By Alex Jensen
SEOUL
The Koreas put heightened tensions aside Tuesday to resolve a wage dispute that has overshadowed the joint Kaesong Industrial Complex since February.
While the neighbors remain on edge following landmine explosions south of the border earlier this month, committees representing both sides were able to agree on a 5 percent minimum wage increase at the Kaesong facility, according to an official from Seoul’s Unification Ministry.
The complex is just inside North Korea, but houses 124 South Korean firms responsible for the employment of nearly 55,000 local workers.
South Korea rejected the North’s unilateral 5.18 percent hike earlier this year, triggering a dispute that threatened to sever what is viewed as a thread holding together inter-Korean cooperation.
The agreed rise aligns with a 5 percent wage cap already established at Kaesong, and amounts to less than $74 a month.
Even taking into consideration potential add-ons, a worker earning the minimum wage in South Korea could more than double a Kaesong counterpart’s monthly salary in less than a week.
But the joint complex represents greater considerations for Seoul, as the government threatened to punish its own firms when they appeared determined to conduct business as usual at a facility that had closed for several months during particularly frosty bilateral relations in 2013.
“By taking into account the grave situation facing inter-Korean ties, the government plans to take measures to develop the complex,” the ministry official was quoted as saying by news agency Yonhap, reflecting South Korea’s aim to protect Kaesong from politics.
On the same day, however, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff revealed that its chairman told soldiers to “powerfully” respond to any North Korean military actions.
“If the enemy provokes again, do not hesitate and retaliate resolutely,” Admiral Choi Yoon-hee instructed a frontline unit after accusing the North of planting the landmines responsible for seriously wounding two South Korean soldiers on August 4.
Referring to the South’s renewed psychological warfare measures of blasting outside information northward from loudspeakers positioned at the border, Choi also said that they “pose fears bigger than those posed by any other high-tech weapons.”
The reclusive North has called on its neighbor to switch off the broadcasts, while also replying with its own propaganda announcements after making a series of threats to physically attack South Korea and its ally the United States.
Pyongyang has been further riled this week by the start of a joint military drill involving tens of thousands of South Korean and American troops.
