North Korean Economy Watch

According to Yonhap:

The U.N. development agency plans to restart its operations in North Korea in February after a two-year hiatus, a U.S. radio station reported Saturday.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesman at the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), told Voice of America that the remodeling of its Pyongyang office was completed in September and works are underway to install furniture and other equipment as well as to connect the Internet.

The office will become “fully operational” by the end of February, he said.

Currently, Jerome Sauvage, head of the UNDP’s Pyongyang office, and two other foreign staffers stay there, with two others due to arrive in Pyongyang in February, according to the spokesman. The UNDP has already recruited 13 North Korean employees, he added.

The UNDP launched development projects in the North in 1981 — including agricultural development, human resource development and economic reform programs. But it withdrew from Pyongyang in early 2007 after suspicions arose over the reclusive communist regime’s misappropriation of development funds.

On her visit to Seoul last month, UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said that her agency will reopen the office “with a small program — around $2.5 million a year and a very small number of employees.”

The UNDP, meanwhile, shut down its office in Seoul earlier this month as South Korea has transformed itself from a recipient of international assistance to donor.

Read the full article here:
UNDP to resume operations in N. Korea in February
Yonhap
12/26/2009

According to the US Treasury Department’s Press Release (h/t One Free Korea):

FinCEN Updated Advisory:
North Korea Government Agencies’ and Front Companies’ Involvement in
Illicit Financial Activities

VIENNA, Va. – The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today added an additional North Korean bank to its June 18 guidance to financial institutions regarding the involvement by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“North Korea”) government agencies and front companies in illicit activities. Based on new publicly available information, Kumgang Bank has been added to the list of North Korean banks. This update amends the FinCEN issuance of FIN-2009-A002, on June 18, 2009.

As further described in the guidance, the U.N. Security Council has called for enhanced monitoring of financial transactions, to prevent the financing of North Korea’s nuclear, ballistic missile, and other weapons of mass destruction (“WMD”)-related programs or activities. The Security Council’s action, combined with the potential that North Korea will attempt to evade these financial measures, illustrates the increased risk that North Korea and North Korean entities, as well as individuals acting on their behalf, pose to the international financial system and financial institutions worldwide.

FIN-2009-A002 can be read here.

Links to previous posts on sanctioned DPRK organizations (US and UN) can be found here.

UPDATE:  Culture clash when North Koreans want to talk business and US general has other ideas
By Michael Rank

It was a clash of cultures, an accident waiting to happen, when the four-star United States general and his entourage of American business leaders came to Pyongyang to discuss security issues and the North Koreans wanted to talk business.

The North Koreans had assumed the general and his colleagues wanted to talk about investing in their isolated country, and were dumbfounded to discover that was one thing the visitors had absolutely no intention of discussing.

It wasn’t entirely the North Koreans’ fault – retired Air Force General Charles “Chuck” Boyd and his pals were from a high-powered Washington-based think tank called Business Executives for National Security (BENS), so business is definitely part of their brief – but not when it comes to North Korea.

The North Korean ministers whom Boyd met made no attempt to hide their shock when they discovered that the visitors had not come with thoughts of investing a handful of dollars at least in their country, even if it is under international sanctions, and that they were there to discuss the nuclear issue instead.

“I think they had a little bit of a misunderstanding about the nature of our objective, ” Boyd told North Korean Economy Watch in a telephone interview.

“I think they believed that we came with business leaders who were interested in investing in North Korea, and of course that we had to make that clear to them right from the outset that nobody [in the BENS delegation] had any intention whatsoever of making any investments in North Korea and in fact could not” due to international sanctions.

“They were not particularly pleased to hear that. They wanted to talk about investments, they didn’t want to talk about the linkage of those investments to a resolution of the nuclear issue,” said Boyd, who has been president and chief executive officer of BENS since 2002 and steps down at the end of the year.

“There were some tense moments as we worked our way through that, but i think there was clarity in everybody’s minds when we left” that the group had come not to discuss investment but “in a larger context of trying to talk about the benefits of leaving their isolation and entering into the globalised world.”

Boyd said the tone of the conversations he held with North Korean officials “varied a bit…some were softer in their argumentation, some were harsher. I suppose the tone of the meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs [Pak Ui-chun] was really quite warm.”

