North Korean Economy Watch

from the Joong Ang Daily:

After North Korea began a capitalist experiment by adopting economic reform measures in 2002, incentive payments have become common at communal farms, following the lead of factories in urban areas. After the North Koreans quickly grasped the essence of capitalism ― the more they work, the more they earn ― productivity at North Korean farms has increased, and some workers have become the rich in a famine-stricken country.

Paek Kun-su, a 72-year-old farmer at the Chilgol Farm near Pyongyang, met with the JoongAng Ilbo on May 14, during a trip to the North by a team from the newspaper, which was allowed to tour a large number of economic sites last month.

Chilgol Farm is one of North Korea’s representative state-run farms, the authorities there said. After Mr. Paek developed a new variety of rice that yields more with less fertilizer, he was given 15 million North Korean won ($100,000) as a bonus. That was an extravagantly large sum in the North, where a public servant with 30 years of service receives a monthly salary of 6,000 won. A North Korean worker at the Kaesong Industrial Complex receives about $60 a month, and even that is higher than the average salary in the North, so Mr. Paek’s windfall was worth about 160 times that figure.

Mr. Paek said his rice variety, called only “Number Six” in a bow to socialist realism, yielded more than 4 tons per acre in last year’s crop. He also stressed that the new rice variety requires less fertilizer than the ones it replaced and is resistant to attacks by insects. “It can be planted where the temperature is low,”Mr. Paek said. “It can be planted anywhere on the west coast of Korea and anywhere south of Kilju, North Hamgyong province, on the east coast.”

Those claims, however, may require some caution in accepting. For example, the average rice yield in the United States is estimated at about 3.5 tons per acre; the figure in Korea is 2.2 tons.

Mr. Paek said he introduced the new rice variety at a national science and technology fair on May 5. He was selected from more than 50,000 participants as the grand prize winner.

He said he was once a director at North Korea’s rice research institute, a part of the Academy of Science for Agriculture. During his career as a scientist, he said, he won six awards, including medals and a television set, but never a cash prize.

“I am very happy to contribute to increasing crop production in our country and helping resolve food shortages here,” he said, adding that he began developing the new strain of rice in the mid-1990s, after seeing large number of his countrymen dying of hunger.

Mr. Paek’s windfall is out of reach for almost all North Koreans, but many farmers do seem to enjoy better living conditions after the incentive payment system was established. At the Chongsan Cooperative Farm in South Pyongan province, Ko Myong-hee, a 46-year-old manager, said farmers there are living in stable conditions. The JoongAng Ilbo toured the farm on May 14.

Ms. Ko said the farm’s 600 workers produced 8,000 tons of rice in addition to other crops, vegetables and fruits. The farm has about 1,470 acres of rice paddies and 980 acres of fields and orchards. (The difference between that farm’s rice output and Mr. Paek’s claimed yields is startling.)

North Korean farms usually complete their harvest in October, and the government purchases the crops. Milled grains are purchased at 40 won per kilogram, and raw grain at 20 won per kilogram.

Ms. Ko said the Chongsan Cooperative Farm’s workers each received an average of 500,000 won in cash last year in addition to the food they consumed. The incentive payment translates to about 40,000 won per month, about eight times higher than the salary of a Pyongyang office worker. A factory worker in the North with high skills can earn as much as 20,000 won per month, including incentive payments.

“During the famine of the mid-1990s, production went down sharply, but we managed to survive,”Ms. Ko said. “Recently, we improved our crop varieties and the quality of farming land, and production went up after that.”

An official at the National Reconciliation Council, which arranged the visit, said farm villages had suffered relatively less from the severe famines of a decade ago. “Those who had relatives in farming villages received a lot of help from them back then,” he said.

With slowly improving farming conditions, North Korea began last month a revived campaign to mobilize the nation’s workers for agriculture. Another National Reconciliation Council official said a similar campaign last year was successful; “Students older than 12 years and other laborers were mobilized to support farms in this rice planting season,” he said.

North Korea has been living on foreign food aid for more than a decade, and the country is struggling to end its perennial food crisis. “We have high pride, and you can imagine how bad the situation used to be when we asked the international community to help us,” the National Reconciliation Council official said. “But we cannot live on foreign aid forever.”

