North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Daily NK:

The chairman of North Korea’s State Development Bank, Jeon Il Chun visited China on April 8, reportedly to try and bring Chinese investment to Daebong Mine, located near Hyesan, Yangkang Province.

Daebong Mine is one of North Korea’s major gold mines, managed under the auspices of the No. 39 Department of the Central Committee, a special department charged with raising funds for Kim Jong Il’s personal use. Jeon Il Chun is the person in charge of the No. 39 Department.

Attempts to sell shares in a gold mine directly controlled by the 39 Department, Kim Jong Il’s own private safe, to China seem to indirectly imply that Kim is suffering from a debilitating foreign currency supply crisis.

One Daily NK source in China who is well-acquainted with North Korean affairs reported that while Jeon was in China, he met with the management of three or four Chinese enterprises which already have investments in North Korea, and suggested investment conditions under which the North could transfer some of its mineral rights to them and receive capital investments in return.

The source said, “For now, as far as I know, executive managers of the No. 39 Department have been in contact with Chinese enterprises. Since the Workers’ Party is trying to sell shares in a gold mine, it seems the funding of the Party might be serious.”

“It is not clear whether or not this attempt was done on Kim Jong Il’s instructions, but attracting foreign investment in a gold mine is not a commonplace affair,” the source pointed out, adding that an investor has not yet been put in place.

What is the Daebong Mine for?

The Daebong Mine is a relatively large gold mine on the border of Woonheung and Gapsan in Yangkang Province. Until 2001, a Yangkang provincial foreign currency earning enterprise and the foreign currency earning department of the People’s Safety Agency jointly managed it. However, in May, 2002, it became a No. 39 Department affiliated enterprise.

The No. 39 Department has been raising private funds for the leader and Party operations under the Finance and Accounting Department of the Central Committee since the mid-1970s. According to defectors, it has the highest authority and the largest funds of all North Korea’s foreign currency earning enterprises. Especially, it has the ability to mobilize tremendous financial resources since it manages and controls supplies of gold and silver and rare non-ferrous metals.

A source from Yangkang Province explained, “According to Chongjin University of Mining and Metals and Kim Chaek University of Technology, the purity of the gold from the Daebong Mine is more than 76 percent, while production from Hoichang and Eunsan in South Pyongang Province is 63 percent and 61 percent respectively. More than 150kg of solid gold is produced annually, so this mine is known as the ‘loyalty mine’.”

“People say that the government earns four or five million dollars a year through this mine. Neither Yangkang Provincial Committee nor Hyesan Municipal Committee is involved with the business of the mine.”

The source added, “Since the No. 39 Department deals with the mine, only those discharged soldiers with good family backgrounds are dispatched there by the Central Committee. In October of last year, around 200 discharged soldiers with good family backgrounds came to the mine.”

Almost all the gold produced in the Daebong Mine is stored in Swiss and Austrian banks in gold bars.

A Chinese company had a contract with the DPRK’s Musan Mine which has been canceled for an unknown reason.

Click here to see what I believe is the mine’s location.

Read the full article here:
No. 39 Department Hawking Shares in Key Gold Mine
Daily NK
5/3/010
Lee Sung Jin

According to Yonhap:

Trade between South and North Korea nearly doubled last month compared with a year ago amid a nascent economic recovery in the South, a government report showed Wednesday.

Inter-Korean trade jumped 88.5 percent from a year ago to US$204.03 million in March, according to the report by the Korea Customs Service. Compared with two years ago, before the South Korean economy was hit by the global financial crisis, trade between the two Koreas rose 29.7 percent in the reported month.

South Korea imports a range of labor-intensive goods such as clothes and watches from the joint Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea, as well as seafood and some agricultural produce. North Korea imports textiles such as cotton and other staple fabrics, along with electronics products including computers and machinery.

South Korea’s outbound shipments to the North came to $84.36 million while its imports from the communist country amounted to $119.67 million. This marked the highest trade deficit for the South in 17 months at $35.31 million, the report said.

The surge came on the back of an economic turnaround in the South. Inter-Korean trade did not seem to be affected by ongoing political tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

During the first quarter of this year, two-way trade soared 64.3 percent from a year earlier to $526.72 million, it said.

