North Korean Economy Watch

DOWNLOAD IT HERE (to your own Google Earth)

Using numerous maps, articles, and interviews I have mapped out North Korea by “industry” (or topic) on Google Earth.  This is the most authoritative map of North Korea that exists publicly today.

Agriculture, aviation, cultural, manufacturing, railroad, energy, politics, sports, military, religion, leisure, national parks…they are all here, and will captivate anyone interested in North Korea for hours.

Naturally, I cannot vouch for the authenticity of many locations since I have not seen or been to them, but great efforts have been made to check for authenticity. In many cases, I have posted sources, though not for all. This is a thorough compilation of lots of material, but I will leave it up to the reader to make up their own minds on the more “controversial” locations.  In time, I hope to expand this further by adding canal and road networks. 

I hope this post will launch a new interest in North Korea. There is still plenty more to learn, and I look forward to hearing about improvements that can be made.

Daily NK
Kim Young Jin
4/16/2007

The North Korean authorities ordered that the holiday gifts given to North Korean citizens for 4.15 Kim Il Sung’s birthday, Sun Day, be distributed by each provincial body.

The leader of a people’s unit Mr. Choi of a district in Hyesan, Yanggang said in a phone conversation with Daily NK on the 13th, “The order came from the center to supply liquor and sweets through the body.”

He said, “A ‘4.15 subdivision committee’ has been organized in each province and has been going down to the commercial offices and food factories to directly inspect production.” The committee is a team that exists for the people who were temporarily transferred from party and political organizations for the seasonal production of sweets for distributing to children on Kim Il Sung’s birthday

This order’s intention can be interpreted as North Korean authorities trying to raise the holiday atmosphere by sparking competition among the provinces to celebrate Day of the Sun as “the year of victory in Military First Ideology.”

”The manager who cannot even provide one bottle of alcohol is not entitled”

However, the central party provided the order without a realistic plan of action, leaving it in the hands of factory and enterprise offices.

Another well-informed source stated that, “The central party has sparked a competition amongst the provinces to see which municipality provides more.”

On the 80th birthday anniversary of Kim Il Sung in 1992, when the “Supply Diversification” competition was kindled, the news spread that Junchun Commercial Office in Jakang, to where Jung Chun Sil (a member of Supreme People’s Committee) belongs, supplied 13 kinds of socks, candles, matches, and alcohol, but most of the provinces stopped after passing out one bottle of drink.

The well-informed source also stated that more than one bottle of drink could not be distributed this time. Soju is an item which cannot be left out from the holiday provision. Each provincial organization was known to bluff. “Factory managers who cannot provide at least one bottle of drink should forfeit their positions.”

At a food factory producing drinks, 10 hours of electricity was provided and the factory entered production round the clock, but it still had difficulty due to the lack of electricity and raw materials.

Demand-driven supply is also insufficient. After supplying drinks produced at this factory to organizations of influence, coal and mine workers, and laborers who work in dangerous jobs, there is not enough for all citizens.

As a result, authorities are asking factory and enterprises offices themselves to provide the laborers. Most factories are ordering from individual home-brew traders.

Failure in “gift” production for children

In the midst of this, it has been known that units which have taken charge of production of gift-use sweets are in a state of panic.

A part of the provinces used corn taffy and substituted corn instead of flour because of the lack of candy powder (sugar). Also, provisions had to be completed by April 13 to 14th, but the production line could not operate due to the lack of electricity, so goods could not ensure within the planned time.

Until the early 1990s, the central party promised flour, sugar, and other materials, but due to the worsening of financial difficulties, it decreed that provinces themselves take care of these goods. After the 65th birthday anniversary of Kim Il Sung in 1977, North Korea provided sweets to pre-school students who are at least five-years old to 11-year old elementary school students as a way of boosting their devotions but under the pretext of “gifts.”

Defector Mr. Kim reflected, “I can remember, after going up one by one to receive gifts, approaching the portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jung Il and bowing. In 1970-1980, the snacks and sweets were at least 10 different kinds, but now, there is only corn snack and one package of candy.”

