North Korean Economy Watch

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

This summer and fall has seen a somewhat contradictory stream of information about the North Korean food situation. First there were the drought warnings, which were closely followed by regime sources claiming that harvests were actually getting better thanks to agricultural reforms. During the fall, however, the picture painted by multilateral institutions like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) has been one of dire and continued problems.

In early October, the FAO said that North Korea’s staple food production could go down by 14 percent during the year compared to last year, as AFP reported:

North Korea’s staple food production could plummet by 14 percent this year because of bad weather, sparking fears of exacerbating chronic food shortages in the impoverished nation, according to the UN agricultural agency.

The gloomy forecast from the Food and Agriculture Organization comes as the reclusive communist country prepares for a lavish military parade Saturday to mark the 70th anniversary of the ruling Workers’ Party.

The North is expected to produce 3.7 million tonnes of rice and corn this year, down from 4.3 million tonnes last year, according to a report from the FAO early warning system.

Pyongyang plans to import 500,000 tonnes of rice and corn from abroad, the FAO said, but it will not be enough to feed its 25 million people.

The country, plagued by regular droughts, will face a total shortfall of 1.2 million tonnes of its staples.

State media reported in early June the country’s main rice-growing areas had been badly hit by the “worst drought in 100 years”.

North Korea saw significant rainfall later, but analysts said the prospects for this year were still grim.

Full story here:
North Korea food production could drop 14%: FAO 
Yahoo News/AFP
10-9-2015

Later last month, the FAO reiterated its concerns over North Korea in its yearly report on the state of agriculture in the world. Voice of America:

More than 26 percent of children in North Korea’s countryside are underweight, a U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report says.

The agency, in its recently released “State of Food and Agriculture 2015” report, also estimated that there are twice as many undernourished children in the communist country’s rural areas as in its cities.

Andre Croppenstedt, an FAO researcher who wrote the report, told VOA that “it’s normal to have a much higher percentage of children underweight in rural areas as opposed to urban areas,” but that the gap “is perhaps a little larger than usual” in North Korea.

The North Korean ratio is the 24th highest among the 123 low-income developing countries. Among East Asian countries, North Korea’s ratio ranked fifth, after East Timor, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea and Laos.

Read the full story here:
FAO: 1 in 4 Rural North Korean Children Underweight
Kim Hyunjin
Voice of America
10-22-2015

And last month, WFP announced it was extending its aid to North Korea over next year due to expected food shortages. Voice of America again:

The United Nations’ food agency plans to extend aid to North Korea amid reports that the communist country is facing food shortages next year.

Damian Kean, a regional spokesperson for the World Food Program (WFP), told VOA this week the agency plans to extend the current food aid program for another six months.

“This current program cycle is supposed to be finished this December. What we decided to do is to extend the program until the middle of next year,” said Kean.

He added that the agency needs an additional $23.3 million to fund the extension.

The WFP is conducting an assessment of the nutritional status of North Koreans to determine if further assistance is needed after June of next year, Kean said.

The agency launched a two-year food aid program in July 2013, and it had already extended the program through the end of this year.

According to Kean, the food shortages are affecting the most vulnerable groups, including young children and pregnant women.  More than 30 percent of North Korean children under five are experiencing stunted growth because of malnutrition, and more than a third of pregnant women and breastfeeding women are suffering from anemia.

Full story here:
UN to extend aid to North Korea
Kim Hyunjin
Voice of America
11-03-2015

This all suggests, as one might have expected, that North Korean claims of successful agricultural reforms may not have been the whole truth. At the very minimum, had such reforms had a strong and positive impact, harvests shouldn’t be declining compared with last year. Or harvests could just be stronger than what they would have been after the drought absent economic reforms. In any case, North Korean claims of a growing harvest do not seem to have held out.

UPDATE 10-10-2015:

Marcus Noland at the Peterson Institute’s Witness to Transformation Blog offers an interesting theory on these numbers: they aren’t that bad when compared with output over the last decade.

Last week Yonhap ran a story titled “N.K. may suffer severe food shortage next year: S. Korean expert” in which Kwon Tae-jin, formerly of the Korea Rural Economics Institute and now at the GS&J Institute, argued that North Korea may be facing its greatest food shortage of the Kim Jong Un era. Numerous articles, citing reports from the UN system, have highlighted high rates of malnutrition, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children.

