kaesong Industrial District Management Committee, a North Korean corporation that oversees the complex.
Thirteen South Korean firms operate factories, using cheap but skilled North Korean labor in the complex's pilot zone, which opened in June 2004. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:28 am Post subject: |
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You should know that Noh Moo Hyun wants the ROK-USA FTA to incorporate Kaesong's manufactured goods.
Go to Policy Brief: Negotiating the Korea United States Free Trade Agreement after clicking on the link and open up the .pdf file.
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The Kaesong industrial complex is the centerpiece of North-South economic cooperation under the peace and prosperity policy of South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. At present roughly a dozen South Korean firms operate in the industrial park, employing approximately 6,000 North Koreans producing labor-intensive manufactures. (To date North and South Korea have not opened the zone to third-country firms.) Seoul envisions firms in the industrial park ultimately employing more than 700,000 North Korean workers producing heavy chemical and engineering products. At the start, however, the establishment of production in the zone has been complicated by restrictions on the transfer of potential military-use telecommunications and capital equipment under the multilateral Wassenaar Arrangement (in which both the United States and South Korea participate), though these considerations do not appear to be a significant constraint on the incumbent firms operations at this time.
South Korea has requested duty-free treatment for products produced in Kaesong in other FTA negotiations. Products produced in the zone are granted duty-free treatment in South Korea's agreement with Singapore and receive duty-free treatment subject to a rule that 60 percent of the content is South Korean in South Korea's agreement with the European Free Trade Association.
In the case of the Korea-US FTA, however, the situation is a bit more complicated. The United States maintains an extensive set of economic sanctions against North Korea dating back to 1950.25 North Korea is among the few countries to which the United States does not grant normal trade relations status, and North Korean exports are subject to the so-called column 2 tariff rates established by the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. These tariffs tend to be highest on the sorts of labor-intensive products currently manufactured at Kaesong, so duty-free treatment could be critical to successfully exporting to the United States from the zone.
Realistically, the volume of exports emanating from Kaesong will likely remain trivial for some time. Nonetheless, the South Korean side may well insist on its inclusion. From the standpoint of rapidly and successfully concluding an FTA between the United States and South Korea, however, a request for duty-free treatment for Kaesong-produced goods is a high-cost, low-payoff addition to the negotiating agenda and one that could put the entire initiative in jeopardy. |
BTW, everyone give a holler out for the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act! It's still chuggin'! |
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