Yonhap
4/15/2007

North Korea has launched a month-long mass gymnastics show as part of festivities to mark the 95th birthday of its late founding leader Kim Il-sung, the country’s new agency reported Sunday.

The Arirang Mass Games opened at Pyongyang’s May Day Stadium on the evening of Saturday, with hundreds of dancers and gymnasts performing against a gigantic backdrop of mosaic pictures formed by thousands students holding up colored panels, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il did not attend the opening show on the eve of his late father’s birthday, the agency said.

The show was held in 2002 and 2005, but was cancelled last year due to floods, causing hundreds of U.S. and Western tourists to cancel their planned trip to one of the world’s last remaining communist state.

This year’s show, which runs about 80 minutes starting at 8 p.m. every day except for Sunday, is expected to continue until May 20, Western tour organizers said.

This year’s show carries special meaning for North Korea, as it will celebrate the 95th anniversary of the birth of the late leader who died of heart failure in 1994. This year also marks the 62nd anniversary of the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Japan’s colonial rule and the founding of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party.

The first version of Arirang, named after a famous traditional Korean folk song, was held for nearly five months in 2002, with about 100,000 students and ordinary people participating.

At that time, North Korea staged a promotional campaign for the festival, calling it a “once-in-a-millennium” event. Some viewed it as an effort to gain publicity at the time of the World Cup finals co-hosted by South Korea and Japan the same year.

Yonhap
4/4/2007

Despite years of economic hardship and an ongoing dispute over the dismantlement of its nuclear arms program, North Korea is once again setting up the mood for a nationwide celebration of the country’s largest holiday, the birthday of its late leader Kim Il-sung.

Kim, the founder of the North, died of heart failure on July 8, 1994, and his son Jong-il took power afterward in the first hereditary succession in a communist state. The junior Kim was officially named successor in 1980.

The celebrations follow weeks of festivities to mark leader Kim Jong-il’s birthday on Feb. 16, but they also come amid a dispute between Pyongyang and Washington over the North’s first steps toward ending its nuclear weapons program by mid-April.

A mass gymnastics event called “Arirang” is to begin in the North’s capital Pyongyang next Sunday to mark the 95th anniversary of the birth of the late leader, which falls on April 15, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Wednesday.

The Arirang festival was held in 2002 and 2005, but was called off abruptly last year due to floods, causing hundreds of U.S. and other Western citizens to cancel their planned trip to one of the world’s last remaining communist states. North Korea said it will organize the event in April and August every year.

The anniversary comes amid a stalemate in international negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear development program, which is adding to the country’s economic difficulties that followed nationwide floods and droughts and ensuing famine in the mid-1990s.

On Feb. 13, North Korea promised to shut down and seal its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and allow international inspectors back into the country within 60 days. In return, North Korea would receive aid equal to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil from South Korea.

But the latest round of six-nation talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, broke down in Beijing last month when North Korea refused to participate in further meetings unless its frozen assets at a U.S.-blacklisted Macau bank were released.

The impoverished country has depended on international handouts to feed a large number of its 23 million people, but continues to mobilize massive resources and people to celebrate the late leader’s birthday, known as the “Day of the Sun.”
In a recent meeting with U.N. World Food Program officials, a North Korean vice agriculture minister acknowledged that the communist country has a shortfall of about 1 million tons in food and called for aid from the outside world.

National committees in many countries, including China, Cambodia, Indonesia and France, have been established weeks ahead of the holiday to prepare celebrations and other commemorative events marking the birthday of Kim Il-sung, who the North calls the country’s eternal father and president.

Kim Jong-il rules the country with an iron grip, but officially he is only the chairman of the National Defense Commission and general secretary of the Workers’ Party. He reserves the office of president for his late father as a way of showing his filial piety.

The North is officially headed by its titular leader Kim Yong-nam, the president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s parliament.

