Via Yonhap:
North Korea’s new envoy to the United Nations presented his credentials to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon here Wednesday, along with envoys from several other nations, to officially begin his service, Ban’s office said.
Ambassador Sin Son-ho replaced Pak Gil-yon, who had been at his country’s U.N. mission since 2001. He served as deputy chief of the mission from 2000 to 2003.
According to an article in the Associated Press today (reprinted in the Washington Post):
The U.S. has recently stepped back from its demand for a detailed declaration addressing North Korea’s alleged secret uranium enrichment program and nuclear cooperation with Syria; North Korea has denied those allegations. Washington now says it wants North Korea to simply acknowledge the concerns and set up a system to verify that the country does not conduct such activities in the future.
How can any uranium enrichment verification plan be implemented in the DPRK? One solution was proposed to me by Glyn Ford, a member of the European Parliament, when I met him in Beijing last March. His idea was this: Any uranium enrichment program would require a colossal amount of electricity delivered at a consistent voltage. So one way the west could monitor if such a program was taking place would be to keep tabs on the North Korean power grid for suspicious spikes in activity or to build voltage fluctuations into the power supply.
Read the full article here:
US official to travel to NKorea
Associated Press (Printed in the Washington Post)
Foster Klug
5/6/2008
With the likelihood that food is coming into short supply in North Korea, the authorities and individuals alike have implemented strategies to minimize the adverse effects.
I will try and keep a running list of official and civil responses here as they appear in the media.
1. The DPRK supposedly ended rations for mid-level cadres (party and state employees), though food can still be purchased in markets. Unless the government is hoarding its grain supplies, this probably has the effect of improving food distribution (transferring food stocks outside Pyongyang), though not to the satisfaction of those who were used to receiving it for “free.”
2. The DPRK asked China for food aid. (Requested 150,000: tons of corn. Received: 50,000 tons on their first ask)
3. Propaganda extolling people not to waste food has been distributed to workers.
4. The DPRK has started cracking down on liquor production/sale.
6. Distributing food stocks to military families from military warehouses. This will hopefully take some of the pressure off the price of grains in the markets.
Peterson Institute for International Economics Working Paper
May 2008
Stephan Haggard, University of California, San Diego
Marcus Noland, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Erik Weeks, Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
North Korea is on the brink of famine. As detailed [in this forthcoming policy brief], the margin of error between required grain and available supply has virtually disappeared. Local food prices are skyrocketing even faster than world prices. Aid relationships have been soured and the regime’s control-oriented policy responses are exacerbating distress. Hunger-related deaths are nearly inevitable and a dynamic is being put in place that will carry the crisis into 2009, even if as expected, the US announces that it is sending 500,000MT in return for a signed nuclear declaration.
The US can provide aid in ways that maximize its humanitarian impact while limiting the degree to which aid simply serves to bolster the regime. We know that aid is diverted. Yet given the fragmented nature of markets in North Korea, diverted aid often finds its way into markets in the catchment area where it is delivered. Geographically targeting aid to the most adversely affected regions and providing it in forms such as barley and millet that are not preferred by the elite can increase the ameliorative impact of assistance. The Bush Administration has taken up the first part of this equation–requiring that most of its contribution to the World Food Program be targeted at the worst affected regions–but it could do more on the second part: providing aid in forms less preferred for elite consumption. It can also encourage others such as South Korea to follow suit.
The US should also exercise quiet leadership with respect to the refugee question as well. The Chinese government’s practice of returning North Korean refugees may reflect a natural self-protective response against the threat of a flood of migrants and even the breakdown of the North Korean regime; it was, after all, the notorious “hole in the fence” that helped precipitate the collapse of the Eastern European regimes. But the policy of returning refugees does not conform with China’s obligations under the refugee treaty and does not in the end serve the country’s underlying political objectives either; it simply serves to cutoff another escape valve, however small, that has contributed to taking pressure off of a rapidly deteriorating situation.
UPDATE: photos from North Korea’s first cricket game:
ORIGINAL POST:
The venue: Mt. Taesong Park.
Click on image for larger view.
This week Pyongyang hosted its first ever cricket match. I hope to get an update on the game when the team returns to China. Until now, here is what we know from the Telegraph:
The three visiting teams for the Twenty20 tournament will be largely expatriates from England, Australia, South Africa and Holland who are based in Shanghai.
The North Korean side will be boosted by staff from the Indian and Pakistani embassies.
The tournament was planned by Bryan Clark, a British employee of the logistics firm DHL, which has an office in Pyongyang, and the Shanghai Cricket Club, which has been leading attempts to develop the game in China.
The game will be immortalized in the next version of “North Korea Uncovered” on Google Earth.
