North Korean Economy Watch

Korea Times
Kang Seung-woo
2/5/2007

Former winter sports power North Korea is sinking, taking no medals at the Winter Asian Games, which ended Sunday.

The Stalinist state has not picked up a gold medal since the Sapporo Winter Asian Games in 1990, when it earned one gold, two silvers and five bronzes.

“Because of the outcome, the mood of the North Koreans is bad,’’ Chung Ki-young, a manager of the South Korean team, said in Changchun, China, where the most recent games were held.

“We were supposed to meet for lunch, but the North called us to cancel the appointment. They said their situation was not good enough to have lunch with the South.’’

On North Korea losing its winter sports competitiveness, Min Byung-chan, the general manager of South Korea’s ice hockey team, said its absence from most international competitions caused the North to find itself in its current position.

“They did not participate in many international events in the 1990s. That makes North Korea struggle now,’’ Min said.

The general manager said a lack of investment in winter sports was another reason for the North’s struggle.

Min said a North Korea skating coach complained that new skates and other ice hockey equipment was too expensive for most North Korean skaters to buy.

As a result, the North asked for support from the Korea Ice Hockey Association. 

AFP (Hat tip DPRK Studies)
Park Chan-Kyong
2/5/2007

Nuclear-armed North Korea is notorious for selling its missiles overseas but the hardline communist state also has a more improbable export — cute cartoon figures.

South Korean experts say the North’s animated movie industry brings the isolated country both precious hard currency and access to global IT expertise.

“Animation is one of the rare sectors where North Korea is following the global trend,” said Lee Kyo-Jung, an executive at the Korea Animation Producers’ Association (KAPA).

“It has been subcontracted to produce animation for North America, Europe and Asia,” Lee told AFP. Among the major clients are studios in France, Italy and China, he added.

Lee has visited the North to discuss the feasibility of the two Koreas jointly producing animated features, with North Koreans providing manpower and the South supplying equipment and finance.

The North for decades has used cartoons to imbue its own children with socialist ethics. Other cartoons screened there also bring some fun into drab everyday life.

“Tom and Jerry” is a prime-time hit in the communist state, Lee said. “They just love it. They see the US in the headstrong cat and North Korea in the wise mouse.”

The centre of North Korea’s animation industry is the April 26 Children’s Film Production House, known to the outside as SEK Studio. Its 1,600 animators have been downsized to 500 with the introduction of computerised equipment.

“SEK is one of the largest hard currency earners in North Korea,” said Nelson Shin, a North Korea-born US producer who worked on “The Simpsons”.

“SEK is a rare North Korean company that can directly engage in foreign trade and deploys representatives overseas,” said Shin, a frequent visitor to the North.

The state-run company worked for Shin’s US-South Korean studio KOAA Films on his 6.5-million-dollar animated feature “Empress Chung,” a Korean equivalent of the Cinderella story.

The movie was screened simultaneously in Seoul and Pyongyang in August 2005, becoming the first feature film jointly produced by the two nations.

“I was taken by surprise at their manual skill. I dare say the North Koreans are better than their peers in the South in terms of their hand skills,” Shin said.

Shin said Disney had subcontracted the TV series made for European viewers of the “Lion King” and “Pocahontas” to SEK.

North Korea’s animation industry began years before South Korea’s own in the mid-1960s. It dates back to the mid-1950s when it sent young artists to what was then Czechoslovakia to learn the craft, according to Lee of KAPA.

But South Korea has come from behind on the strength of its plentiful animators and computer technology. It earned some 120 million dollars through subcontracted work when the subcontract trade was at its peak in 1997.

Latecomers China, Vietnam and India are taking a growing share of the subcontracting market while South Korea is graduating from the labour-intensive work into creative products.

The growth in North Korean animation reflects the patronage of all-powerful leader Kim Jong-Il, a movie buff whose personal archive is said to comprise tens of thousand of films.

The country, becoming priced out of the lower-end work by latecomers, is now seeking to go upmarket to focus more on computer-assisted animation.

“For North Koreans, animation is not only a source of hard currency but also technology from the outside world. They are really keen on obtaining things like graphics technology,” said Kim Jong-Se, marketing director of Iconix Entertainment.

