KAESONG NEGOTIATIONS HINGE ON DORMITORIES, SAYS

C O N F I D E N T I A L SEOUL 000678 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/28/2019 TAGS: PREL ECON KN KS SUBJECT: KAESONG NEGOTIATIONS HINGE ON DORMITORIES, SAYS KIC'S LARGEST EMPLOYER REF: SEOUL 342 Classified By: POL M/C Joseph Y. Yun. Reasons 1.4(b/d) ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: An important reason behind the DPRK's hostile attitude toward the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) is the ROKG refusal to build dormitories for additional workers. The USG should encourage the ROKG to build the dormitories and allow the KIC to expand to over 100,000 workers, because this is the best way to bring change to North Korea, said Park Sung-chul, Chairman and CEO of ShinWon garment corporation, which employs over 1,000 North Korean workers and has plans to expand to 3,000. END SUMMARY. -------------- Let KIC Expand -------------- ¶2. (C) ShinWon Corporation Chairman and CEO Park Sung-chul's main message at an April 27 meeting with Poloffs was that the USG should urge the ROKG to allow KIC expansion by building the workers' dormitories. The nearly 40,000 North Korean workers at the KIC became "South Koreanized" after two years, beginning to think for themselves, Park had observed, and were learning not only the South Korean way of business but its way of life. DPRK authorities were willing to let the KIC expand, even though they would be careful to limit the effects on North Korean workers. The detention of the Hyundai Asan engineer was a warning about South Koreans mixing with North Koreans, Park believed. In any case, if the KIC workforce expanded to 100,000 or 200,000 workers, drawn from all over North Korea, the effects would be impossible to contain -- much more effective than any previous or current dealings with North Korea, Park observed. Park said that if dormitories are not built, KIC,s expansion will be capped at about 50,000 workers (available from the Kaesong City area) and firms will gradually withdraw. ¶3. (C) Park had made this demarche to Minister of Unification Hyun In-taek last year, but Hyun maintained the denuclearization progress was needed first. However, Chairman of the National Assembly,s Foreign Affairs Committee Park Jin apparently agreed that dormitories should be built. ¶4. (C) Park said recent DPRK hostility could be traced to the dormitory issue. He said DPRK officials mention the dormitory issue to his management staff at the KIC "every day." The April 21 demand to renegotiate the financial terms of the six-year-old KIC, as well as the access restrictions �A;put in place in December 2008 and the temporary cut off of KIC traffic in March all stemmed from DPRK dissatisfaction that President Lee Myung-bak's Administration had not honored this aspect of the October 2007 Inter-Korean Summit Agreement. (Note: After general agreement to expand the KIC at the October 2007 summit, the December 2008 first meeting of the "Joint Committee for Inter-Korean Economic Cooperation" ended with a statement that included "The South and North have agreed to cooperate on the supply of the North Korean workforce necessary for the first stage development of the KIC and to discuss the construction of dormitories for North Korean workers commuting to the KIC..." However, the October 2007 Summit and its follow-on meetings were politically controversial, with Lee and his advisors making clear that his Administration would not be bound by agreements made late in former President Roh Moo-hyun's term, Ref A. End Note.) ¶5. (C) Park saw in recent DPRK behavior signs that the DPRK was determined to keep the KIC open. If they had wanted to close it, they would have done so long ago, he said. For example, the initial DPRK plan was to shut the KIC during the entire two-week Key Resolve joint U.S.-ROK military exercise, but Park said DPRK authorities had listened when ROK businesspeople had argued that factories could not handle such a long hiatus and allowed several crossings during the two week period. When asked why the dormitory issue was not brought up in a recent North-South meeting at KIC on April 21, Park gave two reasons: first, dormitories were a "face issue" for North Korea, so the North Korean authorities would not include dormitories in the official meeting agenda, and second, since the dormitory construction was already agreed in the October 2007 Inter-Korean Summit, North Koreans saw the issue as a "baseline" not needing further discussion. Park predicted that if the dormitory concerns are not resolved soon, the issue would be discussed in