Kim Yong-nam, president of the Supreme People’s Assembly, told him how threatened North Korea felt by its neighbours. “To the extent that I could I think I tried to relieve him of some of his anxiety about the external threats to the country,” Boyd said. He told Kim that the division of the Korean peninsula was the fault of the Soviet Union, not the United States, and he hoped a Russian would attend their next meeting in order to underline this fact. “I think  at the end of it we parted on pretty good terms,” Boyd said of his meeting with Kim, who is often reckoned to rank number two in the North Korean hierarchy after Kim Jung Il.

The delegation also included Ross Perot Jr, chairman of the board, Perot Systems Corp, Maurice Greenberg, chairman and CEO, C.V. Starr & Co, Inc, and Boyd’s wife Dr Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Boyd said BENS had tried to arrange a visit to North Korea for several years,  and after being rebuffed numerous times “almost out of the blue they contacted us and issued an invitation.”

He acknowledged that his visit last week had not achieved any meeting of minds between the US and North Korea, but noted: “Progress comes about in tiny little steps from a broad front, and it may be that we had some tiny bit of influence. And if we didn’t is the world worse off for having gone there? I don’t think so.”

The North Koreans were “certainly left with [an impression of] the firmness with which the private sector is in support of the need for resolving the nuclear issue,” he added.

Boyd was a combat pilot in Vietnam and survived 2,488 days as a prisoner of war. He is the only POW from the Vietnam war to become a four-star general. He will be succeeded at BENS from January 1 by former US Army General Montgomery C. Meigs.

The official North Korean news agency KCNA, which rarely lets the facts get in the way of a good story, reported that the BENS group “had an exhaustive discussion with officials in the economic field of the DPRK on the issues arising in creating environment for investment.”

See group photo here.

ORIGINAL POST: According to Yonhap:

The six-member delegation from the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), led by Peter Agre, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, had traveled to Pyongyang on a mission to explore future opportunities for collaborative research activities in various fields.

The U.S. team “left here for home by air on Tuesday after discussing the matter of cooperation and exchange in the field of scientific research,” the Korean Central News Agency said. It gave no further information.

Agre, director of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute and president of the AAAS, said earlier that his delegation would meet with scientists, university and science policy officials in the North. He also planned to give a lecture for North Korean officials and students at the Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang.

While in Pongyang Agre suppsedly gave a lecture at Kimchaek University of Technology.  According to Yonhap:

The broadcast aired by the non-profit corporation said Agre and other U.S. scientists will visit the Kimchaek University of Technology to give his lecture and hold talks with representatives from North Korean academia to discuss ways to advance bilateral scientific cooperation

Agre is a medical doctor and molecular biologist who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of aquaporins. He is currently the chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Also in the Yonhap story:

Another U.S. delegation visiting North Korea, consisting of businessmen, met with the North’s Vice Premier Ro Tu-chol on Tuesday, state media said in a one-sentence dispatch. The team from the Business Executives for National Security (BENS), a non-partisan Washington-based organization led by Charles Boyd, a retired U.S. Air Force four-star general, arrived in Pyongyang a day earlier.

Michael Rank contacted BENS and received the following statement:

Regarding the North Korea trip: Following initial contact several years ago, the North Korean government recently invited a small group from Business Executives for National Security (BENS) to visit North Korea.  BENS is a not-for-profit group of business executives with an interest in national security and foreign policy issues.  BENS is not a trade organization.

The group hopes to learn first-hand the views of government officials in North Korea.  The trip is solely for educational purposes and was coordinated with appropriate U.S. government agencies.  The traveling party is now in North Korea.  The travelers are: BENS President and Chief Executives Charles Boyd, Maurice Greenberg (Chairman and CEO, C.V. Starr & Co., Inc.) Corinne Greenberg, Ross Perot Jr. (Chairman of the Board, Perot Systems Corp.) Mark Newman (Chairman and CEO, DRS Technologies, Inc.), BENS Board Chairman Joe Robert and Dr. Jessica Mathews.  Greenberg, Perot, and Newman are also board members of BENS.  Ms. Mathews is President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Charles Boyd’s wife.  Reggie Gibbs, a BENS staff member is accompanying the group.  Further details about the trip will be available when the group returns next week.