Iconix trained North Koreans in 3D animation when it subcontracted work to a company called Samcholli. The firm produced part of a cartoon series entitled “Pororo the Little Penguin” in 2003 and 2005.

The series turned out to be a big hit, selling in more than 40 countries.

Kim in late 2001 also helped produce “Lazy Cat Dinga,” the first animated series short of a full-length movie co-produced by the two Koreas.

“North Koreans are very good at doing what they are told but they have problems in using creativity,” Kim said.

Iconix Entertainment CEO Choi Jong-Il said both sides could benefit from splitting their roles.

“Joint projects will certainly bring benefits to both sides, with the South doing the overall planning and the North carrying out the main production,” said Choi.

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
2/4/2007

Corruption is elusive. A vast majority of corrupt transactions are done in secret and remain secret forever. No scholar has ever been able to measure the corruption level even though everybody agrees that it varies markedly, depending on place and time.

Nonetheless, there is no way to make an informed judgment on whether or not, say, the Britain of the 1670s was more corrupt than China of the 1820s. Even the oft-cited Global Corruption Reports of Transparency International is based, essentially, on the personal impressions of the people in the know (largely, businesspeople), not on direct measurements.

North Korea is not considered in the Global Corruption Report. However, everyone with first-hand experience of North Korea agree that corruption and bribery are very common there.

It has not always been the case. Indeed, back in the 1950s one of the features that attracted many Koreans to the North was the relative austerity of its ruling elite. The North Korean administration might have been wasteful, indifferent to human suffering, and irrational, but it was clean _ in marked contrast to Syngman Rhee’s regime in the South.

This did not mean that everybody had his or her fair chance.

On the contrary, people with a “bad social origin” were nonstarters by definition, and they formed a significant minority of the population. One’s connections were important, too. In 1957, Yu Sung-hun, the then president of Kim Il-sung University, complained to a Soviet diplomat that every year “queues of cars” waited near his office on the eve of the entrance exams (a car was a sign of extremely privileged social position).

The president, an honest educator and intellectual, felt guilty and upset because he had to accept the scions of top bureaucrats at the expense of gifted people without the right connections. But, one assumes, this was achieved by the application of political pressure alone, with no money involved.

The situation began to deteriorate in the late 1970s. Perhaps, this reflected the slow decline in idealism: Earlier generations sincerely believed that they were constructing a paradise on earth, but people who became adults in the 1970s and 1980s had fewer illusions. They lived in a society that was run by a hereditary elite, where one’s family background comprehensively determined one’s lifestyle, and where the official slogans were increasingly seen as irrelevant or hypocritical. Thus, bribes began to spread.

What did the North Koreans pay bribes for? Generally, for chances of social advancement, or to access to goods and services one would not normally be eligible for. Thus, sale clerks in the shops, despite their meager official salary, became one of the most affluent groups in society.

They used their access to goods to sell better quality stuff outside the official rationing system and at huge premiums.

In the 1980s corruption became ubiquitous at the colleges where one’s chances of being admitted were greatly improved by an envelope given to an influential professor or bureaucrat. There are stories that the right to join the ruling Korean Workers’ Party was sometimes also purchased through a bribe (this right is important since it makes a person eligible for white-collar positions). Finally, it was becoming quite common to pay a superior to ensure a good position.

The bribes were not necessarily paid in money. Quality liquor or imported cigarettes were even better, and good old greenbacks the best of all.

But it was only in the 1990s that bribery truly became ubiquitous.

The breakdown of old systems of control meant that there was less to be afraid of.

There were also fewer rewards available for the “good citizens of the socialist motherland.”

Finally, the collapse of the economy produced a multitude of opportunities for corruption.

Apart from the sales clerks who have always been engaged in small bribery, the drivers, train conductors and the like began to accept money for letting traders travel with their merchandise, as well as looking the other way when people could not produce valid travel permits (in the latter case policemen have also pocketed their share).

But what about the top crust of society? We do not know much about this, but it appears that they have not been touched by these trends yet.

After all, they already have enormous privileges, and in North Korea there is no private business to tempt them with good pay-offs. Probably, this is going to change soon.

