Text Fwd: Kaesong companies on the brink as sanctions continue

Hankyoreh

Kaesong companies on the brink as sanctions continue
: The companies have been caught between past government support and current government restrictions

Jung Eun-joo
Posted on Jan. 19, 2011　
　
“Are they trying to bleed the Kaesong Industrial Complex tenant companies to death?”

As the Lee Myung-bak administration’s sanctions against North Korea draw out into the long term, tenant companies in the Kaesong Industrial Complex are lurching toward the edge of a cliff. Eight presidents of the tenant companies, who asked that their names not be disclosed, agreed to a series of interviews with the Hankyoreh.

They complained that they have lost hundreds of millions of Won (hundreds of thousands of dollars) with the suspension of factory construction due to administration measures forbidding new investment. They also said that the situation is growing bleaker by the day, with veteran employees quitting as the numbers of resident personnel at the complex drops due to concerns about personal safety. Despite all of this, they suffer without a word of formal complaint out of fears that they might draw the anger of North Korean and South Korean authorities.

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