Yonhap
12/21/2006
The South Korean government may resume its humanitarian assistance to North Korea in the near future as part of efforts to mend soured ties with the communist nation, the country’s point man on North Korea said Thursday.
“The government has a principle to resume the North-South dialogue at the earliest date possible,” Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung told reporters.
Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
12/13/2006
Last Thursday in Seoul, the influential opposition daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo published a government document that outlined the plans for South Korean aid to be shipped to North Korea in the next financial year. In spite of the nuclear test in October and a series of missile launches last summer, the amount sent to Pyongyang this year was record-breaking – nearly US$800 million. If the document is to be believed, the target for the next year is set at an even higher level of 1 trillion won (about $910 million).
This generosity might appear strange, since technically both Koreas are still at war. However, it has long been an open secret that this is not the war the South wants to win, at least any time soon. The Seoul politicians do not want to provoke Pyongyang into dangerous confrontation, and they would be unhappy to deal with the consequences of a sudden collapse of Kim Jong-il’s dictatorship. Now South Korea wants a slow transformation of the North, and is ready to shower it with aid and unilateral concessions.
Many optimists in Seoul believe this generosity will persuade Pyongyang leaders to launch Chinese-style reforms. However, so far no significant reforms have happened. On the contrary, news emanating from the North since late 2004 seems to indicate that the government is now working hard to turn the clock back, to revive the system that existed until the early 1990s and then collapsed under the manifold pressures of famine and social disruption.
Signs of this ongoing backlash are many. There were attempts to revive the travel-permission system that forbids all North Koreans to leave their native counties without police permission. Occasional crackdowns have taken place at the markets. There were some attempts to re-establish control over the porous border with China.
Finally, in October 2005 it was stated that North Korea would revive the Public Distribution System, under which all major food items were distributed by state. Private trade in grain was prohibited, so nowadays the only legitimate way to buy grain, by far the most important source of calories in North Koreans’ diet, is by presenting food coupons in a state-run shop. It is open to question to what extent this ban is enforced. So far, reports from northern provinces seem to indicate that private dealing in grain still takes place, but on a smaller scale.
From early this month people in northern provinces are allowed to trade at the markets only as long as an aspiring vendor can produce a certificate that states that he or she is not a primary breadwinner of the household but a dependant, normally eligible to some 250 grams of daily grain ration (the breadwinners are given 534 grams daily). It is again assumed that all able-bodied males should attend a “proper” job, that is, to be employees of the government sector and show up for work regularly.
In the past few years the economic situation in North Korea was improving – largely because of large infusions of foreign aid. If so, why are the North Korean leaders so bent on re-Stalinizing their country, instead of emulating the Chinese reform policy that has been so tremendously successful? After all, the Mercedes-riding Chinese bureaucrats of our days are much better off than their predecessors used to be 30 years ago, and the affluence of common Chinese in 2006 probably has no parallels in the nation’s long history.
The Chinese success story is well known to Kim Jong-il and his close entourage, but Pyongyang leaders choose not to emulate China. This is not because they are narrow-minded or paranoid. The Chinese-style transformation might indeed be too risky for them, since the Pyongyang ruling elite has to deal with a challenge unlike anything their Chinese peers ever faced – the existence of “another Korea”, the free and prosperous South.
The Chinese commoners realize that they have not much choice but to be patient and feel thankful for a steady improvement of living standards under the Communist Party dictatorship. In North Korea the situation is different. If North Koreans learn about the actual size of the gap in living standards between them and their cousins in the South, and if they become less certain that any act of defiance will be punished swiftly and brutally, what will prevent them from emulating East Germans and rebelling against the government and demanding immediate unification?
Of course, it is possible that North Korean leaders will somehow manage to stay on top, but the risks are too high, and Pyongyang’s elite do not want to gamble. If reforms undermine stability and produce a revolution, the current North Korean leaders will lose everything. Hence their best bet is to keep the situation under control and avoid all change.
Until the early 2000s the major constraint in their policy was the exceptional weakness of their own economy. For all practical purposes, North Korea’s industry collapsed in 1990-95, and its Soviet-style collective agriculture produces merely 65-80% of the food necessary to keep the population alive. Since the state had no resources to pay for surveillance and control, officials were happy to accept bribes and overlook numerous irregularities.