After spending hours each day thinking about the North Korean economy, you sometimes need to take a break and chill.  So, I am introducing the NKeconWatch musical interlude.  This innaugural interlude is dedicated to the Marmot (who provides the link).

The Ryugyong blasts off. 

“Turn on, tune in, drop out.” -T.L.

Joong Ang Daily
Jo Dong Ho
2/3/2007

The New Year editorial is a frank admission of failure by Pyongyang.

After Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, issued his first new year’s message, “Announcement to all North Korean people on the occasion of the New Year,” in 1946, those New Year’s Day messages have been an annual event in North Korea. Before the death of Kim Il Sung, they were messages of hope to the people, delivered by the Great Leader live on the achievements of the past year and plans for the new one.

So on New Year’s Day, North Koreans used to gather in front of radios or later, televisions, to participate in the “sacred ceremony” of listening to the leader’s message.

After his death, the live New Year message was replaced by a joint editorial of three newspapers, the organs of the North Korean Workers’ Party, the People’s Army and the Youth Vanguard.

That pattern was set only in 1995, but the nature of the message, the “message of hope,” was not changed at all.

But this year’s message has changed; it is gloomy rather than hopeful. Although the title, “With the high spirit of triumph, let’s open the golden days of the military-first Korea,” is colorful, in the text there are paragraphs that frankly admit the poor living conditions of today and give no hope for improvements in the near future. The text also confesses that there are no special means available to solve the many problems facing the isolated nation.

The joint editorial this year highlighted “economic revival” as the most urgent task North Korea is now facing. Departing from the traditional rhetoric of mentioning political ideology first and then going on to military affairs and the national economy, this year’s message referred to the economy first, which is unusual. Especially, this is the first time that the expression “economic development is our desperate need” has been found in a joint editorial since they were first published in 1995.

Unlike in the past, there is no detailed explanation of last year’s economic achievements. To the contrary, the editorial admitted that the economic difficulties, including food shortages, have persisted until now. The editorial says that North Korea has endured “its worst difficulties in the past 10 years” and has to solve the problem of feeding people “as it did in the past.”

That means that the North Korean economy is in very serious difficulty. Actually, there is a possibility that the North’s economy might have have had negative growth last year for the first time in seven years. Inflation is worse than ever, and the juche, or self-reliant, economy has rather crumbled into a U.S. dollar-reliant economy. The economy has deteriorated to the state where most North Korean residents cannot survive if they don’t engage in some sort of business. The focus of economic policy this year is on the improvement of people’s lives. It is unusual for North Korea, but the editorial frankly admitted that North Korea is “in desperate need” of consumer goods and even declared that the improvement of people’s lives was the “ultimate principle” that the North Korean authorities should work on attaining.

But the North Korean authorities have failed to present any practical strategies except the slogan of self-reliant economic revival. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the slogan “self-reliant revival” had disappeared, but it became the key word of the joint editorial. The editorial of the Rodong Shinmun, the organ of the North Korean Workers’ Party, even explained in its Jan. 8 issue that the spirit of this year’s joint editorial could be summed up as “building an economically strong nation and achieving self-reliant economic revival.” It is a message that “everybody should find their own way of living,” since it is not possible for the government to provide assistance to solve the many economic difficulties. But how can North Koreans solve all the economic problems with their own hands if they are not living in a primitive agricultural society? Ultimately, the North Korean authorities will have no other choice but to rely on outside help. There is no alternative but to seek help from South Korea while the North exerts diplomatic efforts of its own to ease economic sanctions.

Therefore, there is a large probability that the resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem through U.S.-North Korea talks and the six-party talks will progress unexpectedly smoothly. The joint editorial’s intensity of criticism against the United States is considerably lower than in past editorials. The U.S. strategy of using both a stick, freezing North Korean accounts at Banco Delta Asia; and a carrot, the possibility of guaranteeing the security of the regime and giving economic aid, was effective.

In order to get economic aid, North Korea will also engage South Korea in talks, a good opportunity for us. I hope we can fix the problems in that cooperation, such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where South Korean companies cannot employ or discharge North Koran workers by themselves or pay wages to workers directly, and rice aid to North Korea that is provided in the form of loans to avoid controversy over unreciprocated aid from Seoul.