The country focused on building irrigation waterways to improve farming conditions, officials said. During the JoongAng Ilbo’s visit to the Academy of Agricultural Science, it saw 2,600 researchers working to develop more productive and hardier seeds and more effective fertilizers. The seed improvement project largely focuses on rice and potatoes, the academy said.

“We aim to reach 8 million tons of annual food production by 2007,” a researcher at the academy said.

Ri Il-sop, the science exchange director at the academy, said rice farming in the North used to employ “dense planting” methods until recently, but a test of “thin planting” has been conducted with new varieties of seeds. “The test has been successful so far,” Mr. Ri said. “We can farm easily and save seed with the new methods.”

Another senior researcher at the academy, Pak Sok-ju, said providing information about land conditions and weather is also an important project of the academy. He said other necessary data include things such as the length of the planting season around the nation and the effects of fertilizer usage. “We are developing the program to find a new way of farming in the information age,” Mr. Pak said.

While the North Korean government has called such efforts “an agricultural war,” experts in South Korea said the famine-stricken country still had other crucial tasks at hand. An energy crisis and a shortage of farming tools and fertilizer are crushing burdens, they said, adding that mobilizing manpower and improving seed quality cannot alone resolve the underlying problems in keeping North Korea from being able to feed itself.

Joong Ang Daily

The government said yesterday it would give loan guarantees of up to 10 billion won ($10.5 million) to companies operating in the Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea.

The guarantees, offered as a means of encouraging more manufacturing activity there, will be available beginning late this year.

The Korea Credit Guarantee Fund, a government-owned fund, will guarantee loans extended by banks and other financial institutions. The guarantees will be limited to seven years, and will carry a price tag of a maximum of 3 percent of the loan amount.

The decision was made at a meeting presided over by Han Duck-soo, the economic deputy prime minister.

Finance Ministry officials said such guarantees are limited to 3 billion won for small and medium businesses operating domestically. Those “ordinary” guarantees are also available to exporters and trading companies who want to open or expand domestic facilities.

Companies operating in Kaesong are also eligible for direct loans of up to 5 billion won from official inter-Korean economic cooperation funds.

North Korea has grumbled about the slow pace of building up the Kaesong complex; part of the problem, the ministry said, is that there is some hesitation by companies and difficulty in obtaining loans because of the perceived political risk and the difficulty in using assets located in North Korea as collateral for loans in the South. Those questions, coupled with what the ministry hopes will be a surge in interest in manufacturing at the complex, were the spurs for the new guarantee program, finance officials said.

Seoul is pushing its trade partners to treat goods made in Kaesong as domestic Korean products, a request accepted by some but rejected by others, including the United States. Some trade experts also worry that the new guarantee program could be seen as government subsidies to manufacturers, which could be illegal under international trade rules.

Fifteen companies are operating at the complex now; another 23 are preparing to start.

Yonhap
6/16/2006

Japan’s parliament on Friday passed a bill that requires the government to impose economic sanctions on North Korea unless it improves its human rights situation and resolves the issue of its abduction of Japanese citizens in past decades.

The new law will take effect in one month after going through the due administrative process. The enactment received approval from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition New Komeito Party and the major opposition Democratic Party.

The enactment is the third in a series of economic sanctions Tokyo has imposed to cause North Korea to return Japanese citizens who were abducted from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. Japan revised pertinent laws in 2004 to enable the government to ban money transfers to North Korea without U.N. approval and restrict North Korean ships from entering Japanese ports in 2004.

The new law on North Korean human rights stipulates the abduction issue as a “national duty” that the government has to take. It says if Pyongyang does not make progress on the issue, Tokyo should mobilize economic sanctions on the communist country, provide help for North Korean defectors and offer financial aid to non-governmental organizations helping the defectors. The law set a week in December as a publicity week for the government to enlighten the public on the North Korea issue and required the government to submit an annual report on its efforts to deal with it.

Earlier in the day, the European Parliament passed a resolution that called on the international community to make efforts to improve the human rights situation in North Korea. The resolution, passed in a plenary session in Strasbourg, France, particularly urged Pyongyang to release information about the whereabouts of Son Jong-nam, a 48-year-old North Korean man who was arrested for spilling tales about the situation in the North to his brother in China and sentenced to death.