UPDATE 1: According to the Joong Ang Daily:

[Stuart Thorson, professor of political science and international relations at Syracuse University] spent five days in the North Korean capital, meeting with faculty members at the Kim Chaek University of Technology and the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, and officials from the State Academy of Sciences. Kim Chaek University is the school that has maintained cooperation with Syracuse since 2001. The delegation included Peter C. Agre, the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. […]

Thorson said the Americans talked with North Korean scientists on issues such as developing young scientists and bringing more women into the field. The faculty at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology gave presentations on their research work. “We were quite impressed by it, especially since the level of their physical equipment is below what we have [in South Korea] and in the United States,” Thorson said.

The faculty “responded very well” to the Americans’ presence, he said.

“We were all delighted to have the young scientists [in North Korea] talking with us about their research,” he said. “A lot of [science] has been just kind of old people talking to old people about what they’d like to have happened. There were actually young people talking about what they’re really doing.”

The unlikely science partnership between the United States and North Korea dates back to 2001. With the help of Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea serving then as head of Korea Society, Syracuse University contacted the North Korean mission to the United Nations in New York. Often called the “New York channel,” the North Korean UN mission links the United States and North Korea.

Thorson said his previous experience in dealing with China helped him get started with North Korea.

“I had worked on a similar collaboration with China in the 1990s, so we were comfortable working with countries whose political system was very different than our own,” the professor said.

Thorson added that in working with China, he learned that science and technology are “very much based on shared protocols.”

“That helps us build trust,” he said. “As we share things in common, then I think we can begin to talk about other things sometimes, or perhaps even more importantly, people who talk to us can learn and begin to be more comfortable.

“This is especially important, in my view, to political science regarding North Korea and the United States, where in both countries, the other has been demonized and viewed as something other than a real place with real people,” Thorson added.

Syracuse found its partner in the Kim Chaek University of Technology. They’ve since cooperated in building a digital library at Kim Chaek in 2006, and Syracuse has helped North Korean students at the International Collegiate Programming Contest, run by the Association for Computing Machinery.

Their partnership led to the founding of the U.S.-DPRK [North Korea] Scientific Engagement Consortium in 2007. It’s made up of the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Syracuse University and the Korea Society.

Thorson pointed to the digital library as an example of a positive outcome for the U.S.-North Korea science exchange. When the New York Philharmonic visited Pyongyang in 2008, some accompanying journalists went to the library and even accessed their Facebook pages from computers there.

Though Thorson realizes U.S.-North Korea relations do have an impact on science exchanges, he also thinks the worse the situation, the more such non-traditional diplomacy becomes necessary.

“My impression is that as relations get worse between the two countries, both countries realize that these informal channels are all the more important,” Thorson said. “It’s all the more reason to keep at science diplomacy with North Korea. The more difficult the problem, the more effort it takes to try to resolve that.

“If it were easy, it wouldn’t be much fun,” he said. “It’s frustrating sometimes. It’s also rewarding.”

UPDATE 2: According to the Joong Ang Daily:

The Business Executives for National Security (BENS) is an American nonprofit organization established in 1982 by American entrepreneurs whose top concern is national security. Eight BENS members recently visited North Korea, led by the organization’s current president, former Air Force Gen. Charles G. Boyd. The U.S. delegation included AIG’s former CEO Maurice Greenberg, Chairman of DRS Technologies Mark Newman and Chairman of the Board of Perot Systems Henry Ross Perot, Jr.

They are said to have visited the North at the invitation of North Korean authorities, which have been in contact with BENS for several years. It is likely a coincidence that they visited Pyongyang after U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Stephen Bosworth’s visit to the North two weeks ago.

Nevertheless, we are paying special attention to their behavior because BENS helped abolish nuclear weapons in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, the U.S. removed more than 7,000 nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. In return, the CIS countries were promised safety, economic incentives and incorporation into Western society, in accordance with the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (CRT) in 1991.

Companies under the control of BENS were responsible for removing and destroying the weapons and other nuclear materials, after securing a commercial contract with the U.S. government.

The resumption of the six-party talks is still clouded with difficulties, but if North Korea decides to give up its nuclear weapons, there is a high possibility that the U.S. companies will spearhead their removal.

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No.09-12-9-1
12/9/2009

Aid to North Korea and investment into inter-Korean cooperative projects by the South Korean government appears to be hitting a record low in 2009, dropping to a level not seen since the year 2000.