Bilateral trade has increased steadily over the past decade from $328.65 million in 1999 to $651.68 million in 2002 and surpassing the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2005.

Inter-Korean trade reached $1.79 billion in 2007 and peaked at $1.82 billion the following year before falling slightly to $1.66 billion last year.

Read the full story here:
Inter-Korean trade nearly doubles to $200 mln in March
Yonhap
4/28/2010

According to Yonhap:

A North Korean remake of the Chinese opera A Dream of Red Mansions will premiere in Beijing next month, a Chinese-language daily reported Thursday.

The Hong Kong-based Takungpao said the staging of the Chinese classic of the same title, also known as “Hong Lou Meng,” by North Korea’s national Phibada (Sea of Blood) Opera Troupe will be staged in the Chinese capital city from next Thursday through Sunday.

A Dream of Red Mansions is a masterpiece of Chinese vernacular literature, written between 1749 and 1759. It is one of China’s Four Great Classical Novels.

The North Korean version of the opera reportedly debuted in the North last year as part of celebrations marking 60 years of diplomatic relations between the two allies.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il was reported to have been directly involved in updating the 1961 version created by his father and the regime’s founder, Kim Il-Sung. Former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders watched the original version of the North Korean performance, newspaper reports from that era show.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported last October the North Korean leader and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao watched the Chinese opera remade by North Korean artists at the Pyongyang Grand Theater, during the latter’s visit to North Korea. China’s Ministry of Culture donated costumes for North Korean artists involved in A Dream of Red Mansions.

The Takungpao report said more than 200 North Korean performers will visit Beijing for the staging of the opera, the largest foreign theatrical company to visit China in recent years.

The newspaper said that the leading and supporting actors are well-known stars in North Korea, most of them educated at the Pyongyang Kim Won Gyun Conservatory (Satellite image here), a higher educational institution for music named after a North Korean composer.

Kim Il-hwang, who stars as the protagonist Jia Baoyu, is the grandson of Kim Jong-hwa, who also played the protagonist in the 1961 version, according to Takungpao.

Read the full story here:
N. Korean version of classic Chinese opera to premiere in Beijing
Yonhap
Kim Young-gyo
4/29/2010

UPDATE:  According to the Associated Press (Via Washinton Post):

North Korea formally launched a medical videoconference network Tuesday aimed at giving smaller, rural hospitals access to specialists in the capital Pyongyang with the help of the World Health Organization.

WHO has been providing cameras, computers and other equipment to North Korea to help the reclusive, impoverished country connect a main hospital in Pyongyang with medical facilities in 10 provinces. The system is designed to allow doctors to talk to each other to provide additional services to rural patients.

On Tuesday, North Korean health officials and visiting WHO Director-General Margaret Chan held the formal inaugural ceremony for the system at the Kim Man Yu hospital in Pyongyang, according to footage from broadcaster APTN.

“This is an excellent vision because it meets the needs of the government,” Chan said.

Chan, clad in a white gown, later tested the system by talking with provincial doctors via video link.

One unidentified doctor at Jagang province, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Pyongyang, told Chan he is satisfied with the system because it’s too far for his patients to visit specialists in the capital.

She arrived in Pyongyang on Monday, becoming the U.N. agency’s first chief to visit the communist country since 2001.

…

WHO opened its office in Pyongyang in 2001 and has coordinated the purchase of medical equipment and supplies for North Koreans. The world’s health body says on its Web site that it is currently focusing on strengthening the North’s health infrastructure.

ORIGINAL POST: According to the Associated Press (via Taiwan News):

World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan arrived in North Korea on Monday on a rare visit to the isolated country.

The U.N. body has said Chan will spend two days in the reclusive communist country _ the first chief to go since 2001 _ to tour health facilities and meet the country’s health minister.

The WHO has not provided details of Chan’s itinerary, but the Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch that Chan arrived in Pyongyang on Monday.

The dispatch said the government held a reception for Chan, who arrived the same day as Red Cross and Red Crescent officials. It was not clear if the visits were connected.

The North faces chronic food shortages and has relied on outside assistance to feed much of its population since a famine believed to have killed as many as 2 million people in the 1990s.

