I'd really like to know more about the "oppressive" part. Were these 12 year olds lying about their age to get a summer job? Or were these children getting pimped by a staffing firm?
I think there should be a huge divergence of punishment options based on the actual details.
I remember having a paper route when I was 10 years old. Yeah, not the same thing as a factory line job, but I wanted the job for extra money.
If these kids were forced to work, that's horrible, fine the company, punish them hard.
But if these were kids working a few 4 hour shifts a week because their parents worked there, then that's entirely different. Not legal, but not the same as exploiting some youngster against their will.
Yeah I wonder if the Dad was a manager so he put his son to work or something. They said these were "documented" citizens which I assume means they're not illegal child immigrants. The only other thing we know is that most of these factories were set up by Koreans companies, so they're probably not super small mom and pop shops. The fact they didn't go more in depth into their situation makes me wonder if it's because it goes contrary to the narrative, I know Reuters has a habit of doing that
I think there should be a huge divergence of punishment options based on the actual details.