North Korea’s favorite useful idiot South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young during a meeting with Secretary Condoleeza Rice has offered US corporations to set up factories in the joint North/South industrial (AKA-slave labor) zone in Kaesong, North Korea:

The unification minister is on a six-day trip to the U.S. beginning Sunday. Chung also met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce David Sampson and called on U.S. firms to set up operations in the Kaesong industrial complex.

“If U.S. companies operate in Kaesong, it would have a symbolic meaning,” Chung told Sampson. With regard to the request, Sampson was quoted as saying that U.S. firms would be able to have businesses in Kaesong as South Korean companies do. He added that as the U.S. evaluates the Kaesong industrial complex as important, it will help with the success of the complex.

What is sad is that there is probably US businesses that would love to take advantage of the slave labor available at Kaesong.

Something that got me wondering about this proclamation is; does this mean that Chung Dong-young is the personal spokesman for Kim Jong-il now? It seems like a sensitive subject like this involving North Korean sovereignty would be handled by North Korean diplomats not a South Korean. It seems like it would be offensive to North Korean to have a South Korean going around making policy about their territory.

If Chung is in fact speaking directly for Kim Jong Il now maybe we don’t have to worry about Chung becoming the next President of South Korea in the future which would be a good thing. He may instead be in the running to become Kim Jong Il’s successor instead.