However, in recent years the situation changed. Pyongyang is receiving sufficient aid from South Korea and China, two countries that are most afraid of a North Korean collapse. The nuclear program also probably makes North Korean leaders more confident about their ability to resist foreign pressure and, if necessary, to squeeze more aid from foes and friends (well, strictly speaking, they do not have friends now).
With this aid and new sense of relative security, the North Korean regime can prevent mass famine and restart some essential parts of the old system, with the food-distribution system being its cornerstone. This is a step toward an ideal of Kim Jong-il and his people, to a system where all able-bodied Koreans go to a state-managed job and spend the entire day there, being constantly watched and indoctrinated by a small army of propagandists, police informers, party officials, security officers and the like.
No unauthorized contacts with the dangerous outside world would be permitted, and no unauthorized social or commercial activity would happen under such system. Neither Kim nor his close associates are fools; they know perfectly well that such a system is not efficient, but they also know that only under such system can their privileges and security be guaranteed.
This is a sad paradox: aid that is often presented as a potential incentive for market-oriented reforms is actually the major reason North Korean leaders are now able to contemplate re-Stalinization of their country.
However, it remains to be seen whether they will succeed, since the North Korean society has changed much in the 12 years since the death of Kim Il-sung. New social forces have emerged, and the general mood has changed as well.
When in the mid-1990s the food rations stopped coming, previously forbidden or strictly controlled private trade became the only survival strategy available for a majority of North Koreans. The society experienced a sudden and explosive growth of grassroots capitalist economy, which by the late 1990s nearly replaced the “regular” Stalinist economy – at least, outside Pyongyang.
Apart from trade in a strict sense, North Korea’s “new entrepreneurs” are engaged in running small workshops, inns and canteens, as well as in providing all kinds of services. Another important part of the “second economy” is food production from individual plots, hitherto nearly absent from North Korea (from the late 1950s, farmers were allowed only tiny plots, not exceeding 100 square meters, sufficient only to grow some spices).
In many cases, the new business penetrates the official bureaucracy. While officials are not normally allowed to run their own business operations, some do, and as the line between the private and state businesses is becoming murky, the supposedly state-run companies make deals with private traders, borrow money on the black market and so on.
As one would expect, a new merchant class has emerged as a result of these changes. Nowadays an exceptionally successful North Korean entrepreneur would operate with capital reaching $100,000 (a fortune in a country where the average monthly salary is merely few dollars). Such mini-tycoons are very few and far between, but incomes measured in $100 a month are earned by many more merchants, and nearly all North Korean families earn at least a part of their income through the “second economy”.
These changes have produced a major psychological shift. The old assumptions about society are dead. After many decades of existence under the patronizing control of a Stalinist state, North Koreans discovered that one can live without going to an office to get next month’s food coupons. They also learned a lot more about the outside world. Smuggled South Korean videotapes are important, if dangerous, merchandise in the North Korean markets.
Contacts with China are necessary for a successful business, and these contacts bring not only goods for sale but also rumors about overseas life. And, of course, the vendors are the first people within living memory who became successful outside the official system. One of these former merchants recently told me: “Those who once attempted to trade, came to like it. Until now, [North Koreans] knew that only cadres could live well, while others should be content with eating grass gruel, but now merchants live better than cadres, and they feel proud of themselves.”
It seems that in recent months we have seen the very first signs of the social activity displayed by this new social group. Early last month, a large group of outraged merchants gathered in front of the local office in the city of Hoiryong, demanding to talk to the representatives of the authorities.
The Hoiryong riot was strictly non-political. A few months ago the local officials collected payments from the market vendors, promising to use the money for refurbishing the old market. However, the market was suddenly closed instead of being refurbished (perhaps as part of the ongoing crackdown on private commercial activities). The outraged vendors gathered near the market and demanded a refund.
The crowd was soon dispersed, and more active participants of the protest were arrested. Had a similar incident happened elsewhere, it would probably not have warranted more than a short newspaper report, but in North Korea this was an event of tremendous significance, the first time in decades that North Koreans openly and loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with a decision of the authorities.
