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U.S. not seeking to create “Asian NATO,” defense secretary says

Editor09 mins

The U.S. Defense Secretary emphasized partnership as the main priority for the American security strategy in the Indo-Pacific during a keynote speech on Saturday. However, Lloyd Austin stressed that the U.S. does not seek to create “an Asian NATO.” Austin spoke for half an hour at the First Plenary Session of the Shangri-La Dialogue 2022 security forum in Singapore. While reiterating that the U.S. stays “deeply invested” and committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific, the defense secretary said: “We do not seek confrontation and conflict and we do not seek a new Cold War, an Asian NATO or a region split into hostile blocs.” The United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific have recently expressed concern over China’s increasingly assertive military posture in the region. Beijing, on its part, has been complaining about what it sees as attempts by the U.S. and its partners to form a defense alliance in the region. When leaders from the U.S., Japan, India and Australia met last month for a summit of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, China cried foul. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Washington was “keen to gang up with ‘small circles’ and change China’s neighborhood environment,” making Asia-Pacific countries serve as “pawns” of the U.S. hegemony. “I think Secretary Austin made it very clear that there’s no appetite for an Asian NATO,” said Blake Herzinger, a Singapore-based defense analyst. “The U.S. values collective partnerships with shared visions and priorities, without the need to form a defense alliance,” he told RFA. ‘A region free from coercion and bullying’ The U.S will “continue to stand by our friends as they uphold their rights,” said Austin, adding that the commitment is “especially important as the People’s Republic of China adopts a more coercive and aggressive approach to its territorial claims.” He spoke of the Chinese air force’s almost daily incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and an “alarming” increase in the number of unsafe and unprofessional encounters between Chinese planes and vessels with those of other countries. Most recently, U.S. ally Australia accused China of conducting a “dangerous intercept,” of one of its surveillance aircraft near the Paracel islands in the South China Sea. Austin met with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue on Friday. During the meeting, which lasted nearly an hour, the two sides discussed how to better manage their relationship and prevent accidents from happening but did not reach any concrete resolution. Austin used Saturday’s speech to remind Beijing that “big powers carry big responsibilities,” saying “we’ll do our part to manage these tensions responsibly — to prevent conflict, and to pursue peace and prosperity.” The Indo-Pacific is the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) “priority theater,” he noted, adding that his department’s fiscal year 2023 budget request calls for one of the largest investments in history to preserve the region’s security.  This includes U.S. $6.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative to strengthen multilateral information-sharing and support training and experimentation with partners.  The budget also seeks to encourage innovation across all domains, including space and cyberspace, “to develop new capabilities that will allow us to deter aggression even more surely,” he said. The U.S. military is expanding exercises and training programs with regional partners, the defense secretary said. Later in June, the Pentagon will host the 28th Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise with forces from 26 countries, 38 ships and nearly 25,000 personnel. Next year a Coast Guard cutter will be deployed to Southeast Asia and Oceania, he said, “the first major U.S. Coast Guard cutter permanently stationed in the region.” An armed US-made F-16V fighter lands on the runway at an air force base in Chiayi, southern Taiwan on January 5, 2022. CREDIT: AFP Protecting Taiwan “Secretary Austin offered a compelling vision, grounded in American resolve to uphold freedom from coercion and oppose the dangerously outmoded concept of aggressively-carved spheres of influence,” said Andrew Erickson, Research Director of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, speaking in a personal capacity. “The key will be for Washington to match Austin’s rhetoric with requisite resolve and resources long after today’s Dialogue is over,” said Erickson.   “It is that follow-through that will determine much in what President Biden rightly calls the ‘Decisive Decade’,” he added. Last month in Tokyo Biden announced a new Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA) that Austin said would provide better access to space-based, maritime domain awareness to countries across the region. The U.S. defense secretary spoke at length about his government’s policy towards Taiwan, saying “we’re determined to uphold the status quo that has served this region so well for so long.” While remaining committed to the longstanding one-China policy, the U.S. categorically opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side.” “We do not support Taiwan independence. And we stand firmly behind the principle that cross-strait differences must be resolved by peaceful means,” Austin said. The U.S. continues assisting Taiwan in maintaining self-defense capability and this week approved the sale of U.S. $120 million in spare parts and technical assistance for the Taiwanese navy.