*The writer is the head of North Korean Economy Research Team of the Korea Development Institute. Translation by the JoongAng Daily staff.

the Economist
2/1/2007

Online dating in Pyongyang? Surely not

KIM JONG IL, North Korea’s dictator, has interests in modern technology beyond his dabbling in nuclear weaponry. In 2000 he famously asked Madeleine Albright, then America’s secretary of state, for her e-mail address. Mr Kim believes there are three kinds of fool in the 21st century: smokers, the tone-deaf and the computer-illiterate.

One of his young compatriots is certainly no fool. “Officially, our computers are mainly for educational and scientific purposes,” he says, before claiming: “Chatting on our web, I also met my girlfriend.”

Internet dating is only one of the surprises about the internet in North Korea, a country almost as cut off from the virtual world as it is from the real one. At one of the rare free markets open to foreigners, brand-new computers from China are sold to the local nouveaux riches complete with Windows software. Elsewhere, second-hand ones are available far more cheaply. In most schools, computer courses are now compulsory.

In the heart of the capital, Pyongyang, visitors are supposed to be able to surf freely through the 30m official texts stored at the Grand People’s Study House, the local version of the Library of Congress. The country’s first cyber café opened in 2002 and was soon followed by others, even in the countryside. Some are packed with children playing computer games.

But the world wide web is still largely absent. Web pages of the official news agency, KCNA, said to be produced by the agency’s bureau in Japan, divulge little more than the daily “on the spot guidance” bestowed by Kim Jong Il. No one in Pyongyang has forgotten that glasnost and perestroika—openness and transparency—killed the Soviet Union.

The local ideology being juche, or self-reliance, the country installed a fibre-optic cable network for domestic use, and launched a nationwide intranet in 2000. Known as Kwangmyong (“bright”), it has a browser, an e-mail programme, news groups and a search engine. Only a few thousand people are allowed direct access to the internet. The rest are “protected” (ie, sealed off) by a local version of China’s “great firewall”, controlled by the Korean Computer Centre. As a CIA report puts it, this system limits “the risks of foreign defection or ideological infection”. On the other hand, North Koreans with access to the outer world are supposed to plunder the web to feed Kwangmyong—a clever way to disseminate technical information to research institutes, factories and schools without losing control.

Yet even today, more and more business cards in Pyongyang carry e-mail addresses, albeit usually collective ones. A west European businessman says he is astonished by the speed with which his North Korean counterparts respond to his e-mails, leading him to wonder if teams of people are using the same name. This is, however, North Korea, and sometimes weeks go by in virtual silence.

In some places, North Korea’s internet economy seems to be overheating. Near the northern border, Chinese cell phones—and the prepaid phone cards needed to use them—are a hot black-market item, despite government efforts to ban them. The new web-enabled phones might soon give free access to the Chinese web which, for all its no-go areas, is a paradise of liberty compared with Kwangmyong. In this region, known for its casinos, online gambling sites are said to be increasingly active.

Last summer the police were reported to have cracked down on several illegal internet cafés which offered something more daring than the average chatting and dating. Despite the signs that North Korea’s web culture is ready to take off, internet-juche remains a reassuring form of control in the hermit regime.

Yonhap
2/1/2007

North Korea’s weekly English-language newspaper is distributed in some 100 countries abroad, and its reporters are regularly sent overseas to receive intensive foreign language education, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper based in Japan reported Thursday.

The tabloid eight-page Pyongyang Times, launched in 1965, also runs a Web site featuring both English and French-language editions, reported the Chosun Sinbo, a Korean-language newspaper published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan.

“All of its reporters and newsroom staff receive professional language education, and North Korean authorities are eager to send the reporters and translators abroad for hands-on experience,” the newspaper said.

Choe Chun-sok, editor-in-chief of the Pyongyang Times, said North Korea’s October nuclear device test inspired them to continue to engage in media activities with an eye toward the world. “Recently, we dealt a lot with stories on U.S. policy to stifle and isolate our country, as well as Japan’s crackdown on Koreans living there,” he said.

