North Korean Economy Watch

Daily NK
Han Young Jin
5/21/2007

Well-informed sources say Heungnam manufacturer’s production facility shuts down.

Several well-known sources relayed on the 20th that as North Korean drugs flow into China in large amounts, it strongly protested to North Korea and requested that the Heungnam Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in Hamheung be shut down.

Following suit, the North Korean government authorities was known to destroy the Heungnam Pharmaceutical Manufacturer used in producing bingdu (the alias for “ice” classified in the category of Philopon in North Korea).

The well-informed source said, “China’s judicial authorities are strongly coping with the situation by imposing three years of penal servitude to those who sell 10g of Bingdu (so called “Ice” in North Korea) or a penalty of 20,000 yuan. When North Korea demonstrated a lax response, China expressed strong discontent.”

In North Korea, the Nanam Pharmaceutical Manufacturer in Chungjin, North Hamkyung is famous as a representative drug manufacturing company. The source evaluated that Hamheung, which has recently risen as a drug production base, had weak means of living which produced the highest number of deaths during the 90s’ mass starvation and the stimulant “Ice” was misused due to the lack of medical products.

$3,000 per kilogram…dealt for $10,000 at the border

An internal source said, “During the March of Suffering, a part of citizens who even sold raw materials and factory equipment earned big money by selling drugs. Since then, everyone has followed the trend. The people in Hamheung started handling drugs with great ambition due to the fact that at the Heungnam Pharmaceutical Manufacturer, the prime cost for a kilogram is $3,000 dollars and the profit exceeds $5,000.”

The source said, “In the past, people touched drugs hoping to make a big fortune with a single swoop, but everyone is thinking about making money by selling drugs nowadays. Inevitably, the number of civilians who have become ‘ice’ addicts has significantly increased.”

Ice can be produced for $3,000 per kilogram and sold on site for $7-8,000 and at the border region where smuggling is possible, it can be sold for up to $10,000.

Another source said, “Civilians have fallen to the bedazzlement of making a jackpot with drugs, so they have gone to the border region carrying drugs and seeking dealers. However, fakes that have been manufactured ingeniously are also making a wave.”

In North Korea, as drug sales have been unyielding, it was known that teenagers who are touching “ice” are not only seriously in Hamheung but in all regions. They are not showing immediate signs of addiction, but they can be presumed as “high-risk” people for addiction.

North Korean businessman Mr. Kim, who is engaging is trade between North Korea and China, wore a sorry expression and said, “Nowadays, children who are not yet fully grown use ‘ice.’ Not too long ago, my friend’s 12-year old son was found while secretly using his father’s ‘ice.’ After severely beating him, the father asked, “Do you like ‘ice’ so much? The son responded, ‘it is a cure-all.’”

In the mid-1990s, due to deteriorated medical facilities and a shortage of medical goods, citizens started to depend on folk remedies. Civilians who started using ‘ice’ in lieu of cold medicines started using it as emergency medicine even for the flu and strokes.

Mr. Kim said, “Ice has a stimulant quality, so it is used to as a stimulant and a stress-releaser. Even children have come to regard it as a panacea and think that a little suck of ice will instantly get rid of pain and make one refreshed.”

Narcotic squads hardly have any strength

The North Korean authorities issued a narcotics degree in March of last year to prevent drug abuse. It has even issued the threat of putting to death related parties of drug deals. However, businesses that have earned money through drugs feed bribes to inspection organs, so sources said that these institutions cannot exert any strength.

One domestic source said, “Recently, a Central Party inspection group was organized in Shinuiju and came forward to regulate drugs, but authorities such as the National Security Agency, the National Security Office, and others have become implicated. However, exposing them in increasing measures makes punishment difficult, because complicit individuals can come forward in hordes.”

Drug sellers in the border region have divided left-over profits from handing over to China with participating National Security officers. The source said, “If a drug dealer is arrested, if back-money is given, even the ring-leader will be immediately released.”

The source also said that upper-class drug inspection groups can instantly become conspirators due to the high amount of money to be handed over to their superiors.

According to the Joong Ang Daily (2007-5-21):

It must have been the most expensive train ride in history. A ticket to cross the border between the two Koreas, a 90-minute journey over 30 kilometers, cost more than 2.7 billion won ($2.9 million) per person last week.

