Going to BAT for North Korea

"The world's second largest cigarette company British American Tobacco has been operating a secret factory in North Korea for the last four years, the U.K.’s Guardian daily reported Monday. The paper said BAT in September 2001 set up a joint operation called BAT-Taesong with the state-run Korea Sogyong Trading Corporation, which had until then been exporting carpets. Early on, the company produced the low-priced Kumgangsan cigarettes and is now known to be producing the evocatively named Viceroy and Craven A brands, ostensibly for the North Korean market. With an initial investment of $7.1 million, BAT owns 60 percent of the joint venture. BAT-Taesong employs around 200 North Koreans." http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200510/200510170012.html

"The anti-smoking group ASH said: "It seems that there is no regime so awful and no country so repressive that BAT does not want to do business there." The company says it has worked to improve the working conditions of its employees in Pyongyang, that it provides workers with free meals, and that they are "well paid". In launching its North Korean enterprise, however, BAT is doing business in a country regarded by some as having the worst human rights record in the world. Even one of BAT's own public relations officers, in Japan, was astonished when asked about the joint venture. "Business with North Korea?" he asked. "Where there are no human rights?"
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/tobacco-giant-capitalises-on-north-korean-regime/2005/10/17/1129401197225.html

The KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) reports
"Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico State of the United States, and his party arrived here Monday.",
and "Foreign forces are alien ones and the forces for division. What the foreign forces have done since their occupation of a half of Korea is nothing but acts against the reconciliation and unity of the nation, peace and peaceful reunification. It is due to the foreign forces that the Korean nation still remains divided and has undergone misfortune and pain and a tense situation is prevailing on the Korean Peninsula and it is exposed to the danger of a new war. Even at this time the U.S. imperialists are running amuck to provoke a new war, chilling the desire of the Koreans for reconciliation and unity and persisting in their moves against the north in a bid to block independent reunification."
and "The All-People Committee for Proper Settlement of the Past History, the People's Solidarity for Inheriting the Spirit of the Movement for Democracy and other civic and public organizations of south Korea reportedly held a press conference on Oct. 10 at which they demanded an amendment to the law on the past history. Speakers at the conference referred to the deplorable situation where victims of the "Security Law" are subject to reinvestigation under the existing law on the past history. Charging that the law is obstructive to the probe into the past history, they called for scrapping the poisonous articles of the law as soon as possible. They declared that they would tour all parts of south Korea in demand of the revision of the law on the past history, a tattered one, and hold meetings to hear testimonies of its victims and, at the same time, stage actions to have the amendment to the law placed on the agenda of the "National Assembly."
But makes no mention of Craven cigarettes.

You might want to light up and enjoy a read of the history, so far, of tobacco:
http://www.tobacco.org/resources/history/tobacco_history.html
http://smokingsides.com/docs/hist.html
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~vpeters/tobac.htm
as well as the US North Korean trade sanctions: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/sanctions/t11korea.pdf



Related topic:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Nov/79828.htm