Malnutrition, dysentery, and vitamin and iodine deficiency are believed to pose serious risks among children in the country, which also faces a shortfall of hospitals and lacks an efficient state health care system.

Read the full stories here:
WHO chief arrives in North Korea on rare visit
Associate Press (Taiwan Times)
4/26/2010

NKorea launches telemedicine network with WHO help
Associated Press (via Washinton Post)
Kim Hyung-Jin
4/27/2010

According to Yonhap:

South Korea denounced North Korea’s decision Friday to seize five South Korean facilities at a mountain resort on its soil and warned that Pyongyang will be held responsible for the deterioration of inter-Korean relations.

“It is an illegal and unreasonable measure that undermines the very foundation of the South-North relations,” a spokesman for South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in a statement after Pyongyang said it will seize the South Korean assets at Mount Kumgang.

“The North has proven itself to be an unfit partner for normal business and transactions,” it said.

North Korea also said other non-state South Korean assets at Mount Kumgang will be frozen, and that all employees from the South at the resort will be expelled. The measures were seen as aimed at pressuring Seoul to resume the suspended mountain tour program that had been a source of foreign currency for Pyongyang.

Seoul said it will take “strong measures” against the North. It did not elaborate.

“We cannot accept the (North’s) measures, as they are in violation of contracts between North Korea and our businesses, agreements between the governments and of international laws. It is an unjust step that undermines the very foundation of South-North relations,” a ministry official told reporters.

The North’s move came at the end of a two-day inspection by North Korean military officials of the mountain resort, where dozens of South Korean businesses and private investors own various facilities that are part of the suspended tourism program.

The five facilities to be seized include a family reunion center, funded and owned by Seoul’s National Red Cross, as well as a fire station and a duty free shop. They also include a cultural center and a hot spring resort, both owned by Seoul’s Korea Tourism Organization.

Pyongyang froze the assets, worth some 124 billion won (US$112 million), on April 13 after an on-site inspection by its officials late last month. The latest inspection ended Friday.

“First, we will confiscate all five assets of the South Korean authorities that have already been frozen in compensation for our loss due to the long suspension of the tour,” an unidentified spokesman for the General Guidance Bureau for the Development of Scenic Spots said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

The once lucrative tourism program for the impoverished North was suspended in July 2008 after a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean guard near a restricted area. Nearly 2 million South Koreans had visited the mountain resort since the tours began in 1998.

“The confiscated real estate will be put into the possession of the DPRK or handed over to new businessmen according to legal procedures,” the statement said, referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The North said early last month that it will restart the tourism program with a new business partner unless Seoul agreed to resume the tours before the end of April.

“The situation has reached such an extreme phase that it is at the crossroads of a war or peace, much less thinking of the resumption of the tour. It is quite natural that we can no longer show generosity and tolerance to the south side under this situation,” the statement said.

Friday’s measure also included freezing of all assets owned by over 30 South Korean businesses and private investors.

Hyundai Asan, the main South Korean developer of the joint mountain resort, urged the North to withdraw its decision and the governments of the two Koreas to resolve the issue through dialogue.

“The road to Mount Kumgang must not be severed as the tours greatly helped promote cooperation and reconciliation between the South and the North and peace on the Korean Peninsula,” the business group said in a statement.

“We also urge our government to actively seek a solution to the current situation, as the joint economic cooperation project of the South and the North, as well as properties of businesses that invested in Mount Kumgang, now sit on the verge of a breakdown,” the statement said.

Read the full story here:
Seoul denounces N. Korea’s seizure of assets at Mount Kumgang
Yonhap
4/23/2010
Byun Duk-kun

According to the Press Trust of India:

A Chinese tourist train entered North Korea for the first time today, carrying more than 400 passengers including a group of Finnish students, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.

The train embarked on the four-day tour from the Chinese province of Liaoning under a new arrangement with North Korea expected to attract tens of thousands of tourists, the agency reported from the provincial capital Shenyang.

The first train is mostly carrying tourists from China but also includes foreigners living in China, notably the Finns, resident in Guangzhou.