Yonhap
2/1/2007

North Korea has intensified efforts to stem the spread of South Korean pop culture in the communist state, even as South Korean movies and TV dramas gain popularity there, informed sources said Thursday.

“This year, North Korean authorities waged what they call ‘psychological warfare’ against ‘exotic lifestyles’ by cracking down on South Korean pop culture,” a senior government official said, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

According to a survey conducted on recent North Korean defectors to the South, South Korean video tapes and CDs enter North Korea via China. North Koreans having TVs, video players or personal computers at home watch them, and then swap the programs among peers or friends, another source said.

The popularity of South Korean media has been so great that a lead actress’s line in the hit South Korean movie “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” became a household word in the North, while some North Korean youth are glued to such mega-hit TV dramas as “Fall Fairy Tale” and “Immortal Admiral Yi Sun-shin,” the sources said.

They further explained that the wave of South Korean pop culture does not stop at movies and videos. North Korean youth also enjoy sporting South Korean hairstyles and fashion, preferring tight pants and long front hair.

Since the 1950-53 Korean War, about 9,300 North Koreans have defected to South Korea, including about 1,578 in 2006 alone. The sealed border between the two Koreas has nearly 2 million troops deployed on both sides.

Wave of South Korean Trends in North Korea
Daily NK
Park Hyun Min
2/1/2007

A wave of South Korean actors and trends such as Jang Dong Gun, Bae Yong Joon and Won Bin which has washed throughout China, Japan and Taiwan has finally hit North Korean shores. Consequently, North Korean authorities are racking their brains trying to find a solution to this problem.

This wave of South Korean trends in North Korea comes from an influx of foreign movies and dramas in the form of VCD’s and videos. In particular, the phrase “worry about yourself!” from a Korean movie “Sympathy of Lady Vengeance” has become the latest catchphrase to spread throughout the country.

Regarding this, a South Korean government official said on the 31st “North Korean youths are becoming infatuated with popular South Korean dramas such as “Autumn in my heart” and “General Lee Soon Shin’” and revealed “Defectors say that people who do not watch South Korean dramas are treated as outcasts.”

In fact, according to a survey from Hanawon, an educational training centre for defectors, a growing number of travelers now cross the boarder possessing video tapes and C.D.’s. These goods then circulate amongst families in possession of T.V.’s videos and computers, particularly Pyongyang, where South Korean dramas and music are often heard.

Popular South Korean dramas have gradually infiltrated North Korea since the late 90’s. At the time, dramas such as “The Sandglass” describing the S. Korean Kwangju affair in 1980 and “Asphalt man” gained much popularity and since 2000, dramas such as “Winter Sonata” and “Stairway to heaven” have caught the attention of North Korean youths.

These South Korean movies and dramas do not stop at mere entertainment but rather are influencing the hairstyles and fashion of young North Koreans. Nowadays, many North Korean youth adopt “knife hair,” a hairstyle with thin sharp fringe points and “drainpipe trousers” are also a hit item.

A defector who entered South Korea in 2004 said “If a person is caught circulating any copies of capitalist materials, he or she may be dragged to the political gulags. However, if a person is found to be a viewer, then he or she may receive re-education or sent to the labor training camp or the re-educational camp for 6 months.”

In response to foreign culture which is finding its way into North Korea, authorities are aiming to strengthen public propaganda in order to block foreign ideologies. In particular, North Korean authorities have began considering mobilizing its groups of military youths for rearmament.

North Korea is concerned about the balance of its regime with the demands of the whole society increasingly changing. In preparation for this, it seems that North Korea is actively investing more in the light industry in an effort to stabilize public welfare.

Korea Times
Kim Rahn
1/30/2007

One-fifth of North Koreans who defected to South Korea have gotten swindled here, according to the Korean Institute of Criminal Justice Policy. The majority of the swindlers were other North Korean defectors.

The report released Tuesday was based on a survey of 214 defectors over 20 years old conducted between July and September.

According to the report, 50 of the 214 polled had been the victims of fraud, theft or burglary. The victims constituted 23.4 percent of the total. Only 4.3 percent of South Koreans report having been the victim of similar crimes.

