Well, the Americans aren’t fucking around, I see.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has reportedly deployed—under the cover of secrecy—an investigation team to Seoul to investigate the Kaesong Industrial Park and Kumgangsan tourism projects. Investigations began yesterday at the Government Complex on Sejong-no, and among the people the CRS team talked to were the head of the Kaesong Industrial Park, the president of Shinwon (as representative of businesses operating in Kaesong) and the head of the Unification Ministry’s Kaesong support team.
The CRS has regularly published reports on the scale of intra-Korean trade and North Korea’s underground economy, but this is the first time they’ve actually come to Korea to investigate actual conditions in intra-Korean economic cooperation.
Security surrounding the visit was so tight supposedly that not even the U.S. embassy or Foreign Ministry’s North America desk were told they were coming.
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Wow, they do mean business! No doubt their visit is causing no small amount of discomfort in Seoul.
Apparently, the CRS is a branch of the Library of Congress. So I guess they do more than just preserve dusty old manuscripts and come up with new rules for romanizing Korean book titles!
Sorry, but for some reason my mind is conjuring images of Tia Carerra’s character in Relic Hunter….
Typo: “Tia Carrere,” not “Tia Carerra.”
In point of fact, the article quotes a nameless official who says just that.
Kaesong probably violates many international labor laws, so if the U.S. doesn’t get satisfaction it might go public with this. There’s a precedent in Jay Lefkowitz’s public musing on Kaesong that Korea Liberator covered:
http://www.korealiberator.org/.....t-kaesong/
“Kaesong probably violates many international labor laws”
That’s an understatement.
“The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.” — Minifiction
“…Your giving them hope, you shouldn’t do that…that’s cruel.” –nK General
“Understand, if this factory ever produces a shell that cannot actually be fired, I’ll be very unhappy…”–Kim Jong-Il