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Chinese rubber company detains Laos farmer trying to sell crop outside province

Editor07 mins

Employees of a Chinese-owned rubber company in rural Laos illegally stopped a local rubber tree farmer trying to sell his harvest to another buyer for a higher price, sources in the Southeast Asian country told RFA. Zhongtian Luye operates a rubber processing factory in Khua district in the northern province of Phongsaly along the border with China. The company created a contract farming system with rubber tree farmers in the area to maintain supply. It pays farmers U.S. $0.56 per kilogram ($0.25 per pound) of natural rubber. Though it has contracts with local farmers for certain quantities of their yield, nothing is stopping them from selling the rest of their crop in nearby Oudomxay province, where prices are around 25% higher. Employees of the rubber company blocked a road to prevent a car packed with raw rubber from leaving town, a villager told RFA’s Lao Service on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “They thought that the driver was shipping his output to sell in Oudomxay province [in breach of contract.] They also thought that he was trying to buy output from other villagers who have contracts with the company,” the villager said. “That is why they stopped his car and took it to their camp area. Normally if a car is stopped and there is any kind of wrongdoing, it should be taken to the district police station,” he said. Police showed up at the work camp to investigate, later ordering the company to release the driver. Zhongtian Luye did not have a contract with the man who was stopped, and the rubber was all from his own farm, the villager said. Police fined the employees for blocking the road without permission. A second villager said the company may feel justified in buying rubber at below market prices from local farmers because of the money it has invested in the area, including for road construction and to help farmers start producing rubber. There also have been cases where the farmers broke their agreements with Zhongtian Luye to try to make more money elsewhere, the second villager said. “They already signed agreements, but some farmers are not satisfied with the price set by the Chinese company,” the second source said. “The company has a concession and the right to buy from the farmers as stated in the memorandum of understanding. However, when the trees are mature for harvesting, some farmers don’t want to sell for so low.” A woman who used to do business with Zhongtian Luye told RFA that the company feels entitled to all the rubber produced in the area, even from farmers who are not under contract. “They want them to sell it to their company only, even though they can get a higher price in Oudomxay,” she said. RFA was able to contact Zhongtian Luye’s interpreter but he declined to comment on the issue. Under the most common contract farming system in Laos, referred to as “3+2 contract farming,” companies provide funding, training and marketing services to producers, in addition to buying the product, while farmers provide land and labor. The central or local government is usually responsible for ensuring that neither party is taken advantage of. An official from the Phongsaly province’s Department of Agriculture and Forests told RFA that Zhongtian Luye, the province and the farmers have signed production agreements. The company can decide to block roads to prevent the farmers from selling elsewhere, the official said. “It is to up the provincial and district level authorities to consider how to solve this kind of problem and the district deputy governor will hold a meeting to find a solution,” the official said. “But the agreement states that the rubber farmers who signed a contract-farming agreement cannot sell to other companies, but only this company,” he said, without explaining why the company has a right to prevent the farmers not under contract from selling elsewhere. The official said the company does not tell his department the prices it pays, but said the department would meet with the company to double check that the contracts are fair. Zhongtian Luye has been operating in Khua district since 2006. It is unknown how many farmers have contracts to produce rubber for the company. According to the report from the Phongsaly province People’s Assembly, there are two Chinese rubber companies in the district. Translated by Phouvong. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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Seven Uyghur staffers from sports school in Xinjiang serving up to 5 years in prison