The tour comes amid heightened tensions between reclusive North Korea and South Korea, as Seoul has appeared increasingly suspicious that the North was behind the sinking of one of its naval ships last month.

It also follows reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il plans to visit China soon.

Read the full story here:
Chinese tourist train makes first North Korea tour
Press Trust of India
4/25/2010

Back in 2007 a German breeder of large rabbits expressed concern that some rabbits he sold to the DPRK had been eaten.  You can read about it here.

Well, the rabbit story is back.  According to Radio Free Asia:

The fate of dozens of giant rabbits sent to North Korean to start breeding a cheap source of protein for the famine-hit poor is still unknown, leading to speculation that they may already have been eaten by officials in the isolated Stalinist state.

“I am not aware of [exactly] what happened after we sent the rabbits,” said Jin Sook Lee, the director of the German charity, the German Overseas Korean Cooperation Association. “I don’t even know if they are being used to boost the food supply.”

She said the intended breeding program had run into difficulties once the German-bred outsize rabbits arrived in the isolated Stalinist state, where some sectors of the population still face malnutrition.

To ensure the successful expansion of the giant rabbit population, rabbit cross-breeding and species hybridization were needed, Lee said.

But many female rabbits failed to get pregnant, and of the rabbit kittens that were born, many were deformed, she added.

Boosting ‘rabbit-breeding’

Several charities have raised money to send giant rabbits to North Korea to boost the food supply, as the animals yield up to 10 kilos (22 lbs) of meat.

While the uber-bunnies normally breed as rapidly as their smaller cousins, the French humanitarian group Premier Urgence said it had send staff to North Korea to boost “rabbit breeding skills” among officials in charge of the farms.

The charity, which has received around U.S.$1.5 million in European Commission assistance funds for North Korea, said last November it planned to send a further 200 giant rabbits purchased in neighboring China to North Korea.

Chinese media have meanwhile reported comments made to the German magazine Der Spiegel by the original breeder of giant rabbits Karl Szmolinsky, who has had no information from North Korean officials since he sent 12 rabbits to boost the breeding farms in 2007.

“The only conclusion I can come to is that my rabbits made a nice meal for someone,” an online Chinese farmers’ news service quoted him as saying.

“I would really like to go over there and give them a hand.”

Premiere Urgence said in November that it had sent giant rabbits to seven farms in the country, including Ryongsung in Pyongyang, Youngtan in Northern Hwanghae province, Mikok, and Chungjong in Northern Pyongan province.

Livestock failures

Premiere Urgence said it planned to help the North Koreans improve giant rabbit reproductive rates by sending equipment and working on rabbit-farming skills.

The group said in November it had already dispatched three international staff members to Pyongyang, including a French and a Dutch national, while seven local staff members were already in the office, tasked with technical and clerical duties.

In an attempt to overcome severe food shortages, the North Korean authorities have already experimented with chicken, cow, and pig farming.

However, because of the decrepit state of North Korea’s facilities and the lack of technical skills, most attempts to raise livestock for food appear to have failed.

Director Lee said that sending giant rabbits from Europe was very expensive, costing about U.S. $100 per animal.

The first two rabbits to travel to North Korea paid a fare of U.S. $1,300, with vaccinations and veterinary fees on top of that.

She said her group had given up further plans to send giant rabbits to North Korea.

Experts also said the giant rabbits require more than one kilo (2.2 lbs) of carrots and potatoes daily, hard to come by in impoverished North Korea.

Szmolinsky, 67, of the eastern German town of Eberswalde near Berlin, was first approached by North Korean officials in 2006 after he won a prize for breeding Germany’s largest rabbit.

According to the United Nations, North Korea suffers widespread food shortages, and many people “struggle to feed themselves on a diet critically deficient in protein, fats, and micronutrients.”

Each of Szmolinsky’s rabbits produces around seven kilos (15 lbs) of meat, and under normal conditions should be able to produce 60 offspring a year.

Read the full story here:
Giant Rabbits’ Fate ‘Unknown’
Radio Free Asia
Noh Jung-min
4/19/2010

According to the Times of India:

Economic sanctions by the United States and other western countries is actually strengthening the Kim Jong-il’s regime, a German social worker involved with a non-government organization told reporters here this morning. Sanctions are also affecting life in other ways like the new-found emphasis on sustainable agriculture, she said.