On Thursday, 200 South Koreans boarded two trains on the reconnected Gyeongui and Donghae lines on the west and east sides of the peninsula to chug across the Demilitarized Zone in a show of potential unity. The cost to South Korea, so far, has been 545.4 billion won to reconnect the sections of the cross-border railway severed by the Korean War.

While there are no concrete plans for further runs, the South Korean government has dreams of an inter-Korean rail network that would help the peninsula, cut freight shipment costs dramatically and link Korea by rail to the vast markets of China and the natural resources of Russia.

But to get there from here, the money spent so far on the test run is a pittance. Assuming that the enormous political obstacles to dealing with the North could be overcome, experts say it could cost as much as $10 billion to overhaul the slow, obsolete and backward rail infrastructure of North Korea.

That has not stopped some officials from insisting it can happen. On May 14, Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung announced a three-step plan for an inter-Korean railroad.

The first step would be to use a section of the Gyeongui Line, connecting Seoul and Shinuiju in the North, to serve the Kaesong Industrial Complex project. Transporting goods in and out of Kaesong and allowing North Korean workers to commute to the inter-Korean industrial complex by train is part of the plan.

The next step would be expanding use of the Gyeongui Line up to Kaesong for South Koreans, so that commuters to the complex and South Korean tourists visiting Kaesong could ride the train.

And finally, the South wants to operate trains on a regular basis between Seoul and Pyongyang.

“As of now, providing transportation for goods and commuters to Kaesong and allowing Mount Kumgang tourists to travel by train are current demands,” Lee said at the briefing. The Donghae Line, running between Yangyang and Anbyon in the North, will be used for the Mount Kumgang trip.

“More than 10 billion won worth of goods is produced in Kaesong,” Lee said. “More than 13,000 North Koreans are working there and commuting has become a serious issue.”

Lee has even more ambitious dreams ― the building of a rail line to connect Korea with Europe. “The reconnected inter-Korean railroad will be connected to Russia, one of the largest reserves of natural resources in the world, and China, to provide new economic opportunities,” Lee said. “We need a serious discussion on this with the North.”

Lee, however, admitted that there are enormous obstacles. Gaining the cooperation of the North’s hard-line military, which has been reluctant to open the border to train crossings, and modernization of the outdated North Korean rail infrastructure are among them.

Continuing his drumbeat for the project, after the test run, Lee said South Korea will gladly pay for updating the North’s railroad network ― and cost is no object. “No matter how much it will cost, it is an investment for our economy,” Lee said Friday. “The research is ongoing to estimate the cost, so it is hard to make the number public.”

Estimates vary widely about the cost of modernizing the North’s railroads. Lim Jae-gyeong, a researcher at the Korea Transport Institute, estimated that upgrading the North’s sagging rail networks, for both the Gyeongui and Donghae lines, would cost from 6.5 trillion won to 8 trillion won.

Kim Gyeong-jung, the team leader for inter-Korean railroad networks at the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, cited a Russian report that estimated it would cost up to $3.5 billion “to modernize the railroads in the North and connect them with the Trans-Siberian Railroad.”

Ahn Byung-min of the Korea Transport Institute put the figure at $10 billion for the project, also citing previous Russian reports.

Russia is enthusiastic about the prospects, though, and it conducted three surveys of the North’s railroad infrastructure between 2001 and 2003. The project may accelerate when the two Koreas and Russia begin railroad talks next month.

“We are pushing to hold talks with Kim Yong-sam, the North’s railroad minister, and Vladimir Yakunin, president of the state-run Russian Railways company, at the end of next month in Pyongyang,” said Lee Chul, head of the Korea Railroad Corporation. “The South and Russia have already agreed and the North responded positively.”

The meeting will focus on linking a trans-Korean railway with the trans-Siberia railway. By linking to the Russian lines, Vladivostok could be reached directly by rail from Busan. Researchers say the connection would enable freight to be shipped from Busan to Moscow by rail in just eight days. The transportation cost would be half of the current rate for sea shipments, which is about $600 for a 20-foot container.

