death and bereavementEdinburgh Woollen Mill said the labels are “factually

death and bereavementEdinburgh Woollen Mill said the labels are “factually correct” and they do not discriminate about who they employ, but there are questions about what happens to North Korean workers’ wages.Edinburgh Woollen Mill has 500 outlets around the UK which sell garments including cashmere jumpers, labelled James Pringle and “Designed in Scotland”, which are produced by a company based in Mongolia called Eermel.The North Korean workers in the Eermel factory in Mongolia are given food and a place to sleep, but according to Eermel’s export director, Bayar, their wages are paid to the North Korean government.”We are transferring the money to the account of the light industry of North Korea,” Bayar told Newsnight.He said he did not know how much of the wages were given to the workers: “How they split cheap football jerseys divide cheap nfl jerseys the salary we don’t know.”David Woods, a manager at the Eermel factory who has recently left the company, told Newsnight:”We’re very proud to be working with Edinburgh Woollen Mill, they joined us about five years ago.”Mr Woods said the North Koreans are “hard workers, they don’t complain”, and that “they are looked after by Eermel. They have a dormitory, they have food, they have showers, they have a television”.But when Newsnight contacted Edinburgh Woollen Mill about the arrangement the company told us they had been given a different explanation of the set up by Eermel”No funds are paid to North Korea or any North Korean agency,” they said.The statement was in stark contradiction to what Newsnight’s reporters were told on the ground, which was “the North Korean government is getting money from here”.For decades North Korea has been one of the world’s most secretive societies. It is one of the few countries still under nominally communist rule.Following North wholesale nfl jerseys Korea’s nuclear test in October 2006, the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions on Pyongyang.The labour brigades are usually overseen by North Korean officials who maintain similar tight controls to those faced by the workers back in their totalitarian homeland.At the Eermel factory in Mongolia, the then manager Mr Woods showed Newsnight factory workers, including those from North Korea, making James Pringle cashmere jumpers.Mr Woods also showed us the finished product, ready to cheap nfl jerseys china be sent to Scotland, complete with “Designed in Scotland” labels.Newsnight purchased an identical jumper in one of Edinburgh Woollen Mill’s stores in the Scottish capital Edinburgh.There is no legal requirement to label clothes with their country of origin, but it is an offence to mislead customers about where a product is made.The Trading Standards wholesale jerseys Institute told Newsnight that “on the face of it” labelling a jumper as “Designed in Scotland” and not saying where and how it had been made “could be in breach of the regulations” to protect consumers from unfair trading.Please note: The James Pringle label used by Edinburgh Woollen Mill is not related or linked in any way with the Pringle of Scotland brand.