According to the South Korean Unification Ministry, between January and the end of November of this year (2009), the government dispensed a mere 6.1 percent of the nearly 1.12 trillion won allocated. Just over 68.3 billion won were spent on cooperative projects between North and South Korea. This is considerably less than last year, when only 18.1 percent (only 231.2 billion won of an allocated 1.275 trillion won) was put to use.

In each year since 2000, the South Korean government has failed to spend all funds set aside for inter-Korean cooperation. In 2000, 81 percent of funds were distributed, while in 2001 that fell off to 56.1 percent, and then in 2002 dropped to 50 percent. In 2003, this bounced up to 92.5 percent, then fell to 65.9 percent in 2004, rose to 82.9 percent in 2005, dropped back to 37 percent the next year, and jumped back to 82.2 percent in 2007. Looking at how the disbursed funds were spent, one can see that humanitarian aid was especially reduced.

Following the North’s nuclear test, rice, fertilizer and other government aid was suspended, while indirect assistance from private-sector organizations was also reduced. This led the government to spend only 0.9 percent (from January through November) of the 811.3 billion won set aside for humanitarian aid in 2009.

Despite the fact that the South Korean government has spent such a small portion of the inter-Korean cooperation budget over the last two years, it has been decided that if there is movement on the North Korean nuclear issue, a budget increase of 190 million won will be sought for inter-Korean cooperation next year.

NOKO Jeans are finally for sale on their web page here.  However they include a not-so-subtle warning to American shoppers:

Important regarding ordering from the USA: at this time, goods of North Korean origin may not be imported into the United States either directly or indirectly without prior notification to and approval of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). You need to apply for this in order to import goods produced in North Korea. Contact OFAC here: http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/. It is the buyer’s responsibility to get this approval.

OFACS is the same outfit that is supposed to go after you if you visit Cuba.  I am not recommending you do so, but it semes to me that it would just be a lot easier to have a friend in Europe order them for you…

Read previous NOKO posts here.

UPDATE:  According to AFP:

South Korea is preparing to ship medical supplies worth more than 15 million dollars to help North Korea fight an outbreak of swine flu, officials said Monday.

The unification ministry, which handles cross-border ties, said the shipment would include antiviral drugs for 500,000 patients — Tamiflu for 400,000 and Relenza for 100,000 — and sanitation supplies.

The aid will cost an estimated 17.8 billion won (15.3 million dollars), which will be financed by a state fund for inter-Korean cooperation, it said.

Spokesman Chun Hae-Sung said Seoul would send the shipment as soon as possible, and definitely by the end of the year. But the North, which had accepted the offer, had not yet set a firm date.

The drugs shipment will be the first direct South Korean government aid since relations soured last year, although Seoul has funded assistance to Pyongyang through private groups.

North Korea Wednesday reported nine cases of (A)H1N1 in the capital Pyongyang and the city of Sinuiju bordering China. No death toll was given.

Observers say the virus could pose a particular threat to the North because of malnutrition amid persistent food shortages and a lack of drugs such as Tamiflu.

Good Friends, a Seoul-based welfare group with cross-border contacts, quoted an unidentified Sinuiju city official as saying more than 40 people had died of the swine flu in the border city alone.

The World Health Organization, however, told Yonhap news agency that all nine North Korean patients have recovered.

Yonhap quoted Suzanne Westman, coordinator of outbreak alert and response at the WHO’s New Delhi office, as saying no additional cases were reported in the isolated communist country.

The first of the patients, all children aged between 11 and 14, was discovered on November 25 and the last case on December 4, she said, adding that three of the infections were in Pyongyang with the other six in Sinuiju.

“All contacts have been identified, put in isolation and treated,” she told Yonhap, adding that North Korea had a solid surveillance system and a sufficient number of physicians is believed to be able to handle the outbreak.

ORIGINAL POST: According to KCNA:

Anti-A/H1N1 Flu Campaign Intensified

Pyongyang, December 9 (KCNA) — New Influenza A/H1N1 broke out in some areas of the DPRK amid the growing of its victims worldwide.

According to the Ministry of Public Health, nine cases were reported from Sinuiju and Pyongyang.

The relevant organ is further perfecting the quarantine system against the spread of this flu virus while properly carrying on the prevention and medical treatment.