The immediate challenge is the infrastructure. Rail is the backbone of North Korea’s transportation system, Ahn said. About 60 percent of passenger traffic and 90 percent of freight is carried by train. With two main rail lines running on the east and west sides of the country, Ahn said, the North Koreans have tried unsuccessfully to connect the systems since the 1970s.

“As of late 2005, the North had about 5,248 kilometers of rail, but 98 percent of them are single-track lines,” Ahn said, meaning that the traffic that can be carried is limited to one train at a time. “Most of the other infrastructure, such as bridges, tunnels, stations and communication systems, is also extremely outdated.”

The trains also run at very slow speeds, between 30 and 60 kilometers an hour. “The speed has not changed much since 1956,” Ahn said. “From Pyongyang to Shinuiju, the distance is 223.6 kilometers. By express, it would take about five hours and five minutes, so the average speed is about 40 kilometers per hour,” Ahn said. “But the regular trains take more than 11 hours.” He noted that there are also no set timetables and service is erratic and sometimes dangerous.

Ahn, who has visited North Korea several times to examine the fraying rail network, provided some extreme examples of how the North tries to cope. “Russia and China often provide food aid to the North via trains,” Ahn said. “When train cars from the two countries arrive, the North, under bilateral treaties, must send back the trains within six months. Rarely are the actual train cars returned, instead China and Russia often receive older train cars ready to retire from service.”

About 2,000 train cars sent from China and Russia have thus been marked as “made in North Korea” and put to use, Ahn said.

“North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung once said the operation of a railroad is like the circulation of blood in the human body,” Ahn said, “Based on that expression, you could say that North Korea’s rail network is a patient suffering from a serious circulatory disease.”

Read the full story here:
Inter-Korean railroad faces huge obstacles
Joong Ang Daily
Ser Myo-ja
5/21/2007

Joong Ang Daily
Lee Yang-soo and Brian Lee
5/16/2007

With an eye on future transportation infrastructure, both Russia and China are courting North Korea to get in on the development of Najin port, in the far north of the country near the Russian border.

A Foreign Ministry official said yesterday that Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin is scheduled to visit North Korea to discuss launching a project aimed at improving and repairing a railroad from Najin to Khasan, just across the border into Russia.

Yakunin told former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook, who visited Russia last month, that President Vladimir Putin had great interest in the project and Russia was hoping for the active participation of South Korean companies, the official said. The railway official visited Seoul in July last year to discuss the project with South Korean companies. The issue was also discussed in March at a bilateral meeting with Russia on economic cooperation.

A government official said that Russia wants to use Najin port as a logistics hub, but is also intending to develop the port into a base for future development of oil and natural gas in Siberia. The ultimate goal would be to connect the trans-Siberian railway with an inter-Korean railway system.

Beijing also has its eye on the North Korean port, which it envisions as part of its grand design to build a transport network that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the North Pacific.

“Najin Port is near the Jilin area and China’s own ports in the area have already reached their full capacity,” a government official said yesterday.

Beijing has recently notified Pyongyang that it is willing to spend $1 billion to develop port facilities, build railroads connecting the port to China and improve existing infrastructure such as highways, the official said.

In a report published earlier this year, Cho Myung-chul, a researcher at the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy, predicted that China would use investments in the North’s ports and railroads to extend its own infrastructure for export and import purposes. China has made similar investments in Burma and Bangladesh, among others.

Joong Ang Daily
Hwang Young-jin
5/15/2007

North Korean trade with the EU and Japan went into a free fall last year, but China helped pick up the slack.

Missile and nuclear tests interfered with North Korean trade in 2006, leading to the country’s first decrease in five years, a report from the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency said. Decreases in trade with the West caused by political problems were the biggest culprit, the agency said.

North Korean exports to Japan fell 41 percent while imports from Japan dropped 30 percent. Trade with the European Union went down 23 percent in exports and 18 percent in imports. The European Union and Japan are the world’s first- and third-largest economies. Trade with the world’s second-largest economy, the United States, was practically zero.

But trade with China, the nation closest to the North politically and geographically, served as a buffer to reduce the impact of the large drops in European and American trade, so the North’s overall trade figures didn’t change much, the agency said.

Almost 60 percent of North Korea’s trade is conducted with China. The North’s next-biggest trade partner was Thailand, which accounted for 12.5 percent.

