ROK Companies Continue To Pay for Near Slave Labor
These workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex only make $70 a month with most of it going to the Kim regime. I don’t know what to call this other than near slave labor:
South Korean firms in an inter-Korean factory park in North Korea plan to pay wages to their North Korean employees this week, a government official said Monday.
The move came days after Pyongyang accepted Seoul’s tentative offer of wage payments for North Korean workers at the factory park in North Korea’s border city of Kaesong at a previously agreed level until separate consultations are held.
The deal on Friday would allow South Korean firms to pay the wage based on the US$70.35 per month that was originally set. But it called for the 124 South Korean firms to provide retroactive pay based on the outcome of separate consultations.
The official said North Korea demanded that South Korean firms in Kaesong pay March and April wages by the end of this month. The official asked not to be identified, citing policy.
The sides have yet to produce a deal over the more sensitive issue of a wage cap, which has been set at 5 percent per year.In February, North Korea unilaterally decided to hike the minimum wage by 5.18 percent to US$74 per month for about 53,000 North Korean workers in the factory park. [Yonhap]
No workplace protection laws. Slave wages. A captive, nearly non-mobile workforce. No pesky environmental regulations. And a regime that would be willing to let companies exploit everything for the right price. This is why billionaire investors are salivating at the prospect of doing business with North Korea.
How much of that $70.35 per month is actually going into the pockets of the workers who earn it? And what I’d really like to know is how much money ROK businesses are slipping under the table to ROK politicians and to the NK regime to allow this kind of exploitation?