From the BBC:

Japan’s parliament has passed a bill calling for economic sanctions against North Korea unless a dispute over kidnapped Japanese citizens is solved.
The North Korea Human Rights Bill calls for sanctions to be imposed if no progress is made on the abduction and other human rights issues.

It could be enacted by Friday, as both ruling and opposition parties back it.

But the bill does not specify how progress would be assessed or set a deadline for imposing sanctions.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has been cautious on the issue of imposing sanctions against North Korea in the past, analysts say.

“The government will take into consideration international trends comprehensively,” the bill said.

The sanctions would include money transfers from North Koreans in Japan, an important source of funds for the North.

‘Worst phase’

The bill was passed just hours after North Korea warned Japan against continuing to bring up the abduction issue.

As already clarified by the DPRK more than once, the ‘abduction issue’ had been completely settled

North Korean spokesman

A spokesman from the North Korean Foreign Ministry said that relations between the two nations were at “the worst phase in history”.

The spokesman said the blame lay with Japan for its attempts to internationalise the abduction issue, state news agency KCNA reported.

Pyongyang has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s and used them to train its agents.

Five of the 13 abductees were allowed to return to Japan in October 2002, but North Korea said that the other 8 people had died.

It says the issue has now been resolved.

“As already clarified by the DPRK more than once, the ‘abduction issue’ had been completely settled thanks to its sincere efforts,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

But Japan believes North Korea is not being completely honest about whether the abductees are still alive and how many of its citizens it abducted.

The issue has sparked public anger in Japan and has dogged relations between the two countries for years.

Joong Ang Daily
6/16/2006

Seven North Korean teachers attended a middle school class here yesterday to watch the presentation of lessons on Korean reunification prepared jointly by North and South Korean educators.

This is the second year that teachers on both sides of the DMZ have collaborated on lessons to mark the anniversary of the 2000 inter-Korean summit, but it was the first time North Korean teachers have watched the presentation of the material in the South.

At the Mujin Middle School library yesterday, 36 second-year students met Kim Song-chol, the head of the North Korean Educational and Cultural Workers’ Union, six other teachers and two North Korean reporters. Kwon Su-hee, 27, an ethics teacher at the school, presented the lesson.

Bolstered by a video clip of the meeting of the two Korean leaders, Kim Jong-il and Kim Dae-jung, in 2000, Ms. Kwon described the background and repercussions of the meeting. Another video clip showed North Korean students in their classrooms.

“Children in North Korea are not different from you,” the video’s narrator said. “They are your friends with innocent smiles and dreams.”

Some students, however, appeared puzzled by the material. “I couldn’t fully understand the class,” one said, “but I think that North and South Korean students would have more in common if we studied the same things.”

Kim Young-sik, the principal of Moranbong First Middle School in Pyongyang, said, “I felt like I was watching students at my school. We should make this joint class work, because Korean unification depends on our students.”

From the Joong Ang Daily:

A senior maritime official in North Korea told visiting journalists from the JoongAng Ilbo that his government wants to modernize and open Hungnam Port on the nation’s east coast to expand inter-Korean economic exchanges. Since 2000, a sea route connecting Incheon with the North Korean port of Nampo has been open for direct shipping along the west coast; Pyongyang evidently wants to replicate that success on the east coast, perhaps in a bid to increase investment or to reduce logistics problems in distributing aid shipments from South Korea.

Hungnam is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Hamhung, North Korea’s second-largest city.

“We put priority on one port on the west coast and another on the east coast,” said Cha Son-mo, the maritime operations director of the North Korean Ministry of Land and Sea Transportation. He spoke to the journalists on May 12, during a tour of North Korean economic sites arranged by the newspaper with North Korean authorities.

The comments were the first public indication of Pyongyang’s interest in such a project. Mr. Cha is the equivalent of an assistant minister in South Korea.

“Chongjin and Rajin are essential for freight to and from China and Russia,” he said. “For inter-Korean maritime cooperation, Hungnam should be modernized first. We also plan to upgrade facilities at other places.”

He also confirmed reports that North Korea has been negotiating with China to attract investment to modernize the Rajin and Chongjin ports, both in North Korea’s extreme northeast.