“The leaders are using the sanctions as a justification. People believe the country is in a bad condition because of outside forces,” Karin Janz, country director in North Korea for the German NGO Welthungerhilfe, said while speaking at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Beijing. The official media justified its actions as efforts to fortify the nation against the onslaught of foreign forces, and the people fully believed it, she said.

The sanctions have hit the North Korean agriculture and caused fears of a worsening of the food situation, Karin said. “The North Korean agriculture is highly industrialized,” she said while explaining the country’s agriculture is heavily dependent on imported farm machines and chemical fertilizers. Most of these materials came from South Korea, which has now slammed the doors.

The government has suddenly realized the value of sustainable development and is asking agricultural cooperatives to change their focus. They are being asked to go for organic farming, grow composts and reduce their dependence on chemicals. It is a new policy on sustainable development by default, she said.

“It could be a good start in the direction of sustainable development. But it is a long way to rehabilitate the soil, which is badly damaged” she said.

The Internet is banned to ensure that local citizens do not communicate with the outside world. There is a limited form of Intranet for university students to chat among themselves. But if the ban on Internet were to be lifted, most North Koreans will use it to absorb new knowledge and grow the country with new technological inputs.

“I cannot imagine some kind of opposition rising because it is simply not possible,” she said while discussing the highly militarized nature of the society. The government controls every aspect of life in North Korea and ordinary people seem to be comfortable living in some kind of a “safety shell”, she said.

Patriotism runs high among the people and most have full faith in their leaders. The only sign of dissatisfaction Karin saw was in January when currency reforms hit a large number of people very badly. People who held old currency notes suddenly found they could not exchange them for the new Won notes the government introduced early this year.

Welthungerhilfe is one of the few foreign NGOs that are still operating in North Korea when most of the others have left either because of the challenges posed by government rules and the drying of financing from western sources. There are many Chinese NGOs but the local government does not allow they to communication with those from western countries.

In her five years travelling across nine provinces of North Korea, Karin has not come across a single case of starvation. The food situation is bad, but it is not as grave as the western media tended to show, she said. The government has also done a fairly good job of developing infrastructure and provide school education although the conditions are still a far cry from what prevails in the developed world, she said.

Here is the Welthungerlife North Korea web page (in German).  Here is the page in English (via Google Translate).

I cannot prove it, but I am willing to bet that Welthungerhilfe built these greenhouses near Kujang (via Kernbeisser).  These greenhouses are too new to be visible on Google Earth.

Read the full story here:
Economic sanctions strengthen North Korea’s dictatorship, says German NGO
The Times of India
Saibal Dasgupta
4/20/2010

Michael Rank

Over 30,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit Pyongyang this year, well above normal levels of around 20,000, and numbers are likely to increase further in future, the head of the Pyongyang-based Korean International Travel Company said recently.

In a rare instance of a North Korean official divulging meaningful statistics, Jo Seong-gyu 조성규 赵成奎 was quoted on a Chinese website as saying that in addition to the average 20,000 Chinese tourists who visit under national agreements, a further 20,000 Chinese visitors a year cross into North Korea as border tourists. He said these had been typical levels since a bilateral tourism agreement was signed in 1988. Although Chinese tourists typically number around 20,000 annually, there had been up to 50,000 in some years, as well as years when levels had dipped sharply, he added.

Jo was speaking to Chinese journalists visiting Pyongyang to mark a newly implemented bilateral tourism agreement. He did not say how many border tourists were expected this year, but several new local agreements have been signed recently, so that number is also likely to increase.

Jo said KITC had hired almost 90 Chinese-speaking guides to cope with the expected flood of Chinese tourists. Apart from the usual tourist sights of Pyongyang, the Myohyang mountains and Gaeseong, there are also plans for Chinese tourists to visit the Chinese Korean war cemetery in Hoechang 회창군 county (satellite image here), about 100 km east of the capital, where 134 “martyrs” of the Chinese People’s Volunteers are buried, including Mao Anying 毛岸英, son of Chinese leader Mao Zedong. The 90,000 square metre cemetery is the largest of dozens of such cemeteries in North Korea. Click here for photos of Premier Wen Jiabao visiting the cemetery last October.

