North Korea took 70 pct of Kaesong wages for weapons programme — S. Korea
SEOUL: South Korea said 70 per cent of the US dollars paid as wages and fees for the suspended Kaesong industrial project, run jointly with the North, had been diverted for Pyongyang’s weapons programme and luxury goods for leaderKimJong Un.
It is the first formal acknowledgement by the South that the 55,000 North Korean workers at the Kaesong complex sawlittleof the 160 theywerepaid on average a month.
South Korea on Wednesday suspended the project as punishment for the North’s longrange rocket launch on Feb. 7 saying it would no longer allow the funds paid to Kaesong to be used in the North’s missile and nuclear programmes.
The North conducted its fourth nuclear test last month.
The North called the South’s move to suspend operations ‘a declaration of war’ and kicked out all South Korean workers on Thursday and froze the assets of the South Korean firms.
“The wages for the North’s workers and other fees were paid in cash in US dollars to the North’s authorities and not to the workers,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry said yesterday.
“Thisisbelievedtobechannelled in the same way as other foreign currency it earned.” The cash is then kept and managed by the rulingWorkers’ Party’s Office 39 and other agencies, theministry said.
The ministry said it had confirmed the movement of the money through various sources but did not specify them.
Office 39 is widely believed to exist to finance the luxurious lifestyle of theNorth’s leader.
The office is also believed to be part of the North’s agencies that fund the country’s missile and nuclear programme.
The South Korean government and companies had invested about 1 trillion won (829 million) in Kaesong including 616 billion won in cash since it openedmore than a decade ago, Unification Minister Hong Yong-pyo said on Wednesday.
Kaesong’s North Korean workers were given a taste of life in the South, working for the 124 mostly small and medium sized manufacturers that operated there, about 54 km northwest of Seoul.
The minimum wage for North Korean workers was about 70 a month, although the companies paidmorethandoublethatamount afterovertimeandbonuses— still low compared with wages in the South.
The Kaesong project resulted fromthe first summit meeting of therivalKoreasin2000,wheretheir leaderspledgedreconciliationand cooperation.
It was the last remaining symbol of that effort in volatile North-South relations over the years.
Kaesong had been shut only once before, for five months in 2013, amid heightened tensions following North Korea’s third nuclear test, although its continuingexistenceoftenseemed tenuous.— Reuters