According to TradingMarkets.com:
Top South Korean steelmaker POSCO pledged Thursday to provide more jobs to North Korean defectors struggling to settle in their newfound capitalist homeland.
Under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed with the Unification Ministry, POSCO promised to hire more defectors at its “social enterprise” subsidiaries set up in part to help the underprivileged.
POSCO’s Songdo SE, one such firm, now employees 105 people from the needy classes of society, including 35 defectors from North Korea, and plans to increase the number of defector employees to 50 by next year.
The firm is in charge of building maintenance for POSCO Engineering & Construction’s new headquarters and POSCO Global R&D Center located in Songdo Free Economic Zone in the western port city of Incheon.
“What is most important for North Korean defectors is to help them to stand on their own economically,” Unification Minister Hyun In-taek said in a speech at the MOU signing ceremony attended by some 200 people, including the 35 defectors employed at Songdo SE and POSCO CEO Chung Joon-yang.
Chung said that Songdo SE will put priority on hiring North Korean defectors living in Incheon.
Since the 1950-53 Korean War, nearly 20,000 North Koreans have defected to the South to escape from hunger and political suppression in their communist homeland. But many of them have a hard time getting decent jobs due to their lack of South Korean-style education and social discrimination.
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POSCO pledges to provide more jobs to North Korean defectors
TradingMarkets.com
11/9/2010