The communist country’s trade volume in 2006 fell 0.2 percent, with exports dropping 5.2 percent to $947 million and imports increasing 2.3 percent to $2 billion. Trade has been growing since the start of the new millennium. In 2005, the total trade topped a record $3 billion.

With an international economic blockade in place, trade relations with Japan and the European Union got worse.

The Kotra report said the Feb. 13 agreement reached during the six-nation talks in Beijing regarding the nuclear issue is a positive signal for the recovery of North Korean trade, but it is up to North Korea whether to act on its commitments and allow trade to recover.

Inter-Korean trade was not considered in yesterday’s report. Trade between the two Koreas reached $1.3 billion in 2006, a 28 percent rise year-on-year. The South sold $830.1 million and bought $519.5 million.

American Enterprise Institute Book forum
4/17/2007

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a book forum at the American Enterprise Institute on Nicholas Eberstadt’s new book, The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe.  It was very informative to hear three different perspectives on the direction of North Korea’s economic reform.

Panelists included:

Nicholas Eberstadt, AEI
Andrei Lankov, Kookmin University
Deok-Ryong Yoon, Korea Institute for International Economic Policy

In summary, Mr. Eberstadt and Mr. Lankov are pessimistic about the North Korean leadership’s desire to enact reforms–knowing that information leakages will undermine their political authority.  As Mr. Lankov pointed out, the North Korean nomenklatura are all children and grandchildren of the founders of the country who are highly vested in the current system.  They have no way out politically, and as such, cannot reform.

They argue that the economic reforms enacted in 2002 were primarily efforts to reassert control over the de facto institutions that had emerged in the collapse of the state-run Public Distribition System, not primarily intended to revive the economy.  Lankov does admit, however, that North Korea is more open and market-oriented than it has ever been, and  Mr. Yoon was by far the most optomistic on the prospects of North Korean reform.

Personally, I think it makes sense to think about North Korean politics as one would in any other country–as composed of political factions that each seek their own goals.  Although the range of policy options is limited by current political realities, there are North Koreans who are interested in reform and opening up–even if only to earn more money.  In this light, even if the new market institutions recognized in the 2002 reforms were acknowledged only grudgingly, they were still acknowledged, and their legal-social-economic positions in society are now de jure, not just de facto.  The North Korean leadership might be opposed to wholesale reform, but that is economically and strategically different than a controlled opening up on an ad hoc basis–which is what I believe we are currently seeing. Anyway, dont take my word for it, check out the full commentary posted below the fold:

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Daily NK
Kang Jae Hyok
4/16/2007

In commemoration of the anniversary of Kim Il Song’s 95th birthday (Apr. 15), North Korea has been preparing various spring festivities including the “Arirang” performance.

The number of foreigners visiting North Korea during this time is also expected to escalate.

Recently, the DailyNK confirmed through Chinese merchants that bribery and gifts had been exchanged between North Korean authorities. It is these during these seasons of Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il’s birthday and the founding of the Workers Party and the Republic that bribes are most favorable.

For the past 4 years, Ma Il Su (pseudonym, 43) a Chinese merchant living in Jilian has been importing North Korean agricultural produce and herbal medicines to sell in China. In a telephone conversation with the DailyNK, he informed on the 12th, “I have prepared a special gift to give to North Korean authorities for when I enter the country on the 14th.”

He said, “On the whole, anyone trading with Chosun (North Korea) also offers gifts to them… The best offering is in the form of money.”

“Offering cash to the nation is the best but there are times when electronic goods are also given” he said.

Ma continued, “In order to trade in Chosun, you need the cooperation of authorities on your side” and said, “To charm the hearts of authorities, gifts must be given frequently. The best way to do this is by offering gifts at times of Kim Il Song and Kim Jong Il’s birthday.”

“You should go to the People’s Committee and offer the gifts to the chairman directly saying, ‘I sincerely pray for the Great Leader’s health and Chosun’s growth.’ Then they (the North Koreans) become ecstatically excited they do not know what to do” he said.

When asked whether or not gifts had to be offered to individual authorities Ma said, “You cannot trade if you do not offer bribes to authorities… Officials prefer cash as well as watches or electronic goods such as widescreen TV’s. In particular, they like watches made from South Korea.”