Editor04 mins

Authorities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region sentenced seven Uyghur teachers at a sports school in Kashgar to jail terms of four to five years, a local police officer and a person with knowledge of the situation said. The police officer, who did not give his name, provided the names of the detained teachers at the Kashgar Sports School, which is located in the district his station patrols, but said he didn’t know the reasons for the arrests. Uyghur instructors and staff members Adil Tursun, Amir, Osmanjan and Qeyserjan were arrested in early 2017, he said. Authorities later arrested the school’s Taekwondo trainer, Abduxkur, and math teacher, Esqerjan. Another employee, Nurmemet Yasin, was the last to be detained. “I don’t know the last names of these teachers,” he said. “They were sentenced to four years or five years each for re-education. I don’t where they are now.” Uyghurs comprised about 20% of the employees among the school’s total 60-some workers. The rest were Han Chinese, according to a Uyghur source who knows about the school. “Osmanjan is around 42 or 43,” said a source familiar with the school staff, who did not want to be named. “Amir is the same age as Osmanjan. They graduated from the same class. Adil Tursun is about 45. We don’t know the reasons why they were arrested.” An earlier RFA report confirmed that authorities arrested Alimjan Mehmut, a volleyball teacher at the Kashgar Sports School who served as a torchbearer for China’s 2008 Summer Olympics. Mehmut was sentenced to eight years in a prison in Aksu (in Chinese, Akesu) for “befriending bearded men” under a deepening crackdown on Islamic practices and culture, according to information provided by the Norway-based rights organization Uyghur Hjelp, which documents missing and imprisoned Uyghurs in the XUAR. “Alimjan Mehmut was arrested before I went to work at the school,” said the source. “It’s been two years since he was arrested.” In RFA’s previous story, Aduweli Ayup, the Uyghur linguist who runs the Uyghur Hjelp website, said that Mehmut was one of at least six or seven instructors, including two volleyball coaches, from the Kashgar Sports School hauled away by authorities in past years. At the time, Ayup also named Mehmut’s colleagues, Ezizjan and Ezisqari from the Kashgar Sports School among those arrested, though their detentions have not yet been confirmed by police. Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Guards deny female inmates drinking water after protest in Myanmar’s Insein Prison

Editor05 mins

Authorities in Myanmar’s notorious Insein Prison have cut off the drinking water supply to the cells of female political prisoners who protested poor living conditions in the facility after a fellow inmate who was denied medical treatment suffered a miscarriage, sources said Friday. Sources who visited the prison on the outskirts of Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon told RFA Burmese that dozens of prisoners have been forced to drink from the toilet after the taps were turned off more than two weeks ago, leaving them with no other source of water. “The authorities cut off the drinking water since the protest,” said one recent visitor, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity. “They put 60-70 female prisoners in one prison hall. I was told that all of them are now forced to drink water from the toilet.” The source said that some of the prisoners have contracted cholera and other diseases after drinking the unclean water. Last month, a 24-year-old political prisoner at Insein named Cherry Bo Kyi Naing, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for “unlawful association,” suffered an early-term miscarriage after authorities delayed sending her to the hospital for treatment. On May 23, the female political prisoners held a protest, claiming that Cherry Bo Kyi Naing’s miscarriage was avoidable and the result of negligence by the guards. Two days later, prison authorities shut down the protest and relocated all the female political prisoners to the single prison hall, before shutting off the water supply. When asked by RFA for comment on the situation at Insein, Prison Department spokesperson Khin Shwe denied reports that the women had been cut off access to drinking water. “In Insein prison, we provide adequate water supplies for both drinking and hygiene,” he said. “We don’t give such punishments for incidents that occur in the prison. We have no such thing.” Attempts by RFA to reach the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bangkok, Thailand, went unanswered Friday. The Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) told RFA it is still making inquiries into the protest at Insein and the response by authorities and was unable to comment. Kaythi Aye, a former political prisoner in Myanmar who now lives in Norway, told RFA that female prisoners require better hygiene conditions than their male counterparts, and access to clean water is crucial. “Prisoners are in serious trouble when they don’t have access to clean water, especially during the monsoon season, when mosquitos proliferate and people suffer skin conditions,” she said. “Wet conditions cause disease to spread further. It’s inhumane to cut off clean water for the female prisoners.” According to the AAPP, security forces have arrested more than 11,000 civilians in Myanmar since the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup. There are nearly 1,200 female prisoners across the country, around 200 of which are held in Insein Prison. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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Myanmar’s junta yet to send execution orders for former lawmaker, democracy activist

