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The Kaesong North-South Korea Industrial Complex and the Future of Northeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

CRS, John Feffer
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The Kaesong Industrial Complex is a veritable Rorschach test for those who follow developments on the Korean peninsula. Everyone who looks at the special economic zone located in North Korea just north of the DMZ sees something very different. And these interpretations often reveal more about the viewer than the viewed.

Unification advocates in the South see Kaesong as a concrete example of north-south cooperation. Their hopes for a rapid improvement in inter-Korean relations have transformed a rather modest initiative into the pivot of radical transformation. South Korean businesses, particularly small and medium-sized firms, look to Kaesong as a way to compete against Chinese or Southeast Asian production. Their desire to escape South Korean unions and take advantage of cheap North Korean labor has short-circuited the risk analysis and demand for large profits that would ordinarily militate against such investments. American neoconservatives (and their newly emerging South Korean counterparts) have lambasted Kaesong as a method of transferring funds to the North Korean elite and strengthening a despised system.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 10 , October 2007 , e23
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2007