Check out his revolutionary platform on Youtube

Promo for the World Festival of Youth and Students

Koryo Tours
March 2, 2007

North Korea has finally confirmed that the Arirang Mass games will be hosted in Pyongyang during the period of April 15th - May 15th this year, we also expect the event to be repeated from August to October but this is not definite yet.

It has also been announced that US citizens will be accepted into DPRK at this time, the only other opportunities Americans have had to travel to North Korea have been in 1995, 2002, and 2005 also for Mass Games events, there are the usual added limitations for US tours (3 night stays as a maximum, must fly both ways from Beijing) but it remains the most fascinating chance of your life to visit a truly enigmatic place to see the kind of event that only the North Koreans can pull off, please see tour dates and itineraries on our website www.koryogroup.com.

Developing Background Stand Arts on New Ground
KCNA
2/14/2007

The background stand arts of the mass gymnastic display has broken a new ground in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The background stand arts made its first appearance in the mass gymnastic display “Song of Liberation” in Juche 44 (1955) by displaying a few words with boards. After then, it had made a signal development in the course of creating mass gymnastic displays including “Our Glorious Motherland,” “Holiday of August,” “Era of Workers’ Party” and “Our Brilliant Motherland.”

The mass gymnastic display “Era of Workers’ Party” showed the pictures of flying Chollima (winged horse), fish and torch in combination with words for the first time. And the mass gymnastic display “Under the Flag of Workers’ Party” spread the picture “Arduous March” on the whole of the background, thus showing the content of the work in a persuasive and visual way. They made the background large-sized, rhythmic, symbolic, three-dimensional and scientific.

In particular, the mass gymnastic display “Chollima Korea” registered a signal development in the background stand arts. It successfully reflected on the background such moving pictures as beaming national emblem of the DPRK, red flag of the Paektu forest, beacon, molten iron pouring out of blast furnace, 3,000-ton press, tractor, excavator, fish and patterns of cloth.

The greatest success made in the background stand arts was that it reflected the image of President Kim Il Sung with high graphic depiction for the first time in 1964. Now the background stand arts depict the noble images of the three generals of Mt. Paektu.

In the mass gymnastic and artistic performance “Arirang,” a “Kim Il Sung Prize” laureate, the background stand embossed the ideological and thematic content of the work and realized the intensification and concentration of the depiction, thus breaking a mysterious phase of the visual arts.

The application of laser illumination and large-sized projector adds beauty to each scene.

Even foreigners lavished praises on the ever-changing and largest background which led the audience to ecstasy.

Christian Science Monitor
Robert Marquand
1/3/2007

North Koreans are taught to worship Kim Jong Il as a god. In a manner unique among nations, the North exerts extraordinary control through deification - a cult ideology of complete subservience - that goes beyond the “Stalinist” label often used to describe the newly nuclear North.

While outsiders can see film clips of huge festivals honoring Mr. Kim, the extraordinary degree of cult worship is not well known, nor that programs promoting the ideology of Kim are growing, according to refugees, diplomats, and others who have visited the Hermit Kingdom.

In fact, in a time of famine and poverty, government spending on Kim-family deification - now nearly 40 percent of the visible budget - is the only category in the North’s budget to increase, according to a new white paper by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul. It is rising even as defense, welfare, and bureaucracy spending have decreased. The increase pays for ideology schools, some 30,000 Kim monuments, gymnastic festivals, films and books, billboards and murals, 40,000 “research institutes,” historical sites, rock carvings, circus theaters, training programs, and other worship events.

In 1990, ideology was 19 percent of North Korea’s budget; by 2004 it doubled to at least 38.5 percent of state spending, according to the white paper. This extra financing may come from recent budget offsets caused by the shutting down of older state funding categories, says Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

It has long been axiomatic that the main danger to the Kim regime is internal unrest. That is, Koreans will discover the freedoms, glitter, and diversity of the modern outside world, and stop believing the story of idolatry they are awash in. “It isn’t quite realized [in the West] how much a threat the penetration of ideas means. They [Kim’s regime] see it as a social problem that could bring down the state,” says Brian Myers, a North Korean expert at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.