Editor05 mins

Myanmar’s ruling military junta has not issued execution orders for a former lawmaker from the deposed government and a prominent democracy activist sitting on death row after convictions on terrorism charges, despite reports that the men would be hanged Friday evening local time, a Prisons Department spokesman told RFA. On June 3, the junta announced that it would proceed with the planned executions of former Member of Parliament Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy, a longtime democracy activist and former leader of the 88 Generation Students Group. Anti-regime opponents Aung Thura Zaw and Hla Myo Aung are also facing the death penalty. Myanmar’s military, which seized control from the democratically elected government in a February 2021 coup, has cracked down on anti-regime activists, sentencing more than 100 to death. The executions of Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy, whose real name is Kyaw Min Yu, would be the country’s first judicial executions since 1990. Authorities had not received execution orders from the junta for Phyo Zeya Thaw and Ko Jimmy, who are being held in Yangon’s Insein Prison, said Prisons Department spokesman Khin Shwe. “We haven’t receive anything from the superiors,” he said. “We also don’t know about the news that they will be hanged this evening and that there had been religious rites in prison for the inmates.” All four inmates are in good health and have been transferred to death row where they are wearing orange prison suits given to those facing execution, he said. Junta spokesman, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, told RFA on Tuesday that all four men would be executed under the regular procedures of the Prisons Department. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), sent a written appeal on Friday to Sen. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, head of the State Administration Council (SAC), the formal name of the junta regime, to “reconsider the sentences and refrain from carrying out the death sentences.” “The death sentences and reported planned execution of a number of anti-SAC individuals have attracted great concern among ASEAN member states, as well as ASEAN external partners,” he wrote. If carried out, the executions “would trigger a very strong and widespread negative reaction from the international community” and hurt efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in Myanmar, Hun Sen wrote. A former member of the hip-hop band Acid, Phyo Zeya Thaw served as a lawmaker from the National League for Democracy from 2012 to 2020. Following the coup and the subsequent crackdown on peaceful anti-regime protesters, he went into hiding but was arrested in November 2021. Phyo Zeya Thaw, whose real name is Maung Kyaw, and Ko Jimmy, who was arrested in October 2021, were both sentenced to death by a military tribunal this January for treason and terrorism. Activist Nilar Thein, who is the wife of Ko Jimmy, said the junta will have to take responsibility for giving her husband the death penalty. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

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Hong Kong investigative news agency FactWire shuts down, citing ‘great change.’

Editor06 mins

The Hong Kong-based investigative news agency FactWire announced its closure on Friday, the latest in a line of cutting-edge media outlets to fold amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent under a draconian national security law. “It is time for us to bid you farewell,” the agency said in a statement on its website. “In recent years, the media has contended with great change,” it said. “Despite having wrestled many times with the difficult decision as to whether to continue our journalistic work, we had always come to the same affirmative conclusion: to stand fast to our core values and beliefs, and to always report the facts.” “But to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose. It has, at last, come time to end our journey,” the agency said. “The FactWire News Agency will cease operation as of today, Friday, June 10, 2022. All staff will be dismissed in accordance with pre-established procedures. All monthly subscriptions will also be suspended as of today,” the statement said. Set up in 2015 with crowdfunding from thousands of Hong Kong residents, FactWire ran a non-profit, public service news agency for six years, focusing on hard-hitting investigations, and has been no stranger to official harassment and covert threats. The agency tweeted on May 3 that its newsletter delivery system had been hacked, exposing the personal details of some 3,700 subscribers, apologizing to subscribers for the data leak. It made global headlines in 2017 when it exposed defects in the European pressurized reactors (EPR) designed by French nuclear firm Areva at the U.S. $8.3 billion Taishan nuclear power plant on the coast of neighboring Guangdong. In 2018, the agency reported that a garrison of Chinese border guards had taken over land on Hong Kong’s side of the internal border despite promises from China the city would remain a separate jurisdiction after the 1997 handover. The investigative journalism group FactWire found that some 21,000 square feet of privately owned land within a high-security area along the Hong Kong side of the border with mainland China had been taken over by the 6th Detachment of the Guangdong provincial border defense corps of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for six years. It said the border guards had also built themselves a small bridge over the Sha Tau Kok river, which runs along the border at this point, and “frequently” use it to enter Hong Kong incognito. In 2016, FactWire, which has won SOPA and Human Rights Press Awards for its work, vowed to ignore an anonymous threat of “trouble” after an expose on faulty trains made in mainland China, stepping up security measures. During the 2019 protest movement, which prompted China to exercise far more direct political control of Hong Kong via changes to the election system and by criminalising peaceful opposition under the national security law, FactWire followed up on the fate of victims of the Aug. 31, 2019 attacks on passengers at Prince Edward MTR, and later exposed a facial recognition function hidden in the Hong Kong government’s LeaveHomeSafe COVID-19 tracking app. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) imposed a draconian national security law on Hong Kong from July 1, 2020, ushering in a crackdown on pro-democracy media organizations, activists and politicians that sparked the forcible closure of Jimmy Lai’s Next Digital media empire, including the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, as well as the closure of Stand News and Citizen News, and the “rectification” of iCable news and government broadcaster RTHK to bring them closer to Beijing’s official line. Hong Kong recently plummeted from 80th to 148th in the 2022 Reporters Without Border (RSF) press freedom index, with the closures of Apple Daily and Stand News cited as one of the main factors. More than 800 Hong Kong journalists lost their jobs at the two outlets, leaving most forced to look for work outside the industry, many of them far from Hong Kong. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

