38 North has published new satellite imagery of Hwanggumphyong that shows new construction taking place on the island.
We can now identify the groundbreaking ceremony stone, management committee building, electricity infrastructure, and construction equipment.
Previous posts on Hwanggumphyong and Sinuiju SEZ here.
The always innovative NK News launched a “Pro” service on May 6. I joined this service as a reader and as a regular contributor.
From May 1 most of my original work will appear on NK News Pro. NKeconWatch will be updated with generally available public information from time to time, but I plan on putting all the new stuff on NK News Pro.
NK Leadership Watch and North Korea Tech are joining me. I hope to see you there. Sign up here.
UPDATES:
9. Contributed to James Pearson’s piece on Kim Jong Un’s yacht
8. North Korea’s ‘Torure’ rail transport system
7. Kim Jong-un’s east coast guidance trips
6. New Yalu/Amnok River bridge
4. New residential construction in Chongjin. Follow story up here
My article in the BBC is up. You can see it here.
Rodong Sinmun, June 13, 2013
Army men, Party members and working people are now making a great stride forward, following the examples set by the soldiers in the construction of a skiing ground on Masik Pass responding to the call of the respected Marshal Kim Jong Un for a new turn on all fronts of socialist construction by creating “Masikryong Speed”.
Indeed, a new speed is being created on the skiing ground to finish the project within this year as soldier-builders give full play to their indomitable revolutionary spirit, a spirit of each being a match for a hundred.
Soldier-builders engaged in the construction of the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum expect to wind up the project soon.
Reports of innovatory successes also come from many other construction sites such as the Munsu Wading Pool, the Mirim Riding Club and the Cemetery of Fallen Heroes of the Korean People’s Army.
At the second-stage construction of the Huichon Power Station and in the reclamation of the Sepho Tableland one can witness the vigorous labor endeavors of soldiers and working people for another leap in socialist construction.
A new speed known as “Masikryong Speed” calls for a new upsurge all through the country such as in the project for increasing the Kosan Fruit Farm’s capacity and the project for cutting water ways in South Hwanghae Province.
NOTE: I identified the location of the Masikryong Ski Resort here.
Naenara offers news of a rare DPRK international public tender:
Invitation for International Public Tender
The Ministry of Land and Environment Protection of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea plans to build a new road between Pyongyang and Phyongsong in order to facilitate public transportation in the western region of the country, including Pyongyang.
To this end, the ministry is going to purchase equipment and materials necessary for the project through international public tender. It also intends to employ international consultation services for technical assistance.
The international consultancy services will include road design, building operations and technical supervision (land fill, sand and gravel bedding, cement stability, paving, bridge construction, construction of small structures and protective guard and installation of road signs) and use of equipment and machines for road construction.
The equipment and materials to be purchased are as follows:
Hydraulic excavator, cement truck, self-propelled road liner, measuring equipment, bus, bulldozer, fuel truck, concrete cutter, geological testing equipment, cement, grader, trailer, voltage regulator, examination equipment, round steel, loader, sprinkler, water pumping equipment, drilling equipment, angle iron, Macadam roller, crane truck, dredger, printer, steel pipe, Dandem roller, stone crushing plant, horizontal vehicle for bridge construction, plotter, iron sheet, composite roller, mobile compressor, guniting machine, laptops, timber, tired roller, hammer drill, welder, laser surveyor’s rod (LEICA TCA 2003), asphalt, concrete paver (with the framed rails), rock-driller, electric generator, digital theodolite (SOKKIA DT 610S), fuel, concrete mixing station, asphaltic emulsion truck, pressure pump, automatic leveling instrument (SOKKIA C32II), aluminum sheet, asphalt mixing station, automatic truck, vibratory pile hammer, fork-lifter, luminous paper, mixture truck, asphalt paver, pressure pump, light reflection sign, and car.
Letters of tender invitation will be issued early in July 2013.
For more details, please contact:
International Implementing Office for Road Construction Project
Add: Pothonggang-dong No.1, Pothonggang District, Pyongyang, DPR Korea
Fax: 850-2-381-4416/4410
The English language PDF is here.
Translation courtesy of Lee Kyungmin, currently working at Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea.
Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
2013-6-14
Since the start of Kim Jong-un regime, internal economic management measures continue to be established. Recently, a new law was enacted for the establishment of economic development zones.
The KCNA reported on June 5 that a law for economic development zones was adopted and “in this regard, ordinance of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly’s Standing Committee was promulgated at the session on May 29.”