future inter-Korean KIC meetings. According to Park, the current agreement allowed the ROKG to finance the project while the DPRK was responsible for the actual construction, and the DPRK would be responsible for feeding the resident workers, cafeteria-style. -------------- Respect for North Korean Workers -------------- ¶6. (C) Park made clear that he was not an apologist for the DPRK government. Instead, he had begun traveling to North Korea in the early 1990s out of Christian concern for the North Korean people, who he said were living at the level of "animals," and had continued going to Pyongyang at least once each year since then. Park most recently returned from Pyongyang on the day before the rocket launch, April 4, 2009, having gained the impression that North Korea would never give up its nuclear weapons. After gaining the confidence of North Korean officials, he opened the first ROK factory in Pyongyang in 1994, to make men's suits. He has since opened another factory in Pyongyang, two in Kaesong City and a factory within the KIC. The ROKG initially said that his company, which has factories in Indonesia, Vietnam, Guatemala and China, was too big to fit the small-and-medium profile wanted for the KIC. However, Park convinced the ROKG that his company's track record training "foreign" workers was valuable. ¶7. (C) At KIC, his company emphasized establishing respectful relationships with North Korean workers, most of whom have worked for ShinWon for four years straight. South Korean managers lined up to shake hands with and say hello to arriving workers each morning; it took two years for the "uncultured" North Koreans to begin responding, but they had since opened up somewhat. At one point, DPRK authorities had removed the North Korean managers that Park's staff had carefully trained, but the crew was brought back when ShinWon threatened to close its KIC operations. Park believed, and frequently told North Korean managers at KIC, that closing the KIC would set back North Korean economy and inter-Korean relations at least two decades. ¶8. (C) Park also gained DPRK officials' permission to build a church and began constructing a three-story building with his own capital of USD 3 million for the 700 to 800 hundred South Korean managers who spend weekends at KIC (scheduled to open in July 2009); North Koreans will not be allowed inside. The building, next to his garment factory, will not be overtly marked as a church, but "everyone will know." Park noted that, although his Christian convictions motivated him to set up business in the KIC, his operations there were making a profit. He acknowledged that some KIC companies' orders had declined because of recent uncertainty, but said his company was not affected. ¶9. (C) Commenting on likely negotiations over the costs of operating at KIC, Park said that ROK companies could easily afford 50 percent wage increases. However, a more serious concern, which led Park to tell potential investors to avoid the KIC for now, was the high level of political uncertainty surrounding the project. -------------- Comment -------------- ¶10. (C) The KIC has had a rough year politically, but earlier investments by ROK companies have continued to expand the complex, increasing the workforce from 28,000 in early 2008 to almost 40,000 now. Even during the mid-March temporary cutoff of access to the KIC, with hundreds of South Korean managers stranded at the KIC against their will, there was no evidence that ROK capital was a coward. Many of the firms taking advantage of low wages in KIC have few short-term alternatives. KIC company CEOs met with Minister of Unification Hyun In-taek at that time to urge him not to let the KIC close. Among KIC CEOs, Park is a leader in pushing for continued KIC expansion, and frustrated that the ROKG cannot see what he believes is the big picture. ¶11. (C) Whether the ROKG should expend a large amount of money to build dormitories is a key issue in inter-Korean relations. Seoul's position so far is that South Korea cannot contemplate such a move in the absence of "normalized" relations with Pyongyang, and we see no likelihood that South Korea will do so anytime soon. Still, we find some merit in Park's argument. Currently, virtually every household in Kaesong has a worker employed by the KIC; yet, there is a clear need for more workers. From now on, any expansion of KIC will need workers from outside the region, who have to be housed in dormitories. Park has a valid point in that building these dormitories will spread South Korean business culture outside the Kaesong region. STEPHENS