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Four villagers hurt as hundreds protest over cemetery project in central Vietnam

Editor03 mins

Four people were hurt in clashes with police as hundreds of mostly female protesters wrapped themselves in Vietnamese flags to rally against a cemetery and crematorium project in central Vietnam, villagers said Friday. The protest on Thursday targeted Vinh Hang Eco-park and Cemetery, an 80-ha, 500 billion dong ($21.8 million) project in the Hung Nguyen district of central Nghe An province. Approved by local authorities in 2017, the cemetery has encounterd strong objection by local residents due to environmental and water resource concerns. “There was a clash among the police and local residents. One woman was seriously injured and was sent to Nghe An provincial hospital for emergency care. Two others were sent to a district hospital with less serious injuries,” local resident Phan Van Khuong told RFA Vietnamese. “They arrested three or four people but released them on the same day,” he added. A Facebook page titled “Hạt lúa Kẻ Gai” showed ozens of police officers in uniform knocking down protesters’ tents. “The Commune People’s Committee sent some people to plant markers on a road where local residents put up tents [to block the project] and we all rushed up there to stop them,” Nguyen Van Ky, a resident from Phuc Dien village, told RFA. “In response, district and commune police officers were deployed and they removed the tents and shoved us down, injuring four people,” said Ky. The injuries were caused when police officers kicked and stomped on protesters. A fourth protester had a leg injury that did not require hospital treatment. RFA called authorities from Nghe An province and Hung Tay commune to seek comments but no one answered the phone. While all land in Communist-run Vietnam is ultimately held by the state, land confiscations have become a flashpoint as residents accuse the government of pushing small landholders aside in favor of lucrative real estate projects, and of paying too little in compensation. Translated by Anna Vu. Written by Paul Eckert.

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Thai school reopens for Myanmar children after 2-year COVID lockdown

Editor02 mins

The Sukkahansa (Happy and Joy) Learning Center, located in Thailand’s Mae Sot district along the Myanmar border, welcomed Burmese children back as classes resumed on the first day of June after being shut down for more than two years because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Many of the boys and girls had fled with their families from post-coup violence in their homeland by crossing the Moei River, which separates the two countries. On June 1, nearly 100 students dressed in school uniforms, met with their teachers and friends at the school for the first time since the pandemic began. The school is not part of Thailand’s formal schooling system, but provides students with instruction in Burmese and Thai. It is sponsored by the Help without Frontiers Foundation, a Thai NGO. While Thailand for decades has harbored nearly 100,000 displaced people – largely ethnic Karen, as well as millions of migrant workers – the fighting between the Burmese junta forces and ethnic minority rebels after the February 2021 coup have worsened hardships for those who fled here from Myanmar. About 2,000 of 12,000 students at what had been more than 70 learning centers located along the border with Myanmar have not returned to classes, said Siraporn Kaewsombat. The number of centers has shrunk to 66. “The real problem for students at migrant learning centers is that they have no Thai citizenship so they cannot enter Thai state-run schools and have to depend on these NGO-sponsored schools,” Siraporn told BenarNews.