Most of the defectors who reported the crimes were affected once, but one defector was the victim of eight crimes. The 50 who reported crimes were involved in 91 crimes. Of the 91, 46 involved fraud and 11 involved violence.

The percentage of the victims who fell prey to fraud was 21.5 percent. About 0.5 percent of the South Korean population has reported fraud.

Among the 46 fraud victims, 28.6 percent lost money through a business or investment, 26.6 percent lent money to others and were not paid back and 19 percent gave money to someone who said they would bring the defectors’ family in the North to South Korea and didn’t do so.

Most of the victims of business-related fraud lost money after investing in multi-level marketing companies. Those who invited the victims to the join the businesses were mainly other North Korean defectors, according to the report.

Six of the eight cases related to bringing relatives here from the North were committed by North Korean defectors.

Those with more education were more subject to fraud. Some 42 percent of defectors with college degrees and 14.1 percent of high school graduates were swindled, but none of those who had elementary school education was a victim of fraud.

Most of the surveyed defectors did not trust people, with 63.9 percent saying they should be wary of others in South Korean society.

“The government has to prepare counseling centers and give more detailed law education to North Korean defectors when they leave Hanawon, a state-run settlement facility for defectors,” a researcher said.

N. Korean defectors shift attitude to adapt to capitalism
Yonhap
1/11/2007

For a growing number of North Korean defectors to South Korea, the stark reality of capitalism might offset their long-held dream of living in a free, affluent country.

In a capitalistic society like South Korea, a measure of freedom and independence can come only with ability to compete for decent jobs and willingness to adapt to new circumstances.

“They have a sheer illusion that if they arrive in South Korea, the people will treat them well. But they get disillusioned soon, and their lives get devastated if they don’t try hard to adapt themselves,” said Kim Seung-chul, a researcher at the Institute of North Korea Studies.

The total number of North Korean defectors will likely top 10,000 sometime this year, according to government officials.

So far, 9,265 North Koreans have settled down in the South after finishing all the procedures and obtaining social security numbers, while some 400 are receiving adaptive education at a state-run institute. More than 500 defectors are currently under the custody of South Korean embassies or consulates in Thailand, Mongolia and other countries.

“This year, a lot more North Koreans will likely escape and attempt to come to the South because the food situation is expected to worsen following the missile and nuclear device tests,” said a senior official at a Seoul-based aid group for the defectors on condition of anonymity.

Since heavy floods hit the North in the mid-1990s, the annual number of North Korean defectors reached double digits and in 1999 it swelled to a triple-digit level. In 2002, as many as 1,139 defectors arrived in the South, a sharp rise from 583 the previous year, government data showed.

“In the past, we provided direct help, or unilaterally protective aid, but the policy is shifting to an indirect one aimed at helping them stand on their own. The government will provide more job training and employment opportunities,” a Unification Ministry official said, asking to remain anonymous.

Since 2005, South Korea has introduced an incentive system for North Korean defectors on the basis of their performance in job training and the level of adaptation, aside from the money provided to help them settle in the South.

But the prevailing sentiment among the defectors is that they cannot survive in the South only with government subsidies or state-offered jobs.

“What matters is attitude. They should make efforts to understand the South Korean society and prepare themselves for competition,” said Kim Young-hee, 43, president of an aid group for North Korean defectors.

Park Cheol-yong, 32, who fled the North and arrived here in 2002, had difficulties adapting to the different work culture, but he decided to soldier on, believing that he would have a chance to get recognition after years of experience.

“The cultural differences are far greater than expected, but I tried hard to overcome the problem by adjusting to new circumstances,” said Park, who works at a stationery company.

Park, who is married with a three-year-old son, graded himself “mediocre” in the level of adaptation and expressed hope that life will get much better here as time goes by.

“Life will be much more difficult if I quit the job so easily because of the stress I get from work now. I will do my best to succeed,” said Park, who works for the sales of stationery in the morning and delivers stationery in the afternoon.

The folks who brought us “The Game of their Lives” and “A State of Mind”  have delivered their third DPRK-based documentary, “Crossing the Line” about four American soldiers that defected to the DPRK.  It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival this week, and sorry to Simon, Nick and Dan that you did not win.

