Although the author feels that this story is something akin to the gossip that North Korea has banned bicycles, women’s pants and all male haircuts other than Kin Jong Un’s, we shall delve a little deeper here.
The media’s main source of information was an article in the Washington Post that approached the story fairly cautiously, as the present news were first published by the South Korean newspaper Choson Ilbo, which needs no introductions for the readers of the New Eastern Outlook as even the western media periodically criticise it for the “story” of the “executed girlfriend of Kim Jong Un”, which turned out to be a hoax in a half-year’s time. Despite the sympathetic descriptions of the execution by “reliable sources”, the “executed” singer later returned to North Korean TV.
The Washington Post offers a fairly detailed description of the possible prohibition. Remember that the Kaesong Complex is a place where North Koreans work in South Korean small and mid-sized businesses that need low-skilled labour. Although they earn a very decent salary by North Korean standards, from the South Korean standpoint, it’s like working for peanuts. The salary of a migrant worker from South-East Asia who works at a similar textile factory in Seoul is approximately ten times higher than of a North Korean in Kaesong. Yet even in this situation, the South Korean brass prefers to find an easy way out instead of paying “extra”.
For example, since at least 2012, if not earlier, overtime was paid not with money, but in kind, with the goods not even being the “bare necessities”, but these same Choco Pies. Generally speaking, the salary for overtime amounted to up to 12 pies depending on the generosity of the management, but averaged out to about 2-3. To put it lightly, this is a very profitable method of payment, as the price of a box in South Korea that contains 24 pies is roughly $5.
The author believes that the Choco Pie is a product of the chemical industry as opposed to the food industry, but the skilful PR machine has made it into a symbol of “South Korean deliciousness” which is actively exported outside the country. The results of this “nutritious policy” was that, according to the Post (and other sources), South Korean workers began to trade the Choco Pie on the black market, as eating it was the same kind of “status symbol” as was the American gum or hamburger a long time ago.
In a 2010 article, the Choson Ilbo stated that the black market price for one pie was $9.50, while the average monthly salary for a North Korean worker in Kaesong was $57. Furthermore, a staggering 2.5 million pies were sold on the black market every month. And there are even special markets that only sell the Choco Pie. Though in times of Lee Myung-bak, this wasn’t the worst that the newspaper came up with.
According to the Choson Ilbo, since the Kaesong Complex was founded, the Choco Pie has not only become the most popular South Korean item in the entire country, but has even turned into a kind of unofficial currency. The latter statement, however, is not exactly confirmed even by defectors, but it sounds wonderful as a sensationalist news piece!
The Anti-North Korean organisations have also contributed to the pie craze. They love to send hot air balloons to their northern neighbour which carry not only anti-North leaflets, but also cheap (“you can take it, I don’t want it”) proof of South Korean prosperity, including that same pie.
It’s not surprising, then, that in the eyes of at least a portion of North Korean special forces, the pie has really started to look like a sort of ideological threat, which is why rumours spread across the country that it contains harmful chemicals and is not really safe for eating. Incidentally, while we’re on the topic, in 2008, Russia tried to ban the Choco Pie as well due to the fact that it uses Chinese dried milk as an ingredient, which does not meet Russian food standards at all. There are several theories as to how the South Koreans got out of that one, the most politically correct of which states that they managed to draw a line between the original pie and its various off-shoots.
But let us return to the present and see what Choson Ilbo is writing this time. Firstly, the news article itself states that the Choco Pie was “apparently” banned. Reading on, it becomes clear that the North Korean authorities offered the South to compensate overtime for their workers not with the Choco Pie, but with “more nutritious food”. Now the workers will be receiving sausages, instant noodles, powdered coffee or chocolate bars. Some businesses were even ready to pay dollars for overtime.
Secondly, the Choson Ilbo article also offers another theory with a link to the South Korean Unification Ministry. It states that the North Korean workers themselves told their employers they were sick of the Choco Pie and wanted something else. However, the author is completely certain that the crux of the matter is not in getting sick of the pie and not in the fact that the workers started to realise they were getting scammed, but in the fact that “Pyongyang apparatchiks want to destroy the truest symbol of pro-South Korean propaganda”.
And that’s the pie story. Everyone can make of it what they will. In Russia, we have already passed that stage in the 1990s when managers on foreign plants thought it acceptable to pay their workers in a similar manner. It would be a good thing if these times are also starting to pass in North Korea.
One also has to think about how this story illustrates the relationship between the southerners and the northerners and which kinds of issues may arise after unification if a third of the country’s population will be seen not as brothers, but as slaves, who are ready to work themselves to the bone for another hour for the price of a Choco Pie.
Konstantin Asmolov, Cand. Sc. (History), is a senior research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Far Eastern Studies, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