The problem is that while the situation appears to be deteriorating relative to last year, as shown in the chart above, the FAO forecast of actual food availability per capita for 2015-16 actually represents a slight improvement over conditions for most of this decade.

Detailed data from the FAO displayed in the table below confirm that while production is forecasted to decline for coarse grains, maize, and rice, only in the case of rice is output forecasted to be below the 2011-13 average, and in this case, increased imports are expected to offset most of the shortfall.

Full story here:
Is North Korean food insecurity being hyped? 
Marcus Noland
Witness to Transformation
10-10-2015

What I wonder still is what this says about the progress of reforms, even if the figures aren’t particularly alarming. Also, the trend has been an increase in harvest figures over the past few years. So even if these figures aren’t particularly out of range, they still go against a trend of growth.

UPDATE (11-27-2015): Daily NK interviews one person in the country who says that this year saw a bumper harvest despite weather conditions, but not thanks to state reforms. The article says it’s not thanks to increases in collective farm harvests that things are going better, but because those tending individual plots have found better farming methods:

However, the number of people working hard to ensure the success of the rice harvests on collective farms is dropping. This is in large part due to the fact that despite reassurances from the state that farmers will receive sizable allocations of the harvest for their own use, for the past several years this has not been the case.

After “repeated failures by the authorities to fulfill stated promises,” he asserted, farmers have concluded that it makes no difference to them personally whether the collective farms do well or not.

Read the full article:
Despite Mother Nature, a bumper year for rice harvest
Lee Sang Yong
DailyNK
11-26-2015

According to Yonhap:

The number of South Koreans visiting North Korea has shot up since the two Koreas reached a deal in August to spur inter-Korean civilian exchanges, government data showed Monday.

The number of South Koreans who traveled to the North reached 418 in the January-September period, excluding those who moved in and out of the joint industrial park in the North’s border city of Kaesong, according to the data by the Unification Ministry.

But in October alone, the number of such people came in at 880 as the two Koreas held several joint events such as an inter-Korean project to excavate the ancient palace site and a workers’ football friendly.

The October tally did not include the South Koreans who crossed the border for the reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, held on Oct. 20-26.

The increase in such exchanges is due to the two Koreas reaching a landmark deal on Aug. 25 to defuse military tension.

The value of humanitarian assistance to North Korea has also increased, according to the ministry.

In April, the government gave approval to Ace Gyeongam, a foundation run by bed maker Ace, to send fertilizer to North Korea for the first time since 2010, when Seoul imposed sanctions on the North over a deadly warship sinking that year.

Ace Gyeongam also provided a small amount of fertilizer and other assistance needed for a greenhouse project in North Korea last month.

South and North Korea saw more vibrant civilian exchanges, but there has been no progress over high-level talks as the North has not responded to South Korea’s proposal to have preparatory contact for such inter-Korean dialogue.

Read the full story here:
Civilian inter-Korean exchanges on the rise: data
Yonhap
2015-11-9

Stephan Haggard posted some charts of DPRK-China trade taken from KOTRA:

The National Committee on North Korea (NCNA) has published a quick summary piece on sanctions legislation under deliberation in the US Congress. According to NCNK’s web page:

There are currently three related North Korea sanctions bills under consideration in Congress. H.R. 757, introduced to the House by Rep. Ed Royce in February 2015, is broadly similar to a bill that passed the House in the last session of Congress, but wasn’t acted upon by the Senate. In the Senate, S. 1747 was introduced by Senators Robert Menendez and Lindsay Graham in July of this year. Additionally, Senators Cory Gardner, Marco Rubio, and James Risch are co-sponsors of the recently-introduced bill S. 2144.

Although the three sanctions bills are generally similar in scope, there are several key differences among them, including their potential impact on humanitarian operations; the level of discretion the Executive Branch would have in applying sanctions; and language on sanctions targeting North Korea’s mineral industry.

NCNK’s new Issue Brief gives a detailed side-by-side summary of these three bills, noting key provisions and differences between the three.

You can download the Issue Brief here (PDF).