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Swimming, or drowning, in the Chinese tide

Editor01 mins

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently visited the Solomon Islands and seven other South Pacific nations, part of leader Xi Jinping’s drive to expand Chinese economic and diplomatic clout through the Belt and Road Initiative of loans for infrastructure and trade. The Indian Ocean countries of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, however, have found themselves in deep debt from earlier China partnerships.

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North Korea makes school uniforms in inter-Korean industrial zone without permission

Editor07 mins

Some North Korean students will show up for school this summer decked out in high-quality uniforms made in a South Korean-built factory that has been shuttered in the wake of missile tests by Pyongyang. Sources in the country told RFA that the company that supplies uniforms to schools in North Hwanghae province began making summer uniforms in the nearby Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint-Korean manufacturing zone that was once a showcase of North-South cooperation. The complex briefly closed in 2013 during a period of high tension between Seoul and Pyongyang.  In 2016 South Korea halted operations in the complex in response to a North Korean missile test, and operations remain suspended. Though the uniforms made in Kaesong are superior, unilaterally starting up the South Korean factories could spark friction with Seoul, sources said. “Last week, an official of the provincial Clothing Industry Management Bureau and I returned to North Hwanghae province with summer school uniforms that were able to pass product inspection. We brought them from a garment factory at the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” an official of the province, which lies just across the demilitarized zone from South Korea, told RFA’s Korean Service Tuesday on condition of anonymity for security reasons. The bureau is responsible for making enough summer uniforms by the end of the month, after which they will be given to the province’s elementary, middle and high schools as gifts from the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, the source said. “That’s why the bureau has been operating sewing and cutting machines in Kaesong since March, with permission from the Central Committee. They mobilized residents from Kaesong who previously worked at the industrial complex,” he said. “Mobilization” is North Korean code for forced labor, in stark contrast to when the industrial complex was in operation and workers, at least in theory, earned several times more than their counterparts outside the complex. North Korean use of the complex without South Korean permission might be frowned upon below the 38th parallel, but North Hwanghae is located just south of Pyongyang and is a strategic region for propaganda purposes. The students need to look their best. “The Central Committee took special measures to use the facilities in the industrial complex… are partly because the other clothes factories in North Hwanghae are so old. But the main reason is because the Highest Dignity often visits the province to offer his guidance,” the official said, referring to Kim Jong Un’s well-documented visits to factories, farms, schools and areas hit by natural disasters, so he can be portrayed as a benevolent leader. “It is an urgent priority to present the school uniforms to the students in a timely manner,” the source said. Truck drivers are shipping imported fabric from Sinuiju, on the border with China, to Kaesong, for use in the factories, a source north of Pyongyang in South Pyongan province told RFA. “I heard from a driver who brought the imported fabrics in a freight car that they are still producing clothes in the Kaesong Industrial Complex in the factories that were operated by South Korean companies,” he said, on condition of anonymity to speak freely. “They are making winter clothes for officials.” Since the complex closed in 2016, some of the equipment has been repurposed by companies as far away as North Pyongan province in the northwest, a source there told RFA. “Prior to the pandemic, several of the currency earning clothing factories here moved the equipment from the garment factories in Kaesong without permission,” he said on condition of anonymity for safety reasons. “Though clothing processing was suspended due to coronavirus lockdown measures, the industrial complex machinery here has been used to make school bags and uniforms for students in the province,” the third source said. “Although there are homegrown garment production units… in Sinuiju, they are not as good as what was in the industrial complex. So they used it to make the school uniforms faster and with better quality.” South Korea’s Ministry of Unification Thursday announced that it detected vehicle movement inside the Kaesong Industrial Complex, and that it was monitoring the area to determine if North Korea was operating facilities in the complex without permission. Translated by Leejin J. Chung. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

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