Kaesong, a 'logically sound' capitalist lesson for N. Korea: KAC president By Byun Duk-keun SEOUL, May 2 (Yonhap) -- The inter-Korean project to develop an industrial complex for South Korean firms in the North Korean border city of Kaesong is not only logically sound, but it will eventually help open the communist state to capitalism, the head of a Korean-American advocacy group said Tuesday.
"As capitalism is introduced to North Korea through the Kaesong project, it will eventually provide a basis for the North to move closer to a market economy," Kim Chul-joo, head of the Korean-American Coalition (KAC), told Yonhap News Agency.
The KAC is a non-profit, non-partisan advocacyorganization which works to facilitate participation by Korean-Americans in various public activities, including civic, legislative and other community affairs.
Established in 1983, the organization currently boasts some 70,000 members with 18 regional chapters nationwide, including in Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Kim, who also goes by the name Charles Kim, said the Kaesong project offers a valuable lesson for the communist North to experience and realize the triumph of capitalism over communism in the decades-long Cold War.
"It is a lesson that cannot be told to the North, but one that can only be learned through its own experience," Kim said in an interview held on the sidelines of an annual conference of the presidential National Unification Advisory Council, which brought together some 540 delegates from South Korea, the United States, Canada and 12 Latin American countries, including Brazil and Mexico.
Kim's remarks followed a claim by special U.S. envoy for North Korean human rights Jay Lefkowitz last week that the North Korean workers at the Kaesong complex are slave labor because all the others in the communist state are, and that therefore goods produced in Kaesong would not be permitted for sale in the United States or elsewhere.
Seoul does not refute the claim that workers in North Korea, maybe even including those employed by South Korean firms at the Kaesong complex, are enslaved by the communist regime in Pyongyang, but asserts that a rise in the number of North Koreans working for South Korean firms would increase their understanding of market economics and democracy.
Currently, about a dozen South Korean companies are operating in the joint industrial park, employing some 3,000 North Korean workers. The number is expected to increase to 2,000 firms and nearly half a million North Koreans once the complex moves into full swing in 2012, according to officials at Seoul's Unification Ministry.
"What the Seoul government needs to do is to defend its case for Kaesong logically, not emotionally," Kim said.
Kim said that while Lefkowitz's remarks may not represent the opinion of the whole, the South Korean government may be facing another problem in its pursuit of the peaceful reunification of the two Koreas than mere criticism from the United States; the loss of support from young Korean-Americans.
"What I worry about Seoul's North Korea policy is that we are losing next generation Korean-Americans. My generation is the last one that speaks Korean and the young Korean-Americans are no longer coming into the Korean community after graduating from college," said the 51-year-old head of the Korean-American Coalition.
"We must see the gap and try to make bridges between the generations, but I do not see any efforts" from the South Korean government, he added.
Kim worked to combat the challenge by helping to establish the "Chasedae," or next generation, movement within the presidential advisory council to help unite and attract more young voices to the council.
The Chasedae movement leaders of the council are scheduled to hold their own conference, the fifth of its kind, in San Francisco from Aug. 31 through Sept. 3, according to Kim.
(Yonhap News Agency)
Kaesong, a ‘Logically Sound’ Capitalist Lesson for N. Korea: KAC |
