Made in North Korea?

North Korea's Sesame Street Export Business
As all of you will soon find out, I am extremely interested in the nation of North Korea. Any time I can post anything on here that's tangentially related to the country, I'm going to do it. Prepare yourselves.

Anyhow, this is an article detailing the ways in which toys produced in North Korea (essentially with slave labor) may now be available on the international market. Sesame Street plush toys have come under especially heavy scrutiny after it was discovered that official Sesame Street products bear a close resemblance to those featured in North Korean foreign trade advertisements. The American company responsible for producing Sesame Street plushies outsources most of its production to China, which is not highly unusual. However, recent wage increases in China have made it more profitable for Chinese companies to outsource in turn to North Korea, where workers often do not receive any form of compensation.

This is not the first time a Western company has been involved with subcontracting to North Korea, as the article indicates. Clothing items bearing tags that read "Made in China" may very well have been produced in North Korea and merely tagged for resale in China. Such products often end up here, even though companies selling products in the United States are legally barred from outsourcing production to North Korea. The North Korean Sesame Street lookalikes may also be knockoffs, which would not be surprising either given the country's well known forays into state-sponsored counterfeiting operations.