This legislation is a follow up to the decision reached on April 1 this year by the Supreme People’s Assembly for the creation of economic development zones.
The legislation is composed of 7 chapters and 62 sections, which cover matters such as configuration, development, management, conflict resolution, and so forth.
The report added that “Economic development zones, in accordance with the regulations set forth by the state, are entitled to various privileges as special economic zones.”
In addition, “Foreign corporations, individuals, economic organizations, and overseas Koreans are able to invest in the economic development zones, and can freely engage in economic activities including establishment of businesses, branches, and offices.” It also indicated that “the state will provide preferential terms to investors in areas such as land usages, recruitment, and tax payments.”
The details of the rights granted to investors were expounded, emphasizing that economic development zone is a special zone, and provides legal safeguards to protect the rights, investment properties and legitimate profits of foreign investors.
According to the KCNA, the economic development zones will include various economic and science and technology sectors such as industrial development, agricultural, tourism, export processing, and high-tech development zones.
Chairman Kim Jong-un delivered a speech at the WPK’s Central Committee Meeting entitled “Economic Development Zones Must Be Created in Every Province Reflecting the Regional Characteristics,” hinting at the state’s policy to attract more foreign investment to accelerate the development of the economic zones.
In particular, investments in infrastructure construction, state-of-the-art science and technology sector, and production of goods highly competitive in the international market were especially encouraged.
The management of these economic development zones will be separated into local-level and central-level zones, indicating that economic development zones will be established in all parts of the country.
However, this law does not apply to the preexisting economic and trade zones in Rason, Hwanggeumpyeong, Wihwa Island, Kumgang and Kaesong. The new legislation indicates that North Korea is committed to economic development regardless of the tense relations on the Korean Peninsula.
According to Agence France-Presse:
The UN food body on Saturday said it had approved $200 million of food aid for North Korea, targeting the country’s most vulnerable people who remain dependent on external assistance.
The World Food Programme (WFP) executive board has this week approved a new two-year operation for North Korea starting on July 1, WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said.
“It will target about 2.4 million people – almost all children, and pregnant and nursing women – with about 207,000 [206,800] metric tons of food assistance at a cost of US$200 million,” he said in an email to AFP.
The WFP will continue to focus on the nutritional needs of young children and their mothers through food which will be manufactured in the North using ingredients imported by the food body, he said.
“WFP remains very concerned about the long-term intellectual and physical development of young children in particular who are malnourished due to a diet lacking in key proteins, fats and micronutrients,” added Prior.
In March, UN resident coordinator in North Korea Desiree Jongsma said timely imports from the WFP had contributed to avoiding a crisis this year but two thirds of the nation’s 24 million population were still chronically food insecure.
Nearly 28 percent of children under five in the North suffer from chronic malnutrition and four percent are acutely malnourished, according to a UN national nutrition survey last year.
Overall production for the main 2012 harvest and early season crops this year was expected to reach 5.8 million tonnes, up 10 percent on 2011-2012, UN agencies said in November.
But the poverty-stricken country is still struggling to eradicate malnutrition and provide its people with vital protein, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and WFP said.
North Korea suffered regular chronic food shortages under the Kim dynasty, with the situation exacerbated by floods, droughts and mismanagement. During a famine in the mid to late-1990s, hundreds of thousands died.
International food aid, especially that from South Korea and the United States, has been drastically cut over the past several years amid tensions over the communist state’s nuclear and missile programmes.
The US last provided food aid to North Korea from late 2008 to March 2009. Some 170,000 tonnes out of an expected 500,000 tonnes was delivered, until Pyongyang expelled US workers monitoring the distribution.
Here is the official announcement.
Quarterly bulletin for WFP’s operation Nutrition Support to Women and Children in DPR Korea (Q1, 2013)
DPRK National Nutrition Survey (October 2012)
Read the full story here:
UN food body approves $200 mn food aid to N. Korea
Agence France-Presse
2013-6-8
Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
2013-6-7
Under the new leadership of Kim Jong Un, North Korea has been making gradual changes with new economic measures. Last year, task force was installed at a state level to configure new economic measures and details are being released one by one.
Details confirmed thus far include the authorities of the administrators of cooperative farms and enterprise are being expanded, which include surpluses can be disposed at the discretion of the administrators of individual organizations. This means voluntary incentives can be now paid to workers to increase production.
The North’s key industries of agricultural and industrial sectors were first to implement such change. The AP reported on April 1, the administrators of cooperative farms and factories were granted the discretionary rights for the promotion of production.