Since the poverty and famine of the late 1990s, everything from CDs and videos, South Korean radio, and cellphone signals from China, new styles and products, and new commercial habits have seeped in, mostly across the Chinese border, in a way that might be called “soft globalization.” Such flows feed a new underground system of private business, information, bribery, and trade that exists outside the strict party-state discipline and rules.

Yet rather than accept such penetration as an inexorable threat, Kim is putting up a serious fight to slow and counter it - by increasing his program of cult-worship.

Kim Worship 2.0

Like a computer software firm updating program versions, the North is steadily updating its ideology to make it relevant. This practice of mass control by in-your-face ideology has been laughed off in much of the world, including China. But North Korea is increasing its ideological cult worship. The scope of the current project outdoes even the cult of personality during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, according to a 2005 doctoral dissertation by Lee Jong Heon at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. Mr. Lee visited North Korea several times for his research.

After the Oct. 9 nuclear test, for example, banners sprang up over North Korea stating “We are a country with a nuclear deterrent.” Kim’s test feeds a national pride that is part of the propaganda drilled into Koreans from birth: that Kim alone can fend off the US and Japanese enemies. A US diplomat in Asia says such pride may prohibit Kim from giving up his nuclear program in the current “six party talks” - and those talks stalled again in late December in Beijing.

“The cult of personality campaign is more extensive today than in 1985,” says former South Korean foreign minister Han Sung Joo, who visited Pyongyang this past October, and in 1985. “Unlike the Stalin and Mao personality cults, there is a deification and a religious emotional element in the North. The twinned photos of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are everywhere. Every speech says Kim Il Sung is still alive. I think if I stayed another two weeks, I might even see Kim Il Sung. The country worships someone who is deceased, as if he is alive.”

Kim Jong Il has upgraded his deification strategies to strengthen the family cult system. Western reports often detail Korea’s unique “juche ideology” - a theology of Kim worship, repeated hourly and daily, reminding Koreans they are insolubly bound to the Kim family and must erase foreign influence from their minds.

Yet juche is a subcategory of a far more encompassing umbrella of deification known as woo sang hwa, or idol worship. In North Korea, woo sang hwa contains all the aspects of cult worship. Kim broke away from orthodox communism, for example, in a program called “our style socialism.” While Marxism-Leninism demands fealty to “nation,” “party,” and “serving the people” - Kim’s “our style [Korean] socialism” does no such thing. It makes “family loyalty,” with Kim at the head, the supreme good - a major deflection from communism.

During the late 1990s famine, a “Red Banner” campaign for unconditional loyalty and harder toil began. Then came “Kangsong Taeguk” in the late 1990s - a project to push economic and military ideology. This project culminated in the 1998 Taepodong-1 rocket launches, which thrilled North Koreans, frightened Japan, and started a whole new military mindset in Tokyo.

The North uses “ideology rather than physical control,” Lee says, whenever possible. The current variation of the program is called “military first.” It is intended to bolster North Korea’s nuclear efforts. Military First started as a campaign to support juche, and as a slogan designed to remind Koreans that the nation is at war. It came packaged with a rallying cry called “dare to die,” say refugees and Kim experts. (There’s a dare-to-die pop song, and a dare-to-die movie. Recent internal memos brought by defectors indicate “dare to die” is urged on local officials due to a feeling in Pyongyang that young people aren’t showing enough zeal to make such a dare.)

A new military focus

Yet Military First may now be a tool for evolving a significant structural change - a new ruling elite in day-to-day affairs. For years, the North Korean state was ruled by the workers’ party. Under Kim Il Sung the party was the driving force in Korea - the main route to achievement and pay. Everyone wanted to join. (Party members in China and Vietnam are 5 percent of the population; a 1998 Korean Central report put Korea’s membership at 5 million, or 22 percent, though it may be lower.)