In March 2005, a soccer riot in Pyongyang demonstrated that North Koreans are quite capable of breaking the law, but during that event the popular wrath was provoked by a foreigner, a Syrian referee, and could be construed as an outpouring of nationalistic sentiments (the soccer fans soon began to fight police, however). This time, in Hoiryong, a large group of North Koreans clearly challenged the state bureaucracy. Perhaps nothing like it has happened since the 1950s.
However, the growing power and social independence of the merchants is not the major problem the North Korean neo-Stalinists have to face. They deal with a society that has changed much, not least because of the penetration of modern technology, which facilitates the spread of information. The key role is played by the Chinese border, which is almost uncontrolled and has become an area of widespread smuggling.
Small radio sets are widely smuggled from China, so much so that a defector recently said: “In North Korea, nowadays every official has a radio set in his house.” This is new, since until the early 1990s all North Korean radios were fixed so that they could receive only official broadcasts. Theoretically, radio sets with free tuning are still banned, but this is not enforced. These radios sets are used to listen to foreign broadcasts, especially from South Korea.
Videocassette recorders are common as well. No statistics are available, but it seems that nearly half of all households in the borderland area and a smaller but significant number of households in Pyongyang have a VCR that is used to watch foreign movies. Defectors reported that in mid-October, just after the nuclear test, all North Koreans were required to sign a written pledge about non-participation in “non-socialist activity”. It was explained during the meetings that this activity includes listening to foreign radio and watching foreign videotapes.
Thus it seems that only a few people still believe in the official myth of South Korean destitution. Perhaps most people in the North do not realize how great the difference between their lives and those of their South Korean brethren is. Perhaps, for most of them, being affluent merely means the ability to eat rice daily. Discussions with recent defectors also create an impression that most North Koreans still believe that the major source of their problems is the suffocating “US imperialist blockade”. Still, the old propaganda about the destitute and starving South is not readily swallowed anymore.
Another obstacle on the way to a Stalinist revival is a serious breakdown of morale among officialdom. The low-level officials whose job is to enforce stricter regulations do not feel much enthusiasm about the new orders. Back in the 1940s and 1950s when Stalinism was first established in North Korea under Soviet tutelage, a large part of the population sincerely believed that it was the way to the future.
Nowadays, the situation is different. The low-level bureaucrats are skeptical. They are well aware of the capitalism-driven Chinese prosperity, and they have some vague ideas about South Korea’s economic success. And they are unconvinced by government promises that, as they know, never materialize. Unlike the elite, the mid-level officials have little reason to be afraid of the regime’s collapse. And, last but not least, they have become very corrupt in recent years, hence their law-enforcement zeal diminishes once they see an opportunity to earn extra money for looking other way.
At the same time, the new measures might find support from the large segments of population who did not succeed in the new economy and long for the stability of Kim Il-sung’s era. Recently, a former trader told me: “Elderly or unlucky people still miss the times of socialism, but younger people do business very well, believe that things are better now than they used to be and worry that the situation might turn back to the old days.”
We should not overestimate the scope of this generalization. After all, it is based on the observations of a market trader who obviously spent much time with her colleagues, the winners of the new social reality. Among less fortunate North Koreans, there will be some people who perhaps would not mind sitting through a couple of hours of indoctrination daily, if in exchange they would receive their precious 534 grams of barley-rice mixture (and an additional 250 grams per every dependant).
Early this month it was also reported that low-level officials had received new orders requiring them to tighten up residence control, normally executed through so-called “people’s groups”. Each such group consists of 30-50 families living in the same block or same apartment building and is headed by an official whose task is to watch everything in the neighborhood.
The new instructions, obtained by the Good Friends, a well-informed non-governmental organization dealing with North Korea, specify the deviations that are of particular importance: “secretly watching or copying illegal videotapes, using cars for trade, renting out houses or cooking food for sale, making liquors at home”. All these are “anti-socialist activities which must be watched carefully and exterminated”. The struggle to return to Kim Il-sung’s brand of socialism continues.
