North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Korea Times, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is preparing to launch the first census taken in the DPRK since 1993.

According to the artilce:

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said it has conducted data-collecting education to North Koreans and has been inspecting regional-level education for a population census in which as many as 35,200 field researchers and 7,500 inspectors will be dispatched

The census will take place between October 1-15.

The above image is from Returned to North Korea, a documentary on the 1959 program to repatriate Japanese-Koreans to the newly founded Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Watch the video here.

Since passage of the North Korean Human Rights Act (NKHRA) the US government has admitted 63 North Korean defectors into the country.  I am no lawyer, but I believe these individuals are classified as refugees, meaning they have more restrictive visa conditions than permanent residents.

The first of this cohort, however, has just received a “green card” (US permanent resident status), which grants the holder most of the privileges of US citizenship with the major exceptions of the right to vote or having the State Department stick up for you if you are detained overseas.

If there are any immigration attorneys out there who can contribute some details, please add them to the comments.

As an aside, the NKHRA statute has a “sunset provision”—meaning it automatically expires this month unless it is again passed by the congress and signed by the president.    Joshua at One Free Korea is eager to see this statute renewed.  I do not have any strong feelings about the foreign policy implications of this legislation, but as an economist I am in favor of allowing most immingrants into the US for economic reasons alone.

Read the full article below
N. Korean Defector Gets Permanent US Residency
Korea Times
Kim Sue-young
9/16/2008

Joseph Dresnok, the last of the DPRK’s four US defectors, sat down with Mark Seddon to give his first interview since the 2006 release of Crossing the Line.

Click on image below to see the interview on YouTube:

Pictured Above: Dresnok with Glyn Ford, EU parliamentarian and author of North Korea on the Brink

The interview was also written up in The Guardian.  Much of the material is covered in Crossing the Line, with a couple of notable exceptions:

Dresnok describes himself as a citizen of Pyongyang. “I call it my country because I have been here for 46 years. My life is here. Enough? The government will take care of me until my dying breath.” So would he like to return to the US? “I tell you, yes; I must be honest to you. I would like to see the place. But how can I go there and dance in front of the American government, when they are arming South Korea?” Dresnok knows that he would be arrested on arrival, as was Jenkins, when he returned to the west in 2004. There is no love lost between Dresnok and Jenkins, who recanted on his return just over three years ago, denounced Dresnok and was granted clemency after only 30 days in the clink. Were he ever to leave North Korea, Dresnok is unlikely to get off so lightly, having been painted as the ringleader by Jenkins. Abshier and Parrish both died in North Korea, where their families remain.

…

And with that Comrade Joe prepares to return to his apartment, where his wife and children are waiting. It is illegal to listen to foreign broadcasts, but as he gets up Dresnok offers his opinion on the US election: “I’m told McCain will get it.”

(Hat tip to Gag Halfrunt for the story)

The UN World Food Program has announced a new emergency relief measure in the DPRK.  The WFP claims to need more than 1.5 million tons food for North Korea and $503 million to maintain adequate operations until November 2009—$60 million of it now.  Below are highlights from the UNWFP and various media outlets:

According to the WFP:

The immediate negative impact on food security was confirmed by a comprehensive “Rapid Food Security Assessment” conducted jointly by WFP and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in June. More than three quarters of all households had reduced their food intake, over half were eating only two meals per day and more malnourished and ill children were being admitted to hospitals and institutions.

“All in all, operations are progressing well and we have been able to expand assistance to reach over 4 million hungry and vulnerable North Koreans.”

WFP is deploying 59 international staff members to support the new programme. More than 20 of them will be working in six newly-established field offices to monitor and track food distributions – and for the first time ever, the international staff will include Korean-speakers, in accordance with the new agreement between WFP and the DPRK government.

WFP monitors have already visited county warehouses and beneficiary institutions in 125 of the 131 targeted counties and have accounted for all WFP food assistance distributed so far.

As an aside, “two meals a day” is a scientifically meaningless measure.  At the bare minimum, it would be far more helpful to detail the number of calories the mean/median North Korean consumes per day along with the total necessary calories needed to maintain health.

