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Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

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Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#131

Post by powerapple »

Despegar wrote: post #122
givemeethekeys wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia disagrees: "In February–March 2021, South Korea continued to omit North Korea's "enemy" status from the South Korean military's White Paper after downgrading the status of Japan" It gets worse from there. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%E2%80%93South_Kore...

Apparently you have a higher standard for "get along" than I do. I think not being actively at war for decades qualifies.

all I can see is that their borders have been very peaceful comparing to other part of the world.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#132

Post by givemeethekeys »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #123
givemeethekeys wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia disagrees: "In February–March 2021, South Korea continued to omit North Korea's "enemy" status from the South Korean military's White Paper after downgrading the status of Japan" It gets worse from there. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%E2%80%93South_Kore...

How is "South Korea no longer rules them an enemy" disagreeing? Surely that's a sign of them getting along.

From the Wikipedia article, this is how:

During his election campaign in 2021, Yoon Suk Yeol said that he would ask that the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea if there is a threat from North Korea.[162] U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea Mark Lambert rejected Yoon's call, saying said the proposal was against U.S. policy.[163]

In November 2022, a US-South Korean air force exercise named Vigilant Storm was countered by North Korea by missile tests and an air force exercise.[164]

In November 2023, both the Koreas suspended the Comprehensive Agreement Pact - a pact aimed at lowering tensions between the two countries - which was signed at the September 2018 inter-Korean summit, after North Korea launched a satellite into space.[165]

On January 15, 2024, Kim Jong Un announced that peaceful reunification was no longer possible and proposed identifying South Korea as a hostile state in the North Korean constitution. It was also announced that North Korea would dissolve the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, the National Economic Cooperation Bureau and the Mount Kumgang International Tourism Administration.[166]

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#133

Post by ars »

purplezooey wrote: post #112
Despegar wrote: post #98

It's time for the US to end the sanctions on North Korea. The abuse workers face is a straight line result from the fact that virtually all aspects of their economy are under total embargo. North Korea is a nuclear state, and they will never go back to not being one. North Koreans have been working in China for decades and that won't change either because China is not going to let them become a failed state.

The argument in favor of this is that the current tensions are largely economic, and when the North Korean citizens can benefit from something closer full participation in world trade, they will be better off. Iran is in a similar situation and we had started down this path, only to be completely undone and set back 20 years by trump.

> Iran is in a similar situation and we had started down this path

Liberals believe this very much, and I sincerely wish it were true. But it's really not. Iran was simply taking advantage of what they could get, there was zero chance of them changing.

Iran is currently in the center, or at least involved, in so many conflicts I can barely list them all. (Yemen, Israel, Russia, Syria, Iraq, just to start with.)

You really believe they are doing this just because of Trump?

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#134

Post by jltsiren »

nradov wrote: post #66
hx8 wrote: post #41

> 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 inc…

Trade sanctions are actually bureaucratic yellow tape to get around with middleman shell companies. They are at least slightly effective by shifting a fraction of the profits from sanctioned entities to middlemen, so better than nothing. But mostly they allow countries to pretend like they're doing something without actually taking kinetic action. For example, there are currently a variety of sanctions against the Ru…

The purpose of sanctions is to increase friction and make the targeted entity less competitive. Nobody expects that they work perfectly, because there are always strong incentives for bypassing them. But the effects are often very significant in the long term. For example, see the differences between South Korea and North Korea.

Nobody actually wants Russia to stop exporting oil, because they are one of the biggest exporters in the world. World economy would take a huge hit if that much oil disappeared from the market. The purpose of the sanctions is not to prevent Russia from exporting oil, but to reduce the amount of money they get from selling it.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#135

Post by powerapple »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #8
el_benhameen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving the state financial incentives to convict and imprison people has some pretty obvious possible second-order effects. You can see them all over the world, from the growth of for-profit prisons in the US to forced labor in Xinjiang. Once the state or a state-associated entity profits from convictions, they have all the reason in the world to increase the rate of convictions.

Peeled garlic is almost an entirely prison labor driven industry in China and is exported all over the world

Damn. I didn't know that. Chinese people will never buy peeled garlic.

I once saw a machine to peel garlic, basically roll garlics in a container and the skins will come off automatically. I wonder if it can works out cheaper and kill this industry.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#137

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

> Since then, North Koreans have been sent to Russia, Poland, Qatar, Uruguay, and Mali.

Poland? Poland is a EU member country, is it legal to employ North Korean slaves in the EU?

Update: Found the following link https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2017-00624... Some Christel Schaldemose was asking the European Parliament the same question back in 2017, but I didn't see an answer.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#138

Post by DinaCoder99 »

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.

> never forget that the alternative, in almost all instances

Well, one shitty alternative alternative anyway

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#139

Post by powerapple »

whatever1 wrote: post #3

I wonder why we do not use some sort of labor as penalty for misdemeanor, instead of useless incarceration. You caused $XXX of damage and you have no funds to cover it, you should work for the state until you pay back the sum.

I kinda agree with you, I think labour is good for prisoners. They were forced to be contained in a prison anyway. I think the solution is better managed prison, where prisons would work to cover the cost the prison, including food, electricity and so on. As long as it is not for profit. It is so hard to do though. Look at the non-profit organizations around us, many of them are corrupted as well.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#140

Post by DinaCoder99 »

quatrefoil wrote: post #78
nimbius wrote: post #77

casual reminder for US readers: this is all pretty common fare in US prisons as well. the 13th amendment to the US constitution does not cover prisoners. As such, most are forced to work, given a token salary to keep up appearances, and punished with solitary confinement if they do not comply. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/05/31/how-the-newest... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape_in_the_United_Stat.…

I find it perfectly possible to be concerned about some aspects of the US penal system without implying its equivalency to the terror endured under one of the most oppressive political regimes in the world.

Is there an implication of equivalence of any general sort of the two societies? I think this is just a rejection that north korea is somehow uniquely capable of this specific sort of terror.
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