Korea

[David Morris]

$4 a day is better than starvation.  Does this criticism offer a
better alternative
beyond idealism?

On Friday, April 5, 2013, Keith Davis wrote:

> From Common Dreams:
>
> e_Cadet <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#> • 2 days ago<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#comment-850833581>
>
>    -
>    -
>
>   South Korean companies rely heavily on the slave labor ($4 a day) at
> the Kaesong industrial complex while the North enjoys the fistfuls of hard
> currency for providing the slaves at the factories. It's a win-win
> situation... unless you happen to be on e of those poor, malnourished North
> Korean factory slaves.
>
> Meanwhile the U.S. continues to rattle its sabres as corporate America is
> willing to sacrifice millions of South Koreans (and North Koreans) if it is
> profitable to do so. The official position for years in the U.S. has been
> to pretend that North Korea doesn't exist by never acknowledging them
> diplomatically, never entering into meaningful negotiations, strangling
> them financially via sanctions and threatening them with annihilation if
> they get out of line. The six-party talks were a scam in which the North
> was told "do as I say unconditionally, and only then may we decide to
> talk." The other parties were told to promise nothing, keep their mouths
> shut and to keep their eye on the ball... namely to pressure the North into
> unconditionally dismantling its nuclear program. Naturally this didn't work
> which plays right into corporate America's plan to use the North Korean
> non-compliance as a reason to continue spending 1 trillion dollars a year
> on "defence" to counter the "threat" of North Korean nukes.
>
> South Korea continues to overpay for stationing 28,000 U.S. troops there,
> American defence contractors continue to spew out more and more WMD's to
> 'safeguard democracy' and the 60 year stalemate between the two Korea's
> continues with no signs of a resolution in our lifetimes. Of course the
> entire situation could easily be resolved by pulling U.S. troops out of
> South Korea, ending sanctions, restarting talks about unification while
> giving assurances that a unified Korea would respect the North Korean
> leaders for stepping aside and allowing a functioning democracy to replace
> the current regime. Reunification would mean that South Korea could then
> build a railroad through the North all the way to Europe drastically
> reducing the time and money to export their goods abroad. Billions would be
> saved as the newly unified Korea could begin to dismantle its bloated
> militaries. Investment from the South would pour into the North as the
> tight housing market and lack of industrial spaces would be addressed via
> unification. The South Korean "Chaebol" of its main corporate entities
> (Hyundai, Samsung, LG, Daewoo and SK Telecom) would expand its workforce
> overnight with plans already in place to build new housing and
> infrastructure across the North in case of unification.
>
> The losers here are U.S. defence contractors and corporations that
> directly compete with the South Koreans. Is it any surprise then that this
> scenario is rejected out right by the U.S?
>
>  23  <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#>
> •
> Reply <http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/03-0#>
> •
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>
> --
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