The State Emergency Anti-epidemic Committee has taken steps to enhance the role of prevention and treatment centers at all levels and increased checkup stations across the country while directing efforts to the medical treatment of its cases.

According to Yonhap:

The World Health Organization (WHO) is working “closely” with the North Korean government to help stem the spread of an Influenza A outbreak there and assess the scope of flu infections among North Koreans, a WHO spokesperson said Wednesday.

North Korea said earlier in the day that it has confirmed nine domestic cases of H1N1 virus infections. The highly infectious disease may be particularly dangerous to the North Korean people, who are mostly undernourished and may have weakened immune systems.

“We are working closely with the (North Korean) government to see what is required and if they need any assistance from WHO,” Aphaluck Bhapiasevi, a WHO spokeswoman on the H1N1 pandemic, said over the telephone.

Bhapiasevi also said there are likely more cases of the H1N1 virus than announced, as people who have mild symptoms are not tested.

“In any country, there may be more cases than have been laboratory-confirmed,” she said. “They may not reflect actual number of the cases.”

In May, WHO provided 35,000 Tamiflu tablets each for North Korea and about 70 other underdeveloped countries to help fight possible outbreaks. Seoul officials say the North would need millions of tablets to safeguard its 24 million people.

Through its office in North Korea, the world health body has been making “preliminary assessments” of the scope of the outbreak, she said. “We have been discussing support that would be required.”

According to the AP, the DPRK will accept ROK assistance as well:

North Korea agreed Thursday to accept medicine from South Korea to fight an outbreak of swine flu, a Cabinet minister said, in a development that could improve relations between the nations after a deadly maritime clash.

“Today, the North expressed its intention to receive” the medical aid, Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told reporters.

North Korean state media reported Wednesday that there were nine confirmed swine flu cases in the country. South Korea plans to send the antiviral Tamiflu to the North, Health Ministry spokesman Lee Dong-uk said, without giving specifics.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said South Korea plans to send enough doses of Tamiflu for about 10,000 people. It cited a government official it did not identify.

The move came two days after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak offered unconditional aid to North Korea to help contain the virus — the government’s first offer of humanitarian aid since Lee took office in early 2008 with a hard-line policy toward the North.

(h/t NK Leadership Watch)

UPDATE 2: NOKO Jeans are on sale here and here.

UPDATE : It looks like the NOKO Jeans launch did not go off as expected. The Swedish department store in which the jenas were to go on sale has pulled the plug on NOKO’s retail space at the last minute.  According to the AFP (Via Singapore’s Straits Times):

A SWEDISH department store on Saturday cancelled what was to be the sale of the ‘first ever’ brand of jeans made in North Korea, the Swedish company behind the communist-made dark denims said.

‘Apparently PUB has censored our exhibition/store by shutting it down and ‘confiscating’ the jeans because of the ‘working conditions in North Korea’,’ Jakob Ohlsson of company Noko Jeans told AFP in an email. ‘At first i thought it was a joke but everything has been removed from the store,’ he added.

Mr Ohlsson, along with Jacob Aastroem and Tor Rauden Kaellstigen – all under the age of 25 and with no previous experience in business or fashion – started Noko Jeans in mid-2007, prompted by a desire to enter in contact with isolationist North Korea.

Their designer jeans were to be sold starting on Saturday at Aplace, a boutique that is a tenant of the trendy PUB department store in central Stockholm. ‘A half-hour before opening, we got a call from the head of the department store and he explained to me… that PUB cannot sell the Noko Jeans,’ Kalle Tollmar, the founder and CEO of Aplace told AFP.

‘The explanation I got was that (the store’s management) had taken the decision… that PUB is not the right place, or platform, for this kind of political discussion,’ he said, confirming his store was hoping to continue distribution of the controversial duds at another location.

The Noko sales space at PUB was deserted on Saturday, the jeans removed and and surrounding photo exhibition taken down by the department store’s security. ‘They have it in a locked room at PUB but we have been promised to get everything back on Monday, it’s only for security reasons, they don’t want us to sell the jeans,’ Ms Tollmar said. — AFP

According to the AP:

A Stockholm department store says it won’t carry a new line of North Korean-made designer jeans because it doesn’t want ties to the isolated communist nation.

PUB store spokesman Rene Stephansen says it is “a political issue that PUB doesn’t want to be associated with.”

