KAESONG, North Korea — Hundreds of North Korean workers hunched over sewing machines and assembly lines were exposed as slaving away for subsistence wages during the first tour ever given to foreign correspondents of the special economic zone here just across the border from South Korea.
The workers were forbidden from speaking about their working conditions, but South Korean managers admitted they received virtually none of the $57.50 a month that that South Korean companies are paying the North Koreans for their services.
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North Korean laborers work at a South Korean-run plant at the Kaesong Industrial Park in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, about 70 km (45 miles) northwest of South Korean capital Seoul, on Feb. 27 during a visit by foreign journalists.
Reuters/You Sung-Ho
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South Korean officials responsible for the zone, which now employs 6,000 North Koreans, said they wanted products made there to be included in any FTA.
U.S. officials have not only rejected that possibility but also said goods made in the zone also compromise the validity for import into the U.S. of products made in South Korea. U.S. officials noted that companies producing clothing, cosmetics cases and the uppers of sneakers are selling those products in South Korea while exporting similar products made in the South abroad.
Either way, U.S. officials said, South Korean companies are benefiting from a program of virtual slave labor in which North Koreans in the zone are forced to work, packed into dormitories nearby and fed just enough to give them the energy to labor on the assembly lines.
The North Koreans, many of them young women, huddle over machines for a minimum of eight hours a day but then are forced to work “overtime” for which South Korean companies pay still more money. But the workers themselves never see a Won or a cent, much less a dollar, of the extra pay, all of which the South Koreans have to remit to the North Korean agencies in hard U.S. currency.
South Korean officials, pursuing reconciliation with North Korea, tried to put the best face on the zone. One official argued that cheap North Korean labor would make South Korean companies competitive with Chinese companies. He said that North Korean workers are paid as little as workers in Southeast Asia, where U.S. officials have protested strongly against low wages and poor conditions.
The great difference, though, is that workers in the zone never see any of the money that’s supposed to go into their pockets. South Korean managers have no power over whom to hire or fire.
Managers said they were forbidden to talk to any of the workers except to instruct them on use of machinery. All the South Korean managers are sequestered in a small area of low-lying structures where they live, socialize and spend much of their spare time watching television on satellite TV. They have no access to email or cell phones although they can call South Korea on landlines running into the zone and go home once or twice a month.
