Apparently in response to the outcry over the deaths of six South Korean campers last weekend, North Korea has quietly dropped its demand for a steep wage raise for the 40,000 North Korean workers in the Kaesong Industrial Complex, instead accepting an increase in line with previous years under the existing Industrial Complex agreement.
According to the Ministry of Unification, North Korea’s Kaesong Complex management office delivered a letter on Thursday which announced Pyongyang’s intention to accept a simple 5% year-on-year increase in workers’ wages, adding just a few dollars to the minimum wage. As a result, it will increase to $58 from $55.
The previous demand, which would have seen the minimum hit $300 overnight, was rejected by the South Korean government, and the ensuing stalemate during four rounds of unproductive negotiations led to a number of substantial problems for the more than one hundred firms which operate in the Complex, including the complete withdrawal of one.
According to a Ministry of Unification press briefing on Friday morning in Seoul, South Korea plans to react positively to the North’s wage proposal, saying, “Our management office, after consultations with businesses operating in Kaesong, is going to sign with the North soon.”
Meanwhile, South Korea has concluded that the catastrophic discharge from the Hwangkang Dam in North Hwanghae Province which killed the six campers in Yeoncheon, 25km south of the border between the two Koreas was indeed illegal, but is still considering whether to pursue the matter through legal channels, not least as a result of feasibility concerns.
South Korea has concluded that the dam discharge didn’t violate international law, notably the UN’s “Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses” of 1997, because neither North nor South Korea is a signatory to the convention. However, the authorities believe that it did violate international customary law, whereby the behavior of one state is not supposed to infringe the rights and interests of another.
Taking an overview of the dam discharge tragedy and Kaesong wage demands, South Korean President Lee Myung Bak told reporters at a Friday breakfast meeting that South Korea would not be easily moved. Noting that the so-called “Imjin River Incident” was “a fresh reminder that the North’s behavior is closely related to our daily life and security,” Lee concluded, “Our government won’t be swayed by individual incidents. Instead, we’ll hold fast to our existing North Korea policy.”