“Through Rajin, China wants to ship goods produced from its three northeastern provinces to South Korea, Japan and Europe,” Mr. Cha said. “And Rajin alone may not be enough, so it wants to modernize and expand operations at Chongjin.” He added that China had proposed to build roads connecting China with the two ports; negotiations are in progress, he said.

Mr. Cha also greeted the visiting journalists during their tour of a ship repair facility in Nampo two days later, giving a detailed briefing on the Yongnam Ship Repair Factory. “While we are focusing on repair operations, our next goal is ship cannibalization and shipbuilding,” he said. “We strongly hope that the two Koreas can cooperate in this field.”

He said North Korea had invested $100 million in the factory, a huge amount in this cash-strapped country. The plant had been modernized to allow it to repair one 50,000-ton ship and two 20,000-ton ships simultaneously.

The shipworks also recently found a partner in the South. Responding to a bid by North Korea last July, Hanaro Shipyard was set up in South Korea in December by Jeong Chan-bae, specifically to work with the Yongnam repair yard.

“South Korean ships all use repair bases in China and Vietnam because there is no place to repair vessels,” said Jeong Chan-bae, the president of Hanaro Shipyard. “But repair prices in China went up sharply recently, so we decided to use the North Korean facility.”

Citing North-South maritime cooperation accords, Mr. Cha also said there was no legal problem to concern South Korean ship owners about using repair services in the North. He is also the chief negotiator for the maritime talks between the two Koreas. “Our repair service prices will be an average of 30 percent less than those in China,” he said.

He also appeared on the scene to guide a separate group of South Korean economists and businessmen who visited the factory on May 17. After that tour, Jeong Nam-su, an executive of South Korea’s STX Shipbuilding, was cautiously positive about the facility. “It is hard to find a place to repair ships in South Korea,” Mr. Jeong said. “The quality and technology of the Yongnam factory has not yet been evaluated, but it has some positive prospects.”

From the Daily NK:

North Korean prices are continuing to rise.

At Sunam Jangmadang of Chongjin City, the price of rice is 1,200W/1kg, corn 300W, bottle of oil 2,000W, pork 2,500W and pants made from China 20,000W.

As it is spring, not only is it a time where the overall price of Jangmadang rice rises, but because the country is not distributing rations, the majority of people depend on the rice at Jangmadang. Also, rice sellers are watching this opening and are raising prices.

Lee who entered South Korea in 2003 says she has already sent money to her family by various means. The money sent through earnings from part-time jobs and resettlement money from the South Korean government, is becoming a lifeline for her family. Her families in North Korea depend on her to send money to live and get great relief from their daughters who live in South Korea.

Chinese 100yuan is 34,000won at Jangmadangi

Lee’s family who support their living by selling goods made from China, ceased trade because of soaring prices and control of Jangmadang by authorities.

Lee added, as it became harvest season and authorities restrained Jangmadang operations, there was even an incident last May at Chongjin where a lot of children were hospitalized after eating sweets and medicines made from China, and instruction was made in regards to strengthening the regulation of Chinese goods.

However, Chinese goods are in the majority and controlling Chinese commodities in North Korea is ‘shading the sun with the palm of your hand.’ Lee conveyed that to regulate the problem, police officers confiscate Chinese goods such as alcohol and cigarettes, and that oppression is worsening.

According to Lee, at present in Chongjin, Chinese 100yuan is 34,000 won for North Korean money. If this is converted to dollars, $1 calculates approximately 2,750won.

In March, the exchange rate at Musan Jangmadang was 100yuan to 37,125 won North Korean currency, in dollars $1 for 2,970won. The exchange rate for Yuan has decreased since March from roughly 100yuan to about 3,000won.

Local factory workers, majority mobilized to the village

The local industrial factory Lee’s brother works for in Chongjin, has recently closed factory doors and sends workers to the village. Compared to reports of North Korean publicity and media of central businesses in production at Pyongyang, standards of local industries are extremely inferior.

The reason, local industries could not extricate the aftereffects of acute shortages in equipment and materials following the economic breakdown in the mid-90’s.

According to defector of Chongjin, person ‘A’ laments “Recovery in factories is difficult as electric machines and electric lines are stolen and sold. Factories themselves want restoration but money is required, and isn’t it that there is no where money can appear.”