The Noko Jeans line is the brainchild of three Swedish entrepreneurs who hoped to help break North Korea’s isolation through increased trade with the West.

A spokesman for the retail space where Noko Jeans was selling its product says the jeans were taken off shelves early Saturday.

Noko Jeans spokesman Jacob Astrom says he regrets the decision is looking for a new shop location. The jeans will be available online.

The NOKO web page says that the jeans will be available on Monday, but in Sweden, Monday has nearly come and gone and the jeans are still not for sale on the web.

ORIGINAL POST: NOKO Jeans go on sale today.  According to Reuters:

Designer jeans labeled “Made in North Korea” will go on sale this Friday at a trendy department store in the Swedish capital, marking a first foray into Western fashion for the reclusive communist state.

The jeans, marketed under the “Noko” brand, carry a price tag of 1,500 Swedish crowns ($215) and will share shelf space at Stockholm’s PUB store with brands such as Guess and Levi’s.

Noko’s founders told Reuters they had spent over a year trying to gain access to factory operators in North Korea, and struggled with poor communications and an unfamiliar approach to doing business once inside the country.

“There is a political gap, there is a mental gap, and there is an economic gap,” said Jacob Astrom, one of three Swedish advertising executives behind the project. “All contacts with the country are difficult and remain so to this day.”

The idea for the project was born out of curiosity for North Korea, which has grown increasingly isolated in recent years under Western criticism of its human rights record and nuclear ambitions.

“The reason we did this was to come closer to a country that was very difficult to get into contact with,” Astrom said.

North Korea, a country better known for its reclusive nature than fashionable clothes, rarely allows outsiders within its borders and has virtually no trade or diplomatic relations with most Western countries. Sweden, one of only seven countries to have an embassy in North Korea, is an exception.

But the process of agreeing a deal to produce just 1,100 pairs of jeans — the first ever produced by the country, according to the founders — often proved baffling. E-mails vanished into a void and communications were strained.

At one point they were asked to bring a zinc smelting oven into the country, and a trade representative once asked them to help him find a pirated version of the computer program Adobe Acrobat so he could read files they were sending him.

“Everyone is a manager. Even our chauffeur was some sort of manager,” said founder Jakob Ohlsson, adding that North Korean titles were often confusing.

After being turned down by North Korea’s largest textile company, the group managed to secure a manufacturing deal with its largest mining company, Trade 4, which also happens to run a small textile operations on its site.

“This is often the way it works in North Korea,” said Ohlsson. “Companies seldom specialize and therefore often manage several operations that differ completely from one another.”

During the summer, the trio traveled to the factory in North Korea to oversee the production process and ensure that workers there were treated according to Noko’s guidelines.

“We were forced to operate by micro-management,” Ohlsson said, referring to his experience on the factory floor.

Fashionable novelty seekers can order Noko jeans from the company’s website www.nokojeans.com after December 4, but you are not likely to see a pair on the streets of Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, anytime soon.

Socialist dress code forbids them.

According to the BBC:

Mr Ohlsson explained black denim was chosen because North Koreans “usually associate blue jeans with America. That’s why it’s a little taboo”.

But the high ticket price for the jeans is not simply aimed at finding an exclusive niche in the market.

Mr Ohlsson admitted: “The reason they are so expensive is that we didn’t have any experience in fashion, trading, or anything like that.”

Read previous NOKO Jeans posts here, here, here and here.

Korea Today Turns 60.  According to Korea Today:

December 4 this year marks the 60th founding anniversary of The Foreign Language Magazines, DPRK.

On the occasion we extend heartfelt gratitude to our readers.

We began to publish our journal, titled New Korea, in January 1950, hoping to help the readers understand how the Koreans had lived before they got free from the Japanese colonial rule and engaged in building a sovereign independent state, what they were aspiring after and what course they would take in the future.

Later the title changed to Korea Today.

The monthly magazine has so far carried policies the Workers’ Party of Korea set forth in each stage of socialist construction, achievements the Korean people made in their implementation, independent and creative life of the working masses and their happiness as well as the history, geography and culture of Korea.

Also introduced are the struggle of the Koreans and other progressive people for reunifying the nation that has been divided into the north and the south for over 60 years and building a new independent world—in various styles and methods.

