[Marxism] A Korean Paradise -- "Strikes? Absolutely Not"

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

FOR MANAGERS [capitalists], A KOREAN PARADISE
By James Brooke The New York Times
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2006

KAESONG, North Korea
In a cavernous factory floor here, where hundreds of North Korean
women diligently cut and sewed women's jackets Monday, a South Korean
businessman seemed to have found Korea's answer to China: wages at 26
cents an hour.

"Kaesong has more advantages that Vietnam, China or Guatemala," Hwang
Woo Seung, president of Shinwon Ebenezer Company, said, citing other
countries where his company produces clothes. "We opened here last
March and we are already starting to build another factory here twice
the size of this one."
. . . .
Over the next year, the number of South Korean factories and North
Korean workers is to nearly quadruple, to 39 factories and 15,000
employees.

By 2012, the industrial park is to spread over 67 square kilometers,
or 26 square miles, and to employ 730,000 North Koreans, almost 8
percent of the work force in this impoverished nation, which has a
total population of 23 million.
. . .
According to North Korean propaganda, the North is a worker's
paradise. But after 60 years of communism and Kim family dynastic
rule, the North looks like a manager's paradise.

Not only are the wages the lowest in Northeast Asia, but independent
labor unions are banned.

"Strikes?" Hwang replied dismissively in response to a reporter's
question. Raising crossed arms, he said with a slight smile:
"Absolutely not."

"North Korean workers are very skilled, and that is why we decided to
move here," Moon Chang Seop, president of Sam Duk Starfield, a Pusan-
based shoe manufacturer. Noting that shoe manufacturing "is getting
small" in South Korea, he said he hoped to one day move his entire
line to Kaesong.

For now, Kaesong's 11 factories are producing almost entirely for the
South Korean market.
. . .
At Kaesong, the minimum wage for the 48-hour week is $57.50. But
$7.50 is deducted for "social charges" paid to the North Korean
government. The remaining $50 is paid to a North Korean government
labor broker. None of the South Korean factory managers interviewed
would guess how much of the $50 salary ends up in the pockets of
workers.
. . .
Under labor contracting arrangements in Russia and Eastern Europe,
North Korea's government often withholds half of their workers'
salaries.

Attempts to interview seamstresses at the Shinwon factory elicited
evasive responses and intervention by South Korean guides.

"No interviews with North Korean officials or employees are allowed,"
Mira Sun, the foreign press aide to South Korea's president, Roh Moo
Hyun, lectured reporters by loudspeaker in one bus after reporters
tried to interview seamstresses.
. . .
Beyond the shiny new factories and busy construction sites of the
industrial park, visitors peering beyond a 5-mile long green wire
perimeter fence could glimpse a tableaux reminiscent of Breughel
paintings of pre-Industrial Europe. In one field, about 20 people
were bent over their hoes. An ox cart creaked down a lane carrying
winter feed, while a man with a load of brush on his back trudged
down a path.

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