Mick Hartley

What's happening with the 50,000 or so workers – and their families – who lost their jobs when South Korea decided to close down the Kaesong Industrial Complex? Is there any sign of their grievances developing into some sort of organised resistance to the Kim regime? Well, no, not yet. This is North Korea, after all. But the authorities are, it seems, concerned.

From the Daily NK:

On the 23rd, our Daily NK reporter spoke with a source in North Hwanghae Province who informed us that following the withdrawal of the South from Kaesong, workers and their families, along with local residents, are “wishing it hadn’t come to this.” Those who had, until recently, been employed at the complex, and their families who had reaped the benefits by extension, cannot shake the feelings of sadness and regret as they recall happier times when they worked together, he said. 

Some of these stakeholders still cling to hope, habitually returning to look for signs of life around the industrial park, but without any hope of a change in sight, “can do nothing but uselessly stare at an abandoned [joint venture] before turning around and going back home again.” 

The rest of their time is mostly filled by Party cadres from the provincial and city levels affiliated with the complex. These officials have been gathering both former workers and ordinary citizens several times a day to hold propaganda sessions premised on cementing animosity toward the South, but our sources indicate that these sessions are ineffective, and the harder the Party cadres push the “blame the puppet-government in the South” narrative, the harder it becomes for its recipients to “suppress their incredulous snorts.” 

“People around Kaesong know better than anyone that the reason the South closed Kaesong is because they were nervous about the rocket launch and nuclear test; they just presume that in the end the South became exasperated and decided to pull out,” the source pointed out. 

“When the South pulled out, we were left with nothing but darkness,” he said, as relayed to him in a conversation with one despondent resident in the area. 

Added a different source in North Hwanghae Province close to the issue, “Party propaganda cannot override the goodwill amassed by the workers towards their Southern colleagues that was born of ten years of contact with our brethren from ‘the neighborhood below [South Korea].’” 

Workers from the complex, and their families, feel grateful towards the South for supporting their livelihoods during that time, she said, and cannot brush off these feelings. Even residents of the area recognize that although the water and electricity may have been cut off to the area now, during the time Kaesong was operational, they lived in relative luxury–a “golden decade,” many called it– compared to people in other areas. 

That's despite the fact that they received only about 20% of the money paid out by the South Korean companies. The rest went straight to the Fat Controller.

Their fate still in the balance, the former KIC workers have spent any time not devoted to informed nostalgia or state propaganda to airing their grievances together, with particular focus on the regime’s inability, unwillingness, or likely both to mitigate the fallout from KIC’s closure–at the very least for those most directly affected. These conversations often turn to talk of war, not just for former KIC workers, but all North Koreans, who broadly view the KIC’s operational status as the state of inter-Korean relations writ large. 

The years of collaboration with and affinity for the South experienced by the KIC labor force leads most residents to conclude that “if a war does break out after this, 80-90% of the workers previously tied to Kaesong will flee South immediately,” she concluded. 

So, no – not organised resistance. That would be expecting too much. But a very far from loyal populace.,,,