The Christian Science Monitor printed a few more details: 

Citizens eligible for food rations have seen their allocation cut from 500 grams a day to 150 grams, Banbury reported. Few North Koreans eat meat except on major national holidays when the government distributes it, he added.

What are the roles of South Korea, USA and China in all this?

South Korea
South Korea, which provided more than half the North’s food aid last year, has suspended shipments of food and fertiliser this year in a tougher policy towards Pyongyang from new President Lee Myung-bak.(Financial Times)

On Tuesday, [South Korean] Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Ho-nyeon said Seoul is still considering the appeal and will make a decision based on its assessment of the North’s food situation while monitoring “various situations.” He did not elaborate.(AP via the Herald Tribue)

US
The US promised in May to donate 400,000 tonnes of food aid to North Korea through the WFP and a further 100,000 tonnes through private US organisations. That would nearly double the amount donated last year by China, which has in past said its relationship with Pyongyang was as close as “lips and teeth”. (Financial Times)

China
China is North Korea’s leading source of food and fuel aid. But difficulties in obtaining food export licenses from China have hampered the WFP’s efforts to procure food to be sent to North Korea as well as to Myanmar, the agency said, adding it was in talks with Chinese officials. It has asked the Chinese government to allow the agency to buy 50,000 tons of cereals and export it to their operations in either country. (AP via the Herald Tribune)

I have seen plenty of Chinese tourists in the DPRK, all gambling in Stanley Ho’s casino in the basement of the Yangakdo Hotel, but apparently China has eased regulations on traveling to the DPRK. 

According to Reuters:

China has officially recognized North Korea as a tourist destination for Chinese tour groups, the Xinhua News agency said on Tuesday, quoting Chinese tourism authorities.

North Korean tourism agencies will also be allowed to open representative offices in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, it said.

Chinese individuals were allowed to travel to North Korea on tourism visas as recently as four years ago, but regulations were subsequently changed. However, Chinese tourists have continued to visit North Korea in small groups.

China is the main trading partner with North Korea, whose closed economy faces the risk of famine in the next 14 months following several years of poor harvests.

In 2009, the two countries will celebrate their 60th year of mutual diplomatic recognition.

Read the full article here:
China designates North Korea a tourist destination
Reuters
Lucy Hornby
9/2/2008

The policy of mutual benefits and common prosperity

It doesn’t have the same ring as “Sunshine Policy,” and the acronym PMBCP is too long, but this is the English name of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s policy towards the DPRK. 

According to Yonhap:

We decided to fix an English name for the policy because there have been many different translated versions,” Kim Ho-nyoun, spokesman for the Unification Ministry, the top Seoul office on North Korea, told reporters.

He said the name was chosen because it best suits the government’s policy of pursuing a relationship of co-existence and co-prosperity with the North beyond the current phase of reconciliation.

The government aims at a firmer inter-Korean reconciliation than its two liberal predecessors, seeking to bring tangible benefits not only to the North but to the South as well, officials said.

President Lee Myung-bak pledged during his election campaign to help the North triple its per capita gross national income to US$3,000 if it abandons its nuclear programs and opens itself to the world.

The so-called “Vision 3,000″ program is now part of Lee’s broader North Korea policy, officials said.

The goal of tripling the DPRK’s per capita GNI (GNP) to $3,000 is based on the assumption that the DPRK’s current per capita income is close to $1,000, which is a wild over statement.  Some more realistic assesments put it as low as $368 per year.  Here is a wrap up of the DPRK’s most recent economic stats from the Bank of Korea.

Read the full article here:
Gov’t sets official English name for N.K. policy
Yonhap
Shim Sun-ah
8/26/2008

Myanmar severed diplomatic relations with the DPRK after North Korean agents attempted to assassinate South Korea  president Chun Doo Hwan on his October 1983 visit to Rangoon.

Diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored in April 2007.  Shortly after, North Korea was accused of selling rocket launchers to Myanmar’s SPDC (Orwellian acronym for: State Peace and Development Council)–formerly known as SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council).

Now the AFP reports that trade has expanded into natural resources, with which Myanmar is abundantly blessed:

Military-run Myanmar is to begin exporting rubber to North Korea, in a further warming of relations between the reclusive governments of the two countries, a weekly newspaper reported Tuesday.