The most urgent is the problem of electricity. Most recently, as it is the farming season, all the electricity is mobilized for the water meter operations, with electricity servicing the villages approximately 10hours daily. However, as electricity is supplied to the villages, meanwhile the city is locked in darkness.

Daily NK
Yang Jung A
6/9/2006

On the 5th of last, U.S Department of State announced the ‘2006 Slave Trade Report’ including the issue of North Korean foreign worker’s human rights. On this, international human rights organization asserted that if basic human rights of them is not secured in Czech Republic, then their foreign employment should be blocked.

North Korea is sending low wage workers for foreign currency earning to various parts of the world such as Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Africa and it has become known that currently there are more than 300 laborer’s dispatched in the Czech Republic.

Voice of America(VOA) of the U.S pleaded with human rights organizations on the 7th and reported that “The major fundamental difference for North Korean laborer’s is not only that they have no freedom, but the excessive working hours, and that wages are not received by workers but go to the North Korean government.”

On this day, Igor Blazevic of a Czech Republic human rights organization People in Need Foundation said in an interview with VOA “These people under watch and control work for very low wages” and that “only times have changed yet these people are no different to a modern day slave.”

The Czech Republic’s human rights NGOs asserted that if it does not ultimately improve working conditions, then permission to employ North Korean laborers should not be granted. In addition, they asserted that this issue should come up for the subject with other issues related to North Korea in the conference of the Human Rights Council of the U.N on the 19th.

Czech Republic Human Rights Organization Said, “North Korean Workers Are Modern Day Slave”

In an interview under evading the eyes of North Korean watch, which was taken by Czech Republic writer Maria Jelinkova and a L.A. Times reporter, a North Korean worker said, “I do not enjoy working in Czech Republican factories and want to return home.”

Kim Tae San (entered Korea 2002), president for the past 2 years for ‘Czech-North Korean Footwear Co-operation’, attested that “For 3 years North Korean women work indiscriminately with Czech Republican workers, and equally receive wages, however of the $50, 70~80% is possessed by the North Korean government, leaving $10~$13 per month to live with.”

However, Kim Tae San said “even though they (from the view of Western European Associations) are violating human rights, the conditions are far better than within North Korea” and “the reason they live is so that they can earn even one extra penny to feed and revive their families in North Korea.”

Kim indicated that without drastic changes to the North Korean system, simply approaching the issue of human rights will not help solve the problem.

Yonhap
Kim Hyun
6/9/2006

North Korea, which has shunned Western entertainment, has given in to World Cup fever and started efforts to satiate people in the country who yearn to watch the imminent tournament.

Pyongyang is seeking to broadcast World Cup matches live across the country with Seoul’s support. North Korea’s state-run broadcaster, Korean Central Broadcasting Station (KCBS), sent a letter to the Korean Broadcasting Commission of South Korea last month asking it to share its World Cup footage with the North that could not pay for the broadcast rights. The request came as the Koreas were politically at odds over testing of newly connected inter-Korean railways.

The South Korean broadcasting commission is in talks with FIFA as part of efforts to assist with Pyongyang’s request, said a public affairs official in the broadcasting commission requesting anonymity because a contract had not yet been signed.

When the deal is reached early next week with FIFA and its Switzerland-based business representative Infront Sports & Media, the North will be able to provide its people with a live broadcasts of the games via satellite from Seoul, the commission official said.

North Korea has candidly expressed on its television programs its people’s desire to watch the football tournament. A KCBS announcer said, “This year’s World Cup competition will really be worth seeing.”
Pyongyang has published four kinds of stamps in commemoration of the tournament, according to the (North) Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday. The stamps depict football players from different countries who distinguished themselves in previous tournaments, it said.

North Koreans in and around Pyongyang who watched the 2002 World Cup games, co-hosted by South Korea and Japan, via free satellite distribution with the South’s help, were thrilled by the South’s unexpected progress, said Kim Jong-chol, a reporter with the Minju Chosun, the North’s Cabinet newspaper.

“The South’s advance to the semifinals in 2002 boosted the morale of the Korean people,” Kim told a Yonhap News Agency reporter.

North Korea failed to advance to the World Cup in the regional qualifier after winning one game and losing five.

After their team lost 2-0 to Iran, angry North Korean players offended the referee and fans threw bottles onto the pitch. As punishment, they had to play Japan in Bangkok without spectators.