Jo said Mt. Chilbo 칠보산 七宝山 on the Sino-Korean border will also be opened to Chinese tourists.

He said the increase in Chinese tourists visiting North Korea was due to a vogue for “red tourism”  – nostalgic tours to revolutionary sites which have become fashionable in China in recent years. These tend to appeal mainly to the older generation who remember the Maoist era, including perhaps the Korean war, and Chinese reports suggest that visitors to North Korea are often in their fifties and sixties.

Jo warned Chinese tourists to behave themselves, saying they should “respect Korean laws and regulations and moral standards and proceed from a standpoint of cherishing Korean-Chinese friendship, mutual understanding and tolerance.”

UPDATE 4: The DPRK has canceled its football team’s visit to Zimbabwe.  According to the Times Live of South Africa:

The North Korean squad had been due to arrive in Zimbabwe on Tuesday to train and play friendlies against local teams before moving onto South Africa, where the World Cup kicks off on June 11.

But a senior source in the power-sharing government of President Robert Mugabe and former opposition leader, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, said the visit was called off after it provoked outrage among supporters of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

UPDATE 3: Zimbabwe continues to put off  deliberation.  According to Voice of America:

Cabinet discussion of whether Zimbabwe should invite the North Korean soccer team to train in the country through the June-July World Cup period has been put off to next Tuesday as President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai are in Tanzania for the World Economic Forum, a ministerial source said.

Education, Sports and Culture Minister David Coltart told VOA Studio 7 reporter Gibbs Dube that the Cabinet will review the decision by the Zimbabwe World Cup 2010 Committee to invite the North Koreans.

“I presume that if the issue has to be discussed by Cabinet, it will be discussed on Tuesday and as far as I am concerned that team has not yet confirmed that it will be training in this country,” Coltart said.

Political commentator Samukele Hadebe said the North Korean team visit should be canceled to promote healing and reconciliation among Zimbabweans traumatized not only by political violence during the 2008 elections but by older episodes like the 1980s Gukurahundi purge of rival liberation activists in the Matabeleland region.

UPDATE 2: It is possible Zimbabwe could back out of the plan since they have yet to confirm a date. And according to the Guardian:

Zimbabwe’s sports minister, David Coltart, said the dates of the North Koreans’ visit were still to be confirmed. “It is important that the Zimbabwe government deals with this matter in a very sensitive way and does not ignore the history of North Korea here, and does not do anything that might inflame passions or reopen old wounds,” he said.

But he added: “I don’t think it is right to attack a group of young players for what happened 27 years ago in this country.”

Strangely…I met Coltart in Washington a few years ago. He was an MP representing Bulawayo at the time.

UPDATE 1: A Zimbabwe perspective:

Boycotting North Korea solves nothing
Tendai Huchu
4/21/2010

The people of Zimbabwe, more than any other nation in Africa, seem pathologically unable to come to terms with their past. As a nation we share the same psychological symptoms of people who have suffered abuse as children.

At the moment there are calls by some for the people of Matebeleland to boycott the visit by North Korea’s football team on May 25 for warm up matches before the World Cup. They site the Gukurahundi massacres in the mid 1980’s as the reason the North Koreans should be boycotted. These people forget that aggressive attempts to court teams like Brazil to Zimbabwe were rebuffed because of our current circumstances. A lot of countries want nothing to do with us but the North Koreans have agreed to come. They could have gone directly to South Africa like everyone else and found facilities there far superior to anything we can offer.

That the Gukurahundi atrocities were a great tragedy in the history of our nation is beyond debate. This is still an issue we have yet to come to terms with, but exactly how boycotting a team we have invited can help redress our past is difficult to understand. North Korea like Zimbabwe is an undemocratic state. These footballers have no influence whatsoever on their government’s policies, especially those from twenty years ago. The majority of them would have been toddlers or not even born when we were slaughtering each other in the 80s. It is absurd to punish these players for something that they had nothing to do with whatsoever. We are quick to protest when New Zealand and England boycott our cricket team because of their differences with the Mugabe government, yet here we are proposing to do the exact same thing to the North Koreans.