According to the Siberian Times:

SWAT team ambush illegal cargo at night in open seas off coast of the Democratic People’s Republic.

The high-quality jade from the Republic of Buryatia was being exported to China without export documents. Its value was put at 50 million roubles or $800,000. Customs spokeswoman Tatiana Shichanina said: ‘We had a tip off that the smuggling was planned and decided to arrange ambush.’

The operation was led from customs vessel ‘Petr Matveev’. Officers seized ten sacks of jade. The crew were detained and taken to Vladivostok.

In China, this mineral is considered a ‘sacred rock’ and it can command a higher price than gold. The value of the ornamental rock in China encourages criminal gangs to collect and smuggle it.

Read the full story here:
Customs seize 3 tons of Siberian jade being smuggled by sea to North Korea en route to China
Siberian Times
2015-10-23

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Twenty North Korean officials have defected to South Korea so far this year, the National Intelligence Service told a National Assembly audit Tuesday.

They were mostly diplomats but also include a high-ranking officer from the powerful Army politburo.

NIS chief Lee Byung-ho told lawmakers the number of North Korean officials defecting from overseas is steadily increasing. Lee added that all 20 who defected this year now live in South Korea.

Although they rank lower than the late Hwang Jang-yop, a senior Workers Party secretary, some are from the elite class, Lee said.

A North Korea source said the Army politburo member defected in April, when he was sent to Beijing for a trading company operated by the politburo.

The Army politburo is in charge of monitoring the activities of all North Korean soldiers and is considered a central part of leader Kim Jong-un regime. Its leader, Hwang Pyong-so, is the second-most powerful man in the state.

Early this year, a mid-level diplomat based at the Hong Kong office of Room 39, the Workers Party office that handles Kim’s slush funds, defected with his family.

Presumably these individuals did not go to Hanawon so their numbers will need to be added to the official numbers released by the Ministry of Unification.

Read the full story here:
20 N.Korean Officials Defected to S.Korea This Year
Choson Ilbo
2015-10-21

Below are charts published by KOTRA of North Korea – China trade.

Here is the source.

According to UPI:

North Koreans, 186 in total, have resettled in the United States since 2006, two years after the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 was signed into law by President George W. Bush. Radio Free Asia reported on Monday the refugees now live in 18 states, and 26 of the 186 settled in Kentucky.

Next, California is home to 25 recent arrivals, followed by New York at 19, Colorado, 17, with Arizona, Virginia, each home to 15 new North Korean defectors. The remaining population is divided among Washington, Idaho, Texas, Indiana, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Maryland and Massachusetts, each state home to less than 10 North Koreans. In 2014, the United States granted asylum to 15 North Koreans, and five resettled in California and three in Utah. Others have taken up residence in Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky and Georgia.

Read the full story here:
More North Korean refugees in the U.S. calling the ‘Bluegrass State’ home
UPI
Elizabeth Shim
2015-10-13

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)

The Kaesong Industrial Complex has reached 3 billion USD (3.5 trillion won) in cumulative output since it started operation 11 years ago. According to the Ministry of Unification, between 2005 (when operation went into full swing) and July 2015, the complex’s total output reached 2,996,160 USD.

This year the Kaesong complex recorded a total of 320 million USD in output through July, an average of 46 million USD each month. This guarantees that cumulative production surpassed 3 billion USD sometime in August.

The annual output of the Kaesong Industrial Complex started at 14.9 million USD in 2005 and reached 180 million USD in 2007, exceeding 100 million USD for the first time.

Except for 2013 (when operations were suspended for about five months), output has grown rapidly each year since 2007, shooting up to 470 million USD last year.

While it took the complex five years to reach 1 billion USD in cumulative output, it took only three additional years to surpass 2 billion USD by 2013, and just two more years to exceed 3 billion USD.

If the complex can maintain a similar rate of output in the second half of this year as in the first half (it produced 278 million dollars-worth in the first half), this year it will surpass an annual output of 500 million USD for the first time.

Even between March and May of this year, when tensions were heightened due to North Korea’s demands for a unilateral minimum wage increase, production was up 10-20 percent over the previous year. Thus, the Kaesong Industrial Complex has maintained a stable growth rate.