“I have already arranged for sheets of Chinese currency to give to individual authorities in timing with Kim Il Song’s birthday” he said and added, “Nowadays, offering bribes has become a norm in North Korea. There would be chaos if a gift was not offered.”

Ma said, “I am aware that my fellow tradesmen are offering gifts of similar nature” and estimated, “If we collect the amount of gifts offered by the Chinese, there should be quite a lot.”

Money given by Chinese merchants to the People’s Committee first reaches the respective local authorities of the Party → higher party authorities → central authorities in Pyongyang, and finally is offered as a bribe to Kim Jong Il. In the end, the money is donated into Kim Jong Il’s private fund and used for his personal pleasures.

Following the July 1st measures in 2002, North Korea-China trade has expanded significantly with hundreds of Chinese merchants filtering into North Korea everyday. In accordance with Ma, the number of people offering bribes to North Korean authorities seems to be considerably large.

Yonhap
4/14/2007

A festive mood was pervading North Korea Saturday as the birthday of the communist state’s late founder drew near, with a series of exhibitions and gatherings being held, the North’s state media reported.

Pyongyang has staged art, sports and dance events annually for the birthday of Kim Il-sung, which falls on April 15, and is also known as the Day of Sun. Kim died of heart failure on July 8 1994 at the age of 82, and his son Kim Jong-il took power afterward.

Art troupes from China, Russia, Japan, Kazakhstan, India and Indonesia staged performances in Pyongyang on Saturday, the third day of the country’s April Spring Friendship Art Festival, according to the North’s state media.

A flower exhibition for “Kimilsungia,” an orchid named after Kim, was opened Friday with the North’s and foreign officials in attendance. The exhibition will be run until Thursday.

The festive mood is expected to culminate when the North stages the pro-unification Arirang festival Sunday through May 20. It is one of the North’s major gymnastics events and is popular among both Western and South Korean visitors.

Foreign delegations also have arrived Pyongyang to celebrate Kim’s birthday, the state media reported.

An Indonesian delegation made a visit to the North’s Mansudae Assembly Hall on Friday and conveyed a present to the incumbent North Korean leader via Kim Young-dae, the North’s No. 3 leader. It also toured Mankyongdae, the birthplace of the late founder in a rural village near the North Korean capital.

A Russian delegation also paid homage to a Kim Il-sung statue at the Mansudae Assembly Hall, while a Mongolian delegation paid visits to art exhibition halls and other sites to commemorate the birthday.

Choson Ilbo
4/12/2007

Last year a Chinese company took a 51-percent stake in Hyesan Youth Cooper Mine in Yanggang Province, North Korea. Hebei-based Luanhe Industrial Group now has the right to develop the mine for the next 15 years.

North Korea also sold a 50-year development claim to the Musan iron mines, Asia’s largest open-air mine, to China’s Tonghua Iron & Steel Group. Since 2006, North Korea has sold the rights to develop more than 10 mines to Chinese firms.

KDB Research Institute, an affiliate of Korea Development Bank, has raised concerns with a report released Wednesday that details China’s intensive investment in North Korean natural resources. According to the report, since 2002 China has invested US$13 million (US$1=W932), more than 70 percent of its total investment in North Korea, in iron, copper and molybdenum mines.

The major investors come from the three northeast provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning. They have moved the focus of their investment from small-scale, commercial opportunities to strategic deals to secure energy resources, the report said.

According to the report, China’s Wukang Group bought the rights to dig the Yongdeung mine, North Korea’s largest hard coal mine, and another Chinese company invested in a North Korean project to develop an oil field in the West Sea. The North has also allowed Chinese fishermen to fish off the coast of Wonsan, a North Korean port city on the east coast, in return for 25 percent of the catch.

Since North Korea lacks funds while China suffers from a shortage of natural resources the two are forming joint development projects, said KDB Research Institute researcher Chung Eui-jun, the writer of the report.

Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, said in the Wall Street Journal last July that the Chinese government seems to have made a strategic decision to encourage Chinese firms to invest in North Korea as a way to maintain its influence with its long-time ally in the post-Kim Jong-il era.

Yonhap
4/10/2007

South and North Korea on Tuesday agreed to dispatch a joint team to China to disinter and repatriate the remains of a prominent independence fighter buried there.