The Observer newspaper in the UK quoted Bulawayo-based activist Effie Ncube saying that the invitation is a “profound insult” because of North Korea’s role in training the Fifth Brigade. This is a typical Zimbabwean attitude of blaming everyone else except ourselves for things that have gone wrong.

The North Koreans are a people we should sympathize with. There are too many similarities between them and us to mention. Like us they depend on handouts from the international community or else they would starve. We, better than most other nations, know what it is like to be isolated from the rest of the world. We know what it is like to live under a government which has no regard for its citizen’s rights and opinions. This is an opportunity to show solidarity to a people who have many similar problems to our own.

We can continue to be a bitter and angry people who constantly look back at the past, not taking responsibility for our actions and blaming everyone else for the things we have done to one another or we can move on. The North Koreans are not our enemy, they have never been. Sport is supposed to bring people together, not to divide them. There is nothing that can be gained by protesting against the North Korean football team for something they had absolutely no involvement in. They deserve to be shown our true Zimbabwean hospitality. We can only pray that the future of both our nations is going to be better than the past we are leaving behind.

ORIGINAL POST: According to Times Live of South Africa:

Zimbabwe’s tourism minister has appealed to activists in the western provinces of Bulawayo to drop plans to protest against the North Korean football team’s scheduled camp in the country during the World Cup.

The presence of the team from the dictatorship of President Kim Jong Il has stirred up strong emotions over the massacre in the early 80s of an estimated 20,000 civilians of the Ndebele speaking people of western Zimbabwe, carried out by soldiers of the Zimbabwe army’s notorious Fifth Brigade who were trained by North Korean instructors.

Groups have threatened to carry out protests against the team in the western city of Bulawayo and in South Africa where over a million Zimbabwean exiles from President Robert Mugabe’s rule now live.

“We are totally against bringing the team to Zimbabwe,” said Methuseli Moyo, spokesman for the Zimbabwe African People’s Union party. “Having a team flying the North Korean flag is very provocative.” The team is due in Harare on May 25 and is set to play friendly matches against the Zimbabwe national team in the capital and in Bulawayo, but activists have warned they would make Bulawayo’s Barbourfields stadium a centre of resistance against the North Koreans.

Tourism minister Walter Mzembi was quoted Sunday in the weekly Standard newspaper as appealing to the groups not to mix politics with sport and to allow national healing to take place.

“Sport must remain the bridge for people-to-people contact, probably the only bridge that has remained standing even when nation states are in a state of fall-out,” he said.

“I wouldn’t want to make this a political issue. It’s purely a sports issue.” He said he had extended invitations to the major teams in the World Cup, including Brazil, England and the United States, but North Korea was the only team that had responded.

The North Korean [5th Brigate] instructors were brought to Zimbabwe in 1983 at the request President Robert Mugabe to form a new brigade of the army, composed exclusively of Shona-speaking veterans of Mugabe’s civil war guerrilla army, to put down a limited insurgency against Mugabe’s rule by Ndebele-based guerrilla veterans.

The Fifth Brigade troops immediately developed a reputation for savage brutality, butchering children and pregnant women to deny the guerrillas support among the population of rural areas where they operated.

Military experts say that the Fifth Brigade’s methods were starkly different from the rest of the country’s largely British-trained army.

Mugabe, held responsible for the massacres, has only referred to the murderous period in the country’s history as a moment of madness. Demands for acknowledgment of the brutality are rising round the country, but two weeks ago police forcibly closed down an art exhibition portraying the suffering of the period, and arrested the artist.

Additional information: 
1. Here is a satellite image of Barbourfields stadium.  (I visited Bulawayo in 1996 and it was a lovely town at the time).

2. Last I read North Korean laborers were building football stadiums in South Africa for the World Cup.  This was in dispute and I do not know whether it has been confirmed or disproven.

3. North Korean laborers built Zimbabwe’s Heroe’s Acre.  Here is a satellite image of it.

4. And just for fun, here is a satellite image of Robert Mugabe’s retirement palace.  If you view the location in Google Earth, you can scroll through historical imagery to see this and neighboring houses under construction.