Published in Russian alone in the initial years, the monthly is now available in English, Chinese, French, Spanish and Arabic, too.

You can get access to Korea Today on the Naenara site.

We’ll do our best to help you know the realities of Korea where building of a thriving nation is on its height, the efforts of the Korean people for national reunification and the struggle of Koreans and other progressive people around the world for a new, free and peaceful world.

It is interesting that Korea Today would remind everyone that their first publications were in Russian and featured Pyongyang’s  Liberation Tower (located here) on the cover.  It removes all doubt about who was actually in control at the time (i.e. not Kim Il Sung). (Новая Корея=New Korea).

Korea Today is full of all sorts of interesting and useless tid-bits on the DPRK–such as this.

Korea Today, Korea, and Kumsukangsan are all published by the Pyongyang Foreign Languages Printing House (also turning 60) located here.

The Soviet equivalent of Korea Today, named Soviet Russia Today, published a piece about the early days of the DPRK by American communist Ana Louise Strong, who was one of the first Americans allowed into the country.  Learn more here.

UPDATE: In 2004 Germany’s Goethe Institut opened a reading room in Pyongyang (see Choson Sinbo article below). This week it was closed. According to Deutsch Welle:

After five and a half years in operation, the Goethe-Institut in North Korea has said it will close its reading room in the capital city of Pyongyang due to censorship concerns.

The institute, a non-profit organization that promotes the study of German language and culture in 91 countries, opened the reading room in June 2004. It was the first and only Western cultural institution to establish itself in the communist country.

Raimund Woerdemann, director of the Goethe-Institut in Seoul, told Deutsche Welle that, contrary to an agreement made with the North Korean government, access to the center was often hindered.

“The building in which the reading room was located was often locked from the front,” he said. “There was a permanent construction site in front of the back entrance: not a welcoming situation.”

To his knowledge, there has never been an Internet connection in the Pyongyang center, said Woerdemann, and attempts to establish an Intranet connection with other North Korean educational institutions were interrupted on multiple occasions.

The reading room is slated to close in summer 2010. Woerdemann added, however, the Goethe-Institut would make an effort to maintain positive relations with North Korea through participation in the North Korean-German Friendship Society, the Committee for Cultural Relations Abroad and other partnerships.

Criticism from Berlin

The decision to close the reading room has met with strong criticism from the German parliament. Phillip Missfelder, parliamentary foreign policy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU issued a statement Wednesday, calling the closure “a bitter experience and a big disappointment for everyone who has stood up against resistance to cultural exchange and for the gradual opening of communist North Korea.”

The move represented “the end of an important aspect of German foreign policy in the areas of culture and education, which was a ray of light in the darkness of the repressive, totalitarian government in North Korea.”

In the statement, Missfelder said the CDU parliamentary group takes the closure “very seriously” and would make every effort to reverse the decision.

The center in Pyongyang was founded with the aim of reducing the information deficit in the country, offering unrestricted access to the Internet and free press, networking with South Korea and other countries, and promoting literature.

The Pyongyang reading room has been removed from the Goethe Institute’s web page, although not all of the links have been removed.

The reading room was located near Tae Mun and the DPRK’s Ministry of Culture in Pyongyang here.

UPDATE 1: According to Korea.net, the Goethe Institut plans to expand Pyongyang reading room:

On the sidelines of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference last week, a German cultural institution reaffirmed its commitment to promote freedom and democracy in North Korea.

The Goethe Institute, an NGO sponsoring German language and culture worldwide, said it is ready to expand its collection of media resources in North Korea.

The institute opened a reading room in Pyongyang in 2004 where North Koreans can freely access a variety of German media, including books, newspapers, and music. The content is completely uncensored and accessible to all North Koreans. That was the condition under which Goethe Institute agreed to open the reading room, said Jurgen Keil, director of the Goethe Institute in Seoul.

“The reading room has been received very positively by North Koreans. We hope that it can contribute to normalizing North Korea’s relations to the outside world,” Keil said.

The efforts mirror a similar German diplomatic strategy in the 1970s when then West German Chancellor Willy Brandt pursued a policy of “Change through Rapprochement” of easing ties with East Germany through a series of reconciliatory measures.

Former President Kim Dae-jung made reference to this strategy when he formulated the South Korean “Sunshine Policy.”