Read the full story here:
North Koreans take on the English at cricket
Telegraph
Richard Spencer
4/24/2008
Although business seems to have stalled in the Kaesong Industrial Zone, Hyundai Asan’s tourism projects have picked up this year.
From Yonhap:
As many as 100,300 South Koreans toured Mount Geumgang so far this year, up from 58,000 a year earlier, according to a spokesman for Hyundai Asan, Hyundai Group’s arm dealing with business with North Korea.
Hyundai Asan officials expect more than 500,000 South Korean to visit the North’s mountain resort this year alone, up from last year’s 350,000.
A total of 40,090 South Koreans also visited the North’s medieval capital city of Kaesong during the first four months this year, Hyundai officials said, adding they recently increased the daily quota for South Korean visitors to Kaesong to 500 from 300.
Read the full article here:
More South Koreans toured North Korea despite chill in ties
Yonhap
5/4/2008
North Korean Economy Watch has thoroughly covered news of the DPRK’s anti-corruption drive (here, here, here, here, and here). We have speculated as to whether this campaign is motivated by primarily fiscal concerns or whether it is a broader realignment of state, party, and military portfolios necessary for a policy/personnel change within North Korea’s socialist system.
Hideko Takayama at Bloomberg highlights the fiscal aspect of the anti-corruption campaign and is the first to announce the Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law is leading it:
Jang, 62, was sent to Beijing and the Chinese city of Dandong near the border with North Korea in February to root out corruption at North Korean corporations operating in China, the businessmen and officials said.
Jang, who was dismissed from Kim Jong Il’s power circle in 2004, was rehabilitated in December 2005 and appointed to be Director of Administration of the Workers’ party last October, an official at Chosensoren, a North Korean organization in Japan which acts as a de facto embassy, said, requesting anonymity.
The leader’s brother-in-law is also responsible for the State Security Department, the People’s Security Ministry and the Central Prosecutor’s Office, according to the Chosensoren official. In addition, Jang runs a campaign against what the government calls anti-socialist activities.
Jang’s mission was to find and punish people who were diverting profits that were supposed to be repatriated to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.
“Jang is familiar with how the business is done outside the country and knows all about money and corrupt ways of making money,” Lee Young Hwa, professor of developing economies at Osaka’s Kansai University, said. “His assignment is like sending a thief to catch a thief.”
Read the full story here:
Kim’s Brother-in-Law Heads North Korea Anti-Corruption Campaign
Bloomberg
Hideko Takayama
5/2/2008
UPDATE: From the Associated Press (Printed in the Herald Tribune):
The North’s Korean Central News Agency quoted quarantine official Ri Kyong Gun as saying all poultry in provinces near the border with the South have received emergency vaccinations, citing a bird flu outbreak in southern South Korea.
Ri was quoted as saying the North has also set up 1,600 observation posts along the east and west coasts to monitor the movement of migratory birds — which he said are a key way the virus spreads.
Bird flu hit North Korea in 2005, leading to the killing of about 210,000 birds, but no new cases have been reported since then.
Original Post:
North Korea sets up emergency body to fight bird flu
From the article:
North Korea said on Wednesday that it has set up an emergency unit to tackle possible bird flu outbreaks after the disease spread widely in South Korea.
“The emergency state quarantine committee was formed to work out national plans to prevent a possible outbreak of bird flu,” said a television channel.
The committee will coordinate quarantine measures by local governments, the TV said, adding that it was set up on the instructions of leader Kim Jong-Il.
The North has reported no new case since it destroyed 210,000 chickens during an outbreak in 2005.
It has since actively taken part in anti-epidemic programmes offered by the World Health Organisation.
Several days ago, the DPRK banned South Korean poultry from the Kaesong Industrial Zone.
Read the full articles here:
North Korea sets up emergency body against bird flu
Huliq.com
North Korea inoculates poultry against bird flu following outbreak in South Korea
Associated Press
5/5/2008
Andrei Lankov is the first in the media to construct a narrative which details the series of decisions that have led to North Korea’s current food crunch.
From his article:
Merely a year ago, North Korean leaders were optimistic. The good harvest of 2005 persuaded them that food shortages were behind them, and that North Korean agriculture had begun to recover. The 2005 harvest was merely 4.6 million tons, well below the 5.2 million tons which are necessary to keep the entire population alive. Still, it was clearly an improvement.
Lankov’s assertion that 5.2 million tons of grain are needed to sustain the DPRK population comes from the UN. Recent work by Marcus Noland estimates that this number is closer to 4.6, although exact figuress are not possible because the actual size of the DPRK population is unknown.
