South Korea said Tuesday it is looking into why three firms at a joint industrial complex in North Korea paid wages to their workers in defiance of the government’s decision not to do so.
The two Koreas have been in a wage dispute since the North unilaterally decided to raise the minimum wage by 5.18 percent to $74 per month for North Korean workers employed by 124 South Korean firms at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in the North’s border town of the same name.
A group of Seoul firms said Monday that the North decided to extend the deadline by a week for the March wage payment.
Three unidentified South Korean firms were found to have paid wages on Monday, the original deadline, and to have signed documents that guaranteed their duty to pay arrears.
Seoul’s unification ministry said the government is looking into their motives first before deciding whether to impose punitive actions against them.
“The three firms followed the government’s guidance that they should stick to the current wage agreement,” an official said, asking not to be named. “But we think that it is problematic that North Korea required them to make pledges to pay arrears later.”
Seoul has not accepted the North’s unilateral move, saying that Pyongyang violated a 2004 agreement that calls for two quasi-government committees from each side to set the wages together. The wage cap has been set at 5 percent per year.
The two Koreas have held the talks on the wage dispute twice so far through a quasi-government committee, but they failed to produce a breakthrough.
South Korean firms have been squeezed as the Seoul government has asked them not to accept the North’s decision while the North has threatened to collect arrears if they do not pay the higher wages.
South Korea is concerned that the wage row could set a precedent for the North to make unilateral decisions on the operation of the industrial park.
The Gaeseong Industrial Complex opened in the early 2000s and is the last remaining symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation. It has served as a major revenue source for the cash-strapped communist North. (Yonhap)