Specifically, the cooperative farms installed smaller work units and each unit of the organization are directly responsible for all the harvest. Whereas all the harvest were required to be sent to the state in the past, surpluses are now can be stored, sold, or exchanged with other goods.
In the case of factories and enterprises, worker’s wages were strictly controlled by the state but after the change, each factory and enterprise can now pay incentives to workers depending on the production results.
Professor Ri Ki Song at the North Korea’s Academy of Social Sciences stated, “individual workers are able to work more to earn more,” and “such policy decision was enforced from April 1 after a period of trial operation.”
New economic measures by the cooperative farms, factories and enterprises that granted each organizations the rights to freely dispose its surpluses is analyzed as an effort to increase production by granting incentives to workers. Increased production is expected to attract active participation of the people in the new economic measures, to achieve a ‘virtuous cycle’ in production.
The increase in goods exchanged between people is changing the existing distribution structure. North Korea is making efforts to ease the planned economy structure in commercial and distribution sectors. In other words, the number and variety of products distributed domestically is increasing and the state is intervening to amend the existing distribution system and strengthen the discretion rights of commercial and industrial institutions.
North Korea’s release of this information regarding the new economic measures to AP and other foreign media after it gained the confidence to properly manage the new economic measure from the successful pilot projects of the new economic measures. However, information released to the foreign media is still limited and changes in other areas including banking and finance sectors remain unknown.
According to the Chicago Tribune:
Hall Healy, chairman of the Wisconsin-based International Crane Foundation, has been engaged for years in the effort to protect the migratory cranes in North Korea and restore their habitats. Since 2008, the group has been raising money and coordinating efforts to help a farming community on the Anbyon Plain, roughly 60 miles north of the DMZ.
Through helping the Anbyon farmers, Healy said they are also helping the cranes. When there’s more food for the farmers, there’s also more rice left over in the fields for the cranes, Healy said. The birds also benefit from a pond that was recently built and stocked with fish.
“You have to work with the people,” Healy said. “And if the people have needs, and they always do, you have to help them first.”
Founded in 1973, the International Crane Foundation works in countries around the world to protect the 15 species of cranes in existence.
The North Korea project — which focuses on the red-crowned and white-naped cranes — has special meaning for Healy, who’s been closely involved since its inception. He’s traveled to the DMZ more than a dozen times, and to the Anbyon Plain twice — most recently in November 2011. He plans to return in the fall.
Anbyon was targeted as a priority area, out of concern that a large wetlands area south of the DMZ, near Seoul, could be developed soon, Healy said. If that development occurs, Anbyon would give cranes a reliable haven.
Over the past five years, the foundation has raised about $200,000, including in-kind services, for machinery, fertilizer, training and building supplies, Healy said. Partnering with other groups — including the State Academy of Sciences in Pyongyang, North Korea, the Anbyon farming cooperative, BirdLife International and the Germany-based Hanns Seidel Foundation — it has turned that relatively small amount of money into significant results, Healy said.
So far, it’s worked out well for the farmers. The primary crop in Anbyon is rice, Healy said, but the farmers are also now planting fruit trees and raising livestock. Organic fertilizer, new machinery and sustainable farming techniques have improved the crop yield and the health of the soil, he said.
On the crane side, it’s still a work in progress. Last winter, cranes circled but did not land in Anbyon. But they landed the two years previous, Healy said, and better results are expected this year.
Wildlife conservation that directly benefits people is becoming a more popular approach, said Jeff Walk, an ornithologist and director of science for the Nature Conservancy in Illinois. And cranes are an excellent focus, he said, because people are naturally drawn to them.
“It’s a good thing. You need that hook with people,” Walk said. “We call them ‘an umbrella species.’ You work to protect them and a whole other community benefits, too.”
Compared with working in other countries, Healy said communication with the North Korean farmers has been limited and indirect. Through the United Nations mission in New York, the International Crane Foundation communicates with the State Academy of Sciences in Pyongyang, instead of directly with the farming cooperative.
Healy worked previously as president of the DMZ Forum, a New York-based group focused on ecological preservation in the DMZ.
Seung-ho Lee, current president of the DMZ Forum, said conservation work in North Korea is inherently “a trust-building process” with people who have been largely cut off from the Western world. The Anbyon project is effective because it yields results without ideology or politics, he said.
“It’s a very useful approach,” Lee said. “To give them a sense of volunteerism and work, but to also give them a real product.”
Previous post on the International Crane Foundation here.
Read the full story here:
Saving the cranes: Hope flies in North Korea
Chicago Tribune
Gregory Trotter
2013-6-7