Claudia Lux, IFLA president-elect, stressed that “knowledge is always a step toward freedom.”

Keil added that many North Koreans can speak German. Until German reunification in 1989, a great number of North Koreans were living and working in East Germany.

North Korea was eager to establish the reading room in order to boost its international diplomatic profile, even though the content available there undercuts the strict censorship imposed by the country.

The reading room in Pyongyang currently holds 4,000 items. Keil said it plans to gradually increase the number to 8,000 in the coming years.

ORIGINAL POST: From the Choson Sinbo (August 14, 2004):

A library of German science books was opened in central Pyongyang on June 2, as the first institution where people can freely read foreign books.

The library was opened in cooperation between Pyongyang’s DPRK-Germany Friendship Association and Germany’s Goethe Institute.

The library has 4,000 scientific books in natural and social sciences and leading German newspapers and magazines. In addition, the library has various kinds of movie tapes, music CDs and cassette tapes and audiovisual education aids for German language study.

It is the first time that the DPRK has opened a library of scientific books of a specific Western country.

An official concerned with the library said that the institute aims at introducing advanced science and technology of Western countries and at promoting mutual understanding between the DPRK and Germany by spreading Germany’s scientific books in the DPRK.

The library introduces German books to libraries of domestic universities and research institutes while allowing people to freely read German books, newspapers and magazines. It lends books to users.

Accepting users’ requests the library orders books from the Goethe Institute, a nongovernmental cultural organization of Germany. Pyongyang’s counterpart offers requested books to the library free of charge.

The library has plenty of natural science books, such as books of medical science, information technology, geology, physics, architecture, chemistry and biology. In addition to natural science books, there are books of German literature, art, philosophy and books of social science including law and history.

According to an official concerned, main users of the library are university students, researchers and scholars.

Officials said that a delegation of the Goethe Institute plans to visit Pyongyang in September to provide 4,000 more books to the library. The Goethe Institute also plans a training course for librarians to staff the library.

Kim Mun Ik, 57, an official of the Association of External Cultural Liaison, said, “The DPRK is not an ‘exclusive country.’ The library is a clear indication that we have been open to the outside, receiving foreign things as far as these are useful for us and now we are making every effort to develop relations with foreign countries, even with Western countries.”

Visitors to Pyongyang’s Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum (Location here) will be interested to know that the DPRK has exported its museum technology to Syria’s Tishreen War Panorama (Location here).

The images are from this web page.

According to an official web page (I think), the panorama dimensions are 129.5m x 7.8m.  It was painted by Kim Sing Chol, O Kwang Ho, Ri Jae Su, Ri Kap Il, Kim Chol Jin, Choe Song Sik, Ri Jong Gap, Kim Ki Dok, Cha Yo Sang, Ri Yon Nam, and it opened on 6th October 1999.  These artists are employees of the Mansudae Overseas Development Group (Art Studio).

I thank a reader for sending me this information.  I have been mapping North Korean projects in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East on Google Earth.  Here are some I have blogged about: Monument to African Renaissanace, Zimbabwe Hero’s Park, Ethiopia’s Derg Monument, Kinshasa Kabila Statue, and quite a few more.  If you are aware of any North Korea projects in your area please let me know.

UPDATE: Cairo’s October War Panorama is also built by the North Koreans.   It appears to have nearly identical architecture.  It is located here.

By Michael Rank

China is planning cruises to North and South Korea, Russia and Japan from the northeastern border city of Hunchun 珲春, according to a Chinese-language report.

Ports of call will include Raseon (Rasŏn/Naseon/Nasŏn) 라선 on North Korea’s northeast coast, Sokcho 속초 in South Korea, just south of the DMZ, and Vladivostok, the report says, quoting Jilin province officials.

“There are still a number of questions to be resolved concerning the cruises, such as different visa requirements among the five countries concerned,” it quotes a Jilin  tourism official as saying. But he also says tourism officials from the five countries have “decided to take joint action and are making great efforts to open this tourist route.”

The head of the Jilin tourism bureau, He Baiping, is quoted as saying Jilin has seven border crossing points and that the number of tourists visiting Russia and North Korea is on the increase, which is good for the local economy.

The report gives no more details, but notes that Hunchun is close to the borders with North Korea and Russia and says the cruises will promote tourism in northeast Asia.