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Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

newyorker.com

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Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#41

Post by hx8 »

> To trace the importation of seafood from factories that appear to be using North Korean labor, my team reviewed trade data, shipping contracts, and the codes that are stamped on seafood packages to monitor food safety. We found that, since 2017, ten of these plants have together shipped more than a hundred and twenty thousand tons of seafood to more than seventy American importers, which supplied grocery stores including Walmart, Giant, ShopRite, and the online grocer Weee!

How can something like this be allowed into The United States. Are trade sanctions actually bureaucratic yellow tape to get around with middleman shell companies? I am completely disgusted that I may have unknowingly purchased food prepared by a facility as inhumane as this.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#42

Post by syndicatedjelly » 

    Government officials carefully select workers to send to China, screening them for their political loyalties to reduce the risk of defections. To qualify, a person must generally have a job at a North Korean company and a positive evaluation from a local Party official. “These checks start at the neighborhood,” Breuker said. Candidates who have family in China, or a relative who has already defected, can be disqualified. For some positions, applicants under twenty-seven years of age who are unmarried must have living parents, who can be punished if they try to defect, according to a report from the South Korean government; applicants over twenty-seven must be married. North Korean authorities even select for height: the country’s population is chronically malnourished, and the state prefers candidates who are taller than five feet one, to avoid the official embarrassment of being represented abroad by short people. Once selected, applicants go through pre-departure training, which can last a year and often includes government-run classes covering everything from Chinese customs and etiquette to “enemy operations” and the activities of other countries’ intelligence agencies. (The North Korean government did not respond to requests for comment.)
I don't think I"m ever gonna complain about my job in America again.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#43

Post by fervor »

woodruffw wrote: post #34
jojobas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yes, poor people are better off in absolute terms than 200 years ago Not than poor people 200 years ago, than kings 200 years ago. No king of early 1800s could have tropical fruits, antibiotics or an entire library of human knowledge at his fingertips. >Why is income inequality so bad? Does a burger taste any worse if you know someone's having caviar? Also, how would you compare today's wealth inequality with that o…

> Does a burger taste any worse if you know someone's having caviar? Human beings have a fine-tuned sense of inequality and injustice; it's one of the things that makes us self-legislating agents, rather than beasts scrabbling for the top. The burger absolutely does taste worse if you know that it isn't a fair representation of the value of your labor. To make this more salient: your argument would apply to people li…

Indeed, what is the value of your labor?

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#44

Post by tekla »

dgfitz wrote: post #36
dimitri_deploys wrote: post #4

Absolutely incredible reporting. The risks taken by the sources both at the factories and within North Korea defy comprehension for anybody lucky enough not to fear that speaking out will endanger their family.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#45

Post by xanthor »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #42

Government officials carefully select workers to send to China, screening them for their political loyalties to reduce the risk of defections. To qualify, a person must generally have a job at a North Korean company and a positive evaluation from a local Party official. “These checks start at the neighborhood,” Breuker said. Candidates who have family in China, or a relative who has already defected, can be disqualif…

That would generally be the goal of pieces like this.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#46

Post by hx8 »

api wrote: post #39
gsk22 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, poor people are better off in absolute terms than 200 years ago. No one is denying this. The question is more that, given how prosperous we are, and how much capital we have at our disposal, why do we still have so many poor people? Why is income inequality so bad?

Multiply 30000 a year (a lower end US wage) by the number of people living in what the UN defines as poverty. That’s about two billion. You get 60 trillion dollars a year. That’s close to world GDP. If you gave that out and those two billion people tried to spend it, you’d just get hyperinflation because there isn’t enough supply to match that demand. We have a lot of abundance but not that much. Still fewer people a…

Living on 30kUSD/yr is a lot different in London than it is in Buenos Aires. To set a universal safety net ensuring everyone had adequate food, shelter, education, medical care, transportation etc would be a lot cheaper than 60tUSD/yr.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#49

Post by dcan »

jojobas wrote: post #18
lobochrome wrote: post #9

"Why we fight" Even with all the problems in the West, with all that's broken at the moment in our end-stage capitalist societies, never forget that the alternative, in almost all instances, is pure terror.

>all that's broken at the moment in our end-stage capitalist societies That's a weird way to spell "the most prosperous time/space ever, where borderline poor people live like kings 200 years ago, and there are fewer and fewer poor people as time goes on and poverty threshold goes up".

We're regressing back to fiefdom in Canada thanks to the unaffordability of housing and people in the United States have a similar situation with employer provided medical coverage combined with at-will employment.

True, many more people are out of poverty, but few are truly prosperous anymore compared to the "American Dream" in the latter half of the 20th century.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#50

Post by zaptrem »

xanthor wrote: post #45
syndicatedjelly wrote: post #42

Government officials carefully select workers to send to China, screening them for their political loyalties to reduce the risk of defections. To qualify, a person must generally have a job at a North Korean company and a positive evaluation from a local Party official. “These checks start at the neighborhood,” Breuker said. Candidates who have family in China, or a relative who has already defected, can be disqualif…

That would generally be the goal of pieces like this.

I think the goal of this piece is closer to reducing the importation of seafood that is the result of forced labor.
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