Update: This post quotes Jack Prichard’s position on Kaesong, which is that expanding Kaesong and projects like it, rather than stifling them, would help transform North Korea – the soft power argument, which I do not buy; in North Korea’s case t…

The planned special economic zone (SEZ) at Shinuiju on China’s border, which never materialized, was to basically be a walled city in which picked workers would be completely isolated from North Korean society in that zone. Similar projects, including Kaesong, would and are yielding similarly results; there is absolutely on evidence that Kaesong is producing, even on a small scale, the sort of effect Pritchard describes.

Rather these projects only serve to keep the regime alive. No wonder after all these years of missed predictions of regime failure, considering UNDP funds, the “Sunshine Policy,” remittances from the Chosen Soren in Japan, and relative international complacency in North Korea’s illicit activities.

The only North Koreans helped by Kaesong are those few hundreds actually working there, and the regime elite.