“They will start by importing at least 10,000 tonnes within the first year,” Khaing Myint of the Myanmar Rubber Planters and Producers Association was quoted as saying by the Myanmar Times.

“We are extremely pleased to add another client nation to our export destinations for our rubber. We expect the first batch to be delivered in October,” Khaing Myint reportedly said.

Read the full article here:
Myanmar to begin rubber exports to North Korea
AFP
8/19/2008

Although the article did not offer much new or probing analysis, there were a few data points that I thought it was important to highlight: 

Despite its isolation and prisonlike feel, the Kaesong Industrial Park is booming with construction. The park’s operator, a South Korean developer, Hyundai Asan, hopes to expand it into a minicity over the next 12 years, with high-rise apartments and hotels, an artificial lake and three golf courses.

By that time, the company hopes there will be about 2,000 factories here employing 350,000 North Koreans and producing $20 billion worth of goods a year.

That compares with a manufacturing output of only $366 million in the first half of this year, according to South Korea’s unification ministry.

In the six months through June, the flow of goods in and out of the industrial park accounted for 42 percent of the $881 million in trade between the two Koreas, the ministry said.

and

[…] 72 smaller South Korean companies have already built factories here, looking to tap the North’s supply of low-cost, Korean-speaking labor. So far, only one foreign company has come [–German auto parts maker Prettl Group is building a factory. Two Chinese companies will begin operations soon[, b]ut most companies here continue to be smaller South Korean firms, producing low-tech goods, from frying pans to running shoes, largely for domestic consumption.] (NKeconWatch combined two different paragraphs here)

The piecemeal brand of change is seen in the experiences of SJ Tech, a South Korean maker of car and cellphone parts that built a $4 million factory here four years ago. The company’s first North Korean employees had never even seen a keyboard, much less a computer, said Yoo Chang-geun, SJ Tech’s president. SJ Tech has spent so much time teaching them things like machinery operation and management concepts that Mr. Yoo jokingly calls his factory “North Korea’s first business school.”

But the North Koreans were eager learners, sketching keyboards on paper to teach themselves typing. Now, SJ Tech’s 430 North Korean employees have learned enough to run the factory without South Korean supervisors.

In a telling sign, they have also changed their haircuts to look more like their South Korean colleagues.

Andrei Lankov seems optimistic on the project’s political goals, stating “When North and South Koreans can interact on a daily basis, it is a chance for the North Koreans to see with their eyes that their own propaganda doesn’t make sense.”

A few described how the South Korean-run industrial park was improving lives by paying its workers the equivalent of about $60 a month, three times the average salary in the rest of Kaesong. […]

The South Korean government, which spent more than $150 million subsidizing the park, provides low-interest loans and insurance to companies to offset the risks of investing in the unstable and still hostile North.

Mr. Yoo of SJ Tech said his North Korean employees’ monthly salaries of $75, in contrast to the $2,000 he pays South Koreans, made investing in North Korea entirely worthwhile, despite any risks.

The article seems to take worker compensation claims at face value, but in reality Kaesong workers do not take home their allotted wages.  The DPRK government keeps most of them in taxes and administrative fees.  However, other non-monetary benefits make the jobs highly envied among North Korean workers.  Rumor has it that North Korean workers pay hefty bribes to get these jobs. 

Read the full article here:
Big Dreams for North Korean Industrial Park
New York Times
Martin Fackler
8/20/2008

Well, it looks like Russia’s dream of rail access to a non-freezong port has come to pass (for the next 49 years, anyway).  From the Moscow Times:

North Korea has agreed to rent out a 52-kilometer section of track to Russian Railways as part of a plan to link East Asia to Europe via the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

The 49-year lease was signed during talks Tuesday and Wednesday in Pyongyang, Russian Railways said Friday. Russian Railways will refurbish the line and build a container terminal at the North Korean port of Rajin.

Construction is expected to begin by the end of the year, Russian Railways said. North Korea and Russia also agreed to study the possibility of upgrading the rail link from Rajin to the Chinese border.

So can we expet Seoul to be connected in the next 49 years?

Past posts on this topic can be found here and here.

Read the full article here:
North Korea to Rent Rail Link to RZD
Moscow Times
8/11/2008