They will also push to organize joint commemorative events for the 100th anniversary of the death of the freedom fighter An Jung-geun in 2010, according to a statement released by the Unification Ministry.

The agreement came at the end of the one-day working-level talks held in the North Korean border city of Kaesong. The talks were resumed after a 13-month hiatus.

“The joint excavation team will be sent to China for about a month beginning in late April. We will work out details for the dispatch later at the truce village of Panmunjom,” the statement said.

An was executed in Dalian in 1910, a year after assassinating Hirobumi Ito, Japan’s first resident-general in Korea, on a railway platform in Harbin. His remains are still buried near a former prison run by Japanese authorities in Dalian.

An’s assassination of Hirobumi was an attempt to prevent Japan’s annexation of Korea, but the Korean Peninsula was formally colonized by Japan from 1910 to 1945.

During the Japanese colonial period, millions of Koreans are believed to have been killed or sent into forced labor, including sexual servitude for the Japanese military.

The South Korean delegation was headed by Lee Byeong-gu, director general of the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, while Chon Chong-su, deputy bureau chief of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland led the North Korean team.

Daily NK
Kang Jae Hyok
4/9/2007

Since the nuclear experiment last year trade between North Korea and China had dwindled. However, lately, business is prospering thanks to the friendly moods between the U.S. and North Korea. Nonetheless, the frequent change in customs officers and their unreasonable requests are disturbing the businessmen.

Some Chinese merchants travel into and out of North Korea everyday, or at the least every couple of days. One businessman, Han Chul Ryong (pseudonym, Korean-Chinese, 42) who had recently visited North Korea for business, expressed his feelings in a concerned voice in a telephone conversation with the DailyNK on the 6th.

Han currently lives in Jilian and has been trading goods with North Korea for 4 years now. With a 2.5 ton truck, he imports and sells North Korean seafood and herbal medicines in China.

Han said, “Nowadays, I don’t want to trade anymore because of the customs officers. They make our lives so difficult… It’s like they have some sort of steel plate over their faces or something. They have no dignity, nothing.”

He added, “Customs officers are so competitive and make so many demands that I cannot remember them all unless it is written down in a notebook. They request a variety of goods such as food, fruits, medicine and electronic goods. Alcohol and cigarettes are a must.”

Another tradesman, Kim Chan Joo (pseudonym) who was traveling with Han said, “Some customs officers go as far as demanding materials for home renovations such as cement, iron rods, window panes, windows, doors and nails.”

When asked what kind of privileges customs officers give after receiving bribes, Kim responded, “Of courses there are privileges… Sometimes they reduce taxes or place a blind eye to goods that should not pass through.”

He said, “There is a saying, ‘A cow fed also gives dung.’ A customs officer who has been fed bribes cannot possibly enforce strict control” and added, “Though customs officers have helped increase trade, as time goes by, the standard of their demands are also rising.”

“That’s not the only annoying problem. After going to all that trouble developing friendly relations with customs officers, they are replaced by new ones and hence there are many losses… It takes double time and money to acquire friendly relations with newly replaced customs officers,” Kim said.

Being a customs officer is considered one of the upper middle-class jobs in North Korea. Unlike an average office worker, customs officers are treated similar to the army. The National Safety Agency is even in charge of some of the customs officers.

Often these people are greedy to accumulate funds for retirement or for their children and as a result, try to gather as much as they can while in office. Even in a chaotic North Korea society, the position of customs officer is considered the yolk of an egg. Consequently, officers go to all means to confiscate as much money as they can from Chinese tradesmen and relatives visiting family.

North Korean authorities are strengthening control over customs officers, however it is difficult to obliterate the problem as it is so deeply rooted. Rather, than the situation dying out, it seems that their unreasonable attitude will increase.

If a customs officer makes receives too many anonymous complaints, he/she is given a warning or penalty. When the situation worsens, the customs officer is then demoted to a different office or in the worse case, dismissed from duty.

Recently, it seems that North Korean authorities have become more aware of the situation and are making efforts to enforce control. One method is removing the officers who are dependent on this corrupt system to different locations.

Han said, “If customs officers don’t do this, it is hard for them to eat and live… Though the demands by Chosun customs officers are increasing by the day, in order to trade there is no other way.”