A section of the interview with the last remaining defector, James Dresnok, was aired on CBS this week.  It was very interesting, not only because we get a glimpse into the life of Dresnok, but also his children.  Click here to see the video clip.

The story below was also published in the BBC.

BBC
1/23/2007

In the 1960s four US soldiers separately defected to North Korea, and were little heard from again.

Now one – the last known former American GI left in the country – has spoken for the first time to British documentary-makers.

James Dresnok is something of a celebrity around the North Korean capital Pyongyang, his home for the last 44 years.

Unmissable thanks to his 6ft 5in height and bulky frame, the 64-year-old has appeared in North Korean films, taught English at university and been a propaganda hero for the Communist nation.

“I have never regretted coming to [North Korea]. I feel at home,” he says, in the documentary Crossing the Line, which premiered at the US Sundance Film Festival on Monday.

James Dresnok was a 21-year-old army private when he decided to leave his post in South Korea one August afternoon in 1962 to cross into the North.

Three months earlier, Private Larry Abshier had become the first known US soldier to defect to the North, while patrolling the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas.

In the three years that followed, Specialist Jerry Parrish and Sergeant Charles Jenkins would follow Abshier and Dresnok across the border.

The four, who initially lived in the same house, found their new life tough in the early years. Mr Dresnok admits he did not want to stay. “I didn’t think I could adapt”.

A joint bid for asylum at the Soviet embassy in 1966 was rejected and the four were forced to undergo intense re-education, which included learning North Korea’s official Juche ideology.

It was at that point, Mr Dresnok says, that he decided he would try to fit in. “Man is the master of his life, and little by little I came to understand the Korean people,” he said.

All four married, were granted North Korean citizenship and – apart from starring as evil capitalists in a propaganda film called Nameless Heroes in 1978 – appeared to drop off the face of the earth.

In fact, so little was known about them that Larry Abshier had been dead for 13 years when the US defence department said, in 1996, it believed all four men were still alive. Jerry Parrish had in fact died in 1996.

Persistence

UK documentary-maker Daniel Gordon and his Beijing-based co-producer Nick Bonner were already familiar to North Korea’s film-making authorities when they asked them about the rumours of the four defectors.

Their 2002 film, The Game of Their Lives – about the North Korean football team that beat Italy in the 1966 World Cup and qualified for the quarter finals – had been a huge hit in the country.

They were working on their second film, A State of Mind – following two North Korean schoolgirls preparing for the mass games – when they asked for permission to make a film about Mr Dresnok and the others.

“We were initially told it was absolutely impossible,” Mr Gordon explained, “but we took that to mean it was possible.”

In June 2004, at a meeting they thought would be with the North Korean authorities, the filmmakers were brought face-to-face with James Dresnok and Charles Jenkins for the first time.

“The two men weren’t wholeheartedly keen on making the film. It had the potential to blow up in their faces. But at the end of the two-and-a-half hour meeting, they had come round,” Mr Gordon said.

Within five weeks of the meeting, however, Charles Jenkins’ story became known to the whole world when he left North Korea to be reunited with his wife in Japan.

Privileged

While the documentary is about all four defectors, the focus is undoubtedly on James Dresnok who is filmed fishing, going to a restaurant, the opera and having a medical check-up.

“I found him a fascinating guy,” Daniel Gordon says. “He has had such a unique experience of life.

“It is hard to understand from our perspective why an American soldier would choose to make his life in arguably the biggest US-hating nation on earth.”

James Dresnok describes how an unstable childhood and his first wife’s infidelity left him with a sense of hopelessness before he crossed the line into the North.

Since his defection, he has been married twice and has three children.

He taught languages and carried out translating work even though he, like the other three, had dropped out of school by the age of 15.

And he also appeared in several other films, apart from Nameless Heroes, and is still referred to as Arthur after a character he once played.

Mr Dresnok admits he lives a privileged life by North Korean standards, confessing that he got rice rations during the deadly famines of the late 1990s while others were starving.

“The government is going to take care of me until my dying day,” he tells the documentary team.