The number of resident companies at the complex has also increased significantly. While in 2005 only 18 companies did business at the complex, currently there are 124. Furthermore, the number of North Korean workers at the complex has risen nine-fold, from 6,000 at the beginning of its operation to approximately 54,000 at present.

Looking at the Kaesong complex companies by industry, textile companies account for over half of companies at 58 percent; machinery metal companies account for 19 percent; electronics companies, 11 percent; and chemicals companies, 7 percent.

The cumulative number of people who have visited the Kaesong Industrial Complex reached 1,100,000 this August, while 723,000 vehicles have visited the complex.

UPDATE 3 (2015-10-22): According to Yonhap (via the Korea Herald):

 North Korea and China signed preliminary trade deals worth $1.6 billion at their annual trade fair, a roughly 10 percent gain compared to deals signed at last year’s exhibition, according to a Chinese official on Thursday.

North Korea and China have jointly held the trade fair in October since 2012 in the Chinese border city of Dandong, and this year’s four-day fair ended on Sunday. Last year, the two nations inked trade deals worth $1.36 billion.

Pan Shuang, deputy mayor of Dandong, told the International Business Daily newspaper that about 100 North Korean business entities attended the North Korea-China Economic, Trade, Culture and Tourism Expo.

The number of North Korean business entities attending this year was similar to last year, but Pyongyang sent trade officials and diplomats to this year’s exhibition, Pan said.

At this year’s fair, North Korea and China also agreed to launch new tour routes linking the North’s border town of Sinuiju and Dandong, Pan said.

North Korea and China “further solidified their trade bridge through a wide range of exchange and cooperation” during the trade fair, Pan said.

China is North Korea’s economic lifeline and diplomatic backer, although their political ties remain strained over the North’s defiant pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Political relations between North Korea and China showed signs of a thaw after Liu Yunshan, the Chinese Communist Party’s fifth-ranked official, held talks with North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong-un earlier this month in Pyongyang.

UPDATE 2 (2015-10-11): According to Xinhua:

A 400-strong delegation from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will attend the fourth China-DPRK expo scheduled next week, said organizers.

The China-DPRK Economic, Trade, Cultural and Tourism Expo will be held from Oct. 15 to 18 in northeast China’s Dandong City, with more than 100 exhibition booths for DPRK companies.

China and the DPRK will also discuss the launch of new tourism projects to DPRK during the expo, according to organizers.

Firms from Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt as well as Hong Kong and Taiwan regions will seek business opportunities at the expo.

Dandong is a key hub for trade, investment and tourism between China and the DPRK. There are more than 600 border trade enterprises in the city, and trade with the DPRK accounts for 40 percent of the city’s total trade turnover.

The Guomenwan trade zone in Dandong is expected to open soon to boost bilateral economic cooperation.

UPDATE 1 (2015-10-2): Yonhap reports on the expo:

North Korea and China will launch a joint trade fair on Oct. 15, with some 400 Chinese companies expected to attend the annual exhibition, according to Chinese media on Friday.

North Korea and China have jointly held the annual trade fair in October since 2012, but the number of North Korean business entities attending the event last year was about 30 percent less than 2013.

About 100 North Korean business entities will take part in the four-day trade fair, which will be held in the Chinese border city of Dandong, according to Chinese media reports.

Besides North Korea and China, companies from Hong Kong, Vietnam, Mongolia and Thailand will join this month’s North Korea-China Economic, Trade, Culture and Tourism Expo.

In the latest sign that Pyongyang and Beijing are trying to increase economic cooperation despite strained political ties, North Korea and China will launch a border trade zone in Dandong on Oct. 15 when the trade fair opens.

The Guomenwan trade zone in Dandong, where more than 70 percent of bilateral trade between the two nations is conducted, would cost a total investment of 1 billion yuan (US$157 million), state-run Xinhua news agency reported in August.

ORIGINAL POST (2015-7-12): Adam Cathcart informs us that the fourth China-DPRK Economic, Trade, Culture and Tourism Expo will be held this year. Info on the first, second, and third expos here.

Here is the website for the event (in Chinese).

According to Cathcart:

The going-forward of the 2015 fair was announced in Dandong at a hotel by the city’s vice-mayor; no North Koreans were listed as attending. Nor were any DPRK officials in attendance[.]