“The outcome of the Military First policy replaces the workers as a main force,” says Haiksoon Paik, a North Korean specialist at the Sejong Institute outside Seoul. “North Korea’s party has not been functioning as well as it is supposed to … several positions in the Politburo have not been reappointed. Kim is not depending on the party, but a smaller more streamlined military apparatus. This is due to his politics as a result of the nuclear crisis brought by the Americans.”

“Military First is not aimed at building up the military, which is already quite built up and strong,” says Lee, whose dissertation is titled, “A Political Economic Analysis of the North Korean Regime.” “It is about replacing the old party - First Rice - structure of senior Kim. If the party is unwieldy, the military will control the people on behalf of the leader.”

Tellingly, on New Year’s Day, Kim Jong Il visited the shrine where his father was interred. He has gone there only four times since he came to power in 1995. Each visit has taken place in a year following major accomplishments. According to South Korean media, for the first time, Kim visited the shrine without party or government officials. This time, only key military officials were in attendance. On Tuesday, North Korean papers heralded the visit, and the Oct. 9 nuclear tests as “an auspicious event in the national history.”

Kim-worship in the North is a vivid - and inescapable - spectacle to behold, say visitors. Thousands of giant “towers of eternality” to Kim scatter the landscape. Special “Kimjongilia” crimson begonias are tended in family gardens. Kim’s media calls him variously the “Guardian Deity of the Planet,” and “Lodestar of the 21st Century.” In 2002, Korean mass dances known as Arirang, featured 100,000 flag wavers (and was described in state media as the “greatest event of humankind.”) Many loyal Koreans bow twice daily to Kim pictures that sit alone on the most prominent wall of their homes.

Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the Korean cult project is its recent veering toward race and ethnic solidarity, say Kim watchers. His main appeal to his people today, a push that rarely gets attention outside the North, is to the racial superiority of a people whose isolation and stubborn xenophobia supposedly makes their bloodlines purer. Mr. Myers notes that festivals of 100,000 flag wavers is not a Stalinist exercise, but a celebration of “ethnic homogeneity.” Since the 1990s Kim has more fervently claimed lineage to the first ancient rulers of Korea, a move intended to place him in a position of historical, if not divine, destiny as leader of the peninsula.

from the BBC:

N Korea cancels gymnastics gala

North Korea has cancelled a massive festival featuring thousands of gymnasts, soldiers and performers because of flooding earlier this month.

The two-month long Arirang festival has in the past been popular with western tourists and visitors from South Korea.

The event features spectacular synchronised acrobatic displays and is seen by Pyongyang as a way of boosting leader Kim Jong-il’s popularity.

Floods in North Korea this month killed more than 100 people.

According to the UN’s food agency, some 60,000 people were left homeless by the floods, which followed torrential rains.

Strained relations

Han Song Ryol, a North Korean envoy to the United Nations, told the Associated Press news agency the festival had been “cancelled due to flood damages”.

He did not say whether the event would be rescheduled.

Pyongyang had planned to invite up to 600 tourists every day from South Korea to see the festival, South Korean news agency Yonhap reports.

The agency said South Korean officials were concerned that the cancellation of the festival could lead to contacts between the two Koreas being curtailed.

Relations between the two countries are already strained over Pyongyang’s recent decision to test new, long-range missiles, ending a self-imposed moratorium on such tests.

Froom Joong Ang Daily:

Citing flooding, North pushes back a festival
July 31, 2006

The North Korean Arirang festival, which was to have begun on Aug. 15, was postponed until next spring, according to the president of the Korean American National Coordinating Council. Rain damage in North Korea was cited as the reason for the delay.

Yoon Kil-sang, the president of the council, posted the postponement announcement Friday (in the United States) on Minjok, an Internet news site there. He said he was notified by the North Korean mission to the United Nations of the postponement.

But South Korean groups said they knew nothing of the change of plans. An official at the South Korean committee preparing for a joint celebration of Liberation Day, Aug. 15, said the committee had not been told.