The communist country is revving up efforts to gain global status in the next World Cup finals in South Africa in 2010. It has strengthened international exchanges to sharpen the team and established football training grounds with artificial grass supplied by FIFA earlier this year.

From the Korea Times:

South Korea’s chief delegate for the inter-Korean economic talks yesterday reaffirmed the North will not be getting any new economic support unless it pushes ahead with the railways test-run.

In a radio interview, Vice Finance Minister Bahk Byong-won said, “We created a structure in which the additional economic cooperation is only possible after the railways test-run.”

The two Koreas closed their 12th Economic Cooperation and Promotion Committee meeting in Jeju on Tuesday with a nine-article agreement on support for light industries, natural resources development and others.

The two sides concurred such agreements will only be implemented when “conditions are met,” which they verbally confirmed referred to the cancelled cross-border test-runs.

North Korea abruptly cancelled the scheduled testing last month, prompting an angry response from the South.

The South, remaining steadfast to its policy of engaging more economically with its communist neighbor, believes staunch military authorities to be behind the cancellation.

“(The North’s) military authorities are closely connected with the procedures of implementing many of the inter-Korean agreements. And the (preconditioning) clause refers to just that,” Bahk said, emphasizing that the North Korean military must take visible measures such as preparing a military guarantee for the railways operation.

The two railways, on the east and west of the Korean Peninsula, run through heavily fortified borders. It would be the first time in over five decades that the trains run.

“Although we said ‘conditions’ in the agreement, both sides made clear when we read out the agreement that the conditions referred to the railways test to avoid any conflicting interpretations in the future,” Bahk said.

(angiely@heraldm.com)

By Lee Joo-hee

From the Joong Ang Daily:

South Korean delegates at the inter-Korean economic talks here won a victory of sorts early yesterday morning; North Korea agreed to Seoul’s linkage of the completion of test runs of the newly reconnected railroads across the Demilitarized Zone to its offer of raw materials for the North’s light industries.

But in what apparently was a face-saving gesture to the North, the linkage was not made explicit in the joint announcement of the results of the four-day meeting. South Korea agreed to supply a package of raw materials for the North’s shoe, soap and textile industries worth $80 million, which will be delivered “when necessary conditions are met.” The agreement said nothing more about the conditions, but the rail tests, most recently cancelled by North Korea the day before they were to be conducted last month, were clearly the point at issue. Kim Chun-sig, the Seoul delegation’s spokesman, made that explicit. “The trial train runs are linked with the supply of raw materials, and the agreed announcement was issued with that understanding by the North.” He said agreement to the linkage was not easily won from the North; Seoul’s delegates stressed the uproar that would break out here if that condition were not attached.

The aid will be in the form of a loan to be repaid in kind ― North Korean natural resources ― over a 15-year period with an interest rate of 1 percent. The two delegations met the press to announce the agreement, saying they had signed a nine-point agreement and a 10-point supplemental document dealing with the aid package.

In the agreement, the aid is to be delivered in August. Mr. Kim said that meant that the necessary military-to-military agreement on safeguards required before travelers cross the Demilitarized Zone must be in place and the rails tests completed.

The strings attached to the aid package are something of a departure for the Roh administration, which has been tolerant ― far too tolerant, critics in the South contend ― of North Korea’s penchant for accepting aid donations while failing to keep promises it had made in return. Pyongyang’s cancellation of the railroad tests in late May was, apparently, too much for Seoul to stomach politically. The tests were cancelled the day before they were to take place, and the North blamed “political instability” in the South and the lack of a military safeguards agreement that the North itself has blocked.

A Seoul delegate said proudly, “Unlike in the past, we focused on enforcement of the agreement and secured some leverage over North Korea.” The two sides made some modest progress on other issues. They agreed to conduct negotiations on a joint project to mine gravel from the mouth of the Han River inside the Demilitarized Zone. They agreed that military-to-military agreements would be necessary for safety and security reasons. The project had been suggested by Seoul in April, and reflects the dwindling supply of such material here because of South Korea’s 30-year construction boom.

Other agreed meetings will address administrative procedures at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, flood control on cross-DMZ rivers and exchanges of weather data, especially on the yellow dust storms that originate in China’s Gobi Desert.