In addition, for a decade South Korean administrations have maintained their Sunshine policy of unilateral concessions and unconditional food aid. Since 2000, about 450,000 tonnes of food have bee delivered to North Korean granaries from the South every year, free of charge. Its distribution was almost unmonitored. Pyongyang leaders came to believe that such aid would continue for the foreseeable future. Additionally, increasing Chinese involvement with North Korea, while not necessarily welcomed by Pyongyang, was seen as a sign that additional food would be coming - and Chinese shipments were roughly equal to those of South Korea. Finally, the basic agreement with the US on the nuclear issue was perceived in Pyongyang as a sign of Washington’s willingness to pay generously for rather minor concessions.
As noted by many besides Lankov (here), this good fortune prompted the DPRK government to reimpose elements of the planned economy which failed long ago:
In 2005, authorities claimed that the public distribution system would be completely revived, and banned private trade in grain. This ban was generally ignored and eventually failed, but subsequent moves were more successful. In late 2006, authorities banned male vendors from the country’s marketplaces. In 2007, women under 50 years old were also prohibited from engaging in business in markets. The assumption is that every able-bodied North Korean should go where he or she belongs, specifically to the state-run factories of the Stalinist economy.
The government also staged some campaigns against semi-legal private businesses that had been tacitly tolerated since the late 1990s. After 2005, authorities successfully cracked down on the trafficking, smuggling and illegal labor migration occurring on the border with China. There was also a remarkable increase in the volume of anti-market rhetoric in the official Pyongyang propaganda.
The economic problems they were attempting to achieve at home through these policies, however, were only the first of several shocks to hit the DPRK economy in the last year:
1. Low harvest numbers
First of all, the 2007 harvest was a failure. It was estimated at only 3.8 million tons, well short of the critical 5.2 million ton benchmark [and Noland’s 4.6 benchmark]. As usual, floods were officially blamed (as if the impoverished North does not share the same small peninsula with the prosperous South, where no signs of food shortage have been seen in decades).
2. Drop in aid from South Korea
The presidential elections of December 2007 led to a change of leadership in Seoul. The new government, led by right-of-the-center pragmatist Lee Myong-bak, said that the era of unconditional concessions to the North was over.
3. International food prices rising
The situation was aggravated by the explosive rise of international food prices. The North Korean press has reported the trend widely obviously in an attempt to,place the blame for the current crisis on factors clearly beyond the government’s control. On April 20, Nodong Sinmun, the major official daily newspaper, ran an article that described food supply difficulties worldwide and mentioned a dramatic increase on food custom duties in “certain countries”.
4. Cold shoulder from China
The worldwide price hike means that the amount of food coming to North Korea via foreign aid channels is likely to decrease. China, preoccupied with the Summer Olympic Games in August, and increasingly annoyed by North Korean antics, is not too willing to help the North out of its trouble which, as some people in Beijing believe, were brought on Pyongyang by its own stubborn resistance to the Chinese reform model.
So what is Lankov’s prediction?
In North Korea, the domestic food situation is deteriorating fast. The sudden hike in food prices seems to be a sign of deepening crisis. There were reports about farmers who refuse to toil the state-owned fields, stating that they are too weak to work (but still willing to work on their private plots). There are rumors of villagers starving to death even though observers believe the food shortage has not yet developed into a famine. If the shortage of fertilizer damages this year’s harvest, a famine may develop by the end of this year.
The political consequences are unclear. Knowledge about the situation inside North Korea remains grossly inadequate. If the past is an indication, however, nothing of great political significance will happen if a few thousand fresh graves appear in the hills of North Hamgyong province. In all probability, Kim Jong-il’s government will use its time-tested tactics: the political elite and the best units of the army will receive full rations; the residents of major cities, police and common soldiers will get barely enough to survive; and the “politically unreliable”, largely villagers from the remote northwest, will be left to their sorry fate.
There is hope the government will momentarily halt its counter-offensive against free market economics, and will ease its border controls to allow more people to China - but even such moderate measures are unlikely. Isolated revolts are possible, but the government seems to be supremely confident. After all, the disorganized, isolated population, deprived of any opportunities to organize or even communicate between themselves, is not capable of challenging the system.
Read the full story here:
North Korea stoic in the face of famine
Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
4/30/2008
Even as realtions sour between North and South Korea, the South plans to donate US$1.18 million worth of anti-malaria supplies to the North via the UN World Health Organization.
Seoul has made similar anti-malaria donations since 2001, reducing the DPRK’s malaria cases to about 7,500 last year from some 300,000 in 2001.
Read the full article here:
South Korea to provide anti-malaria supplies to North Korea
Associated Press
5/2/2008