“In order to prepare for the Arirang festival, working-level meetings should have been nearly finished, but we have not heard from the North,” the official said.

Despite the recent North Korean missile test salvo, Seoul said last week that it would allow a private South Korean delegation to participate in the holiday commemoration and the festival.

Chosun Shinbo, published by a pro-Pyongyang group in Japan, reported on Friday that an area where the festival was to be held was hit hard by recent flooding. It said 1,200 trees were down and roads had been destroyed.

The Arirang Festival, which was first held in 2002, is a patriotic festival praising the country’s leaders and system using phalanxes of people with flash cards, dances and circus shows. Last year, in its second staging, 7,000 South Koreans attended. The festival was originally scheduled to run from mid-August to mid-October.

Separately, in a relatively rare admission of problems in paradise, the Chosun Shinbo also reported in detail on the flood damage in the North. Reportedly, the Pyongan provinces near Pyongyang were hit hard, with 10,000 people affected by floods and 30 bridges destroyed. North Hwanghae province, the agricultural center for much of the country, also suffered substantial damage, the newspaper reported.

Last week, the United Nations World Food Program estimated that 60,000 North Koreans had been left homeless and 30,000 hectares of farmland were destroyed in the recent flooding.

Kwon Tae-jin, a researcher for the Korea Rural Economic Institute, said yesterday that it took several years for the North to repair damage from a flood in the mid 1990s and that the recent flood was likely to cut into food production substantially. But he said if paddy walls could be rebuilt quickly and quarantine measures taken to prevent the spread of disease, damage could be minimized.

From the Joong Ang Daily:

Seoul gives its blessing to view North’s festival

July 21, 2006-The Roh administration said yesterday it would allow a private delegation to participate in North Korea’s celebration of Liberation Day, the August 15 anniversary of Japan’s surrender in 1945. It will also allow South Koreans to attend the annual Arirang Festival that begins the same day and runs for two months.

The festival is widely seen by critics as an extended paean of praise to Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founder and leader until his death in 1994.

Lee Jong-seok, the unification minister, told a news conference yesterday that non-governmental exchanges such as those for the holiday and the festival would go ahead “according to procedures.” He said no decision had yet been made on whether Seoul would send an official delegation to participate in the North’s Liberation Day rites.

After the press conference, a Unification Ministry official said permission to travel to North Korea would be given to all comers except for those barred by law from traveling there. The latter group once included those convicted of National Security Law violations or those under investigation for alleged violations of that anti-communist statute; now, only those involved in a current criminal investigation of any kind are barred.

Tensions in the region escalated rapidly after North Korea test-fired seven missiles on July 5. Ministerial talks a week later collapsed after Seoul refused to continue providing material aid, and the latest sign of tension came yesterday when Pyong-yang, following through on an earlier threat, told Hyundai Asan to repatriate 150 workers from the construction site at Mount Kumgang for a separated family reunion center.

The work, funded by Seoul, was scheduled to be completed in June 2007 at a cost of 50 billion won ($53 million). North Korea’s Red Cross told its counterpart in the South earlier this week that if rice and fertilizer stopped flowing north, the family reunions could not be held.

The decision to allow civilians to travel for the festivities is in line with Seoul’s expressed intention to keep channels with the North open, but critics said darkly that North Korea was certain to abuse that good will.

At the failed inter-Korean talks last week, Pyongyang demanded that Seoul end its restrictions on where South Koreans in the North can travel. It wanted those visitors to be able to visit what it called “holy places and landmarks,” a reference not to religion but to the cult surrounding Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong-il, his father’s successor as the country’s leader. Those “holy places” include Kumususan Memorial Palace, where Kim Il Sung’s mausoleum is located.

Critics also saw a train wreck, in their view, in North Korea’s contention at the recent Busan ministerial meeting that South Koreans are being protected by North Korea’s “military-first” policy. The Arirang Festival performances in recent years have been heavy in praising that policy, and some of those allegedly “protected,” they say, will be in attendance.

by Lee Young-jong, Ser Myo-ja