Still, North Korean authorities are fighting an uphill battle. In a sense they are lucky, since many foreign forces, including their traditional enemy, South Korea, do not really want their system to collapse and thus avoid anything that might promote a revolution. However, the regime is too anachronistic and too inefficient economically, so a great danger for its survival is created by the very existence of the prosperous world just outside its increasingly porous borders.
In the long run, all attempts to maintain a Stalinist society in the 21st century must be doomed. However, the North Korean leaders are fighting to buy time, to enjoy a few additional years of luxurious life (or plain security) for themselves. How long they will succeed remains to be seen.
Dr Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at Kookmin University, Seoul.
Donga
12/6/2006
“The relationship between North Korea and China can be compared to a river that seems calm on the surface but has a great number of uncertainties surging underwater.”
Kurt Campbell, the senior vice president at Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and a think- tank in the U.S., had an interview with this newspaper on December 04. Senior vice president Campbell, renowned as an authority in international securities especially regarding China, said, “The official stance of China is to protect North Korea, but the nation is upset internally at the attitude of North Korea that belittles China and the global society. Without a noticeable change in the attitude of North Korea, China might take steps to reappraise its policies toward North Korea it has maintained over the years.”
―You analyzed in a seminar last month that North Korea will come into possession of nuclear capability targeting China.
“North Korea is feeling threats from many sides. What I meant was that while the major military is aimed at the U.S. across the truce line and Japan, North Korea should be aspiring underneath the surface to have suppressive force against China out of concerns regarding their relationship with China.”
At this point, senior vice president Campbell diagnosed that “North Korea seems determined to become a nuclear nation and will not give up on it” and went on to give his view that “even in case North Korea returns to the six-party round table, it will not show fundamental improvements.”
―How do you view the South Korea-U.S relationship in the present and in the future?
“The relationship between South Korea and the U.S is quite stable at the lower level. The greatest risk to the relationship between South Korea and the U.S. presently is not in the relationship itself but in the domestic politics of South Korea. Uncertainties are being aggravated by questions over where President Roh will take the problems (of the Korean Peninsula).”
―You said the South Korea-U.S relationship is stable at a low level.
“The nuclear testing by North Korea helped compose the relationship between South Korea and the U.S. The replacement of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will also help. He was not a factor conducive to the South Korea-U.S. relationship. I think he looked at South Korea not as a profitable strategic partner but as a pain in the ass. In this aspect it was incidental and ironic that the aim of Secretary Rumsfeld and President Roh, regarding matters such as the transfer of right to control strategies in war, converged at the same point. Of course their motivations diverged greatly. On the other hand the future U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates seems to be a person who shares the opinion that having a closer relationship with South Korea is important.”
―How would you grade the response by related nations toward North Korean nuclear testing?
“I hope to see South Korea, the U.S., and China sending North Korea a concurring message. But what I’m concerned about is whether the government of South Korea did not send a message that “even though the nuclear testing was depressing, it was not unforgivable, and a certain level of business can go on.”
Yonhap
12/6/2006
Byun Duk-kun
Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok returned to South Korea Wednesday after a two-day visit to North Korea aimed at rallying support for a cross-border tourism program criticized by the United States.
The South Korean government’s point man on North Korea arrived in the country’s eastern city of Goseong shortly after crossing the heavily-fortified border with North Korea around 5 p.m.
Lee was the highest-ranking South Korean official to visit the South Korean-developed tourist destination in Mount Geumgang since the communist North tested a nuclear device about two months ago.
The visit was geared towards meeting South Korean officials and businesspeople at the North Korean resort, but it followed Washington’s intensified criticism against the tourism program.
The United States had long opposed the inter-Korean tourism program, but never too explicitly. It asked the Seoul government to halt the country’s cross-border project with the North after Pyongyang conducted its first nuclear weapons test on Oct. 9.
The Mount Geumgang tourism program appears to be “designed to give money to North Korean authorities,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said while traveling here in October.
Hill represents Washington in international negotiations aimed at persuading the North to abandon its nuclear ambitions. The talks are also attended by the two Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.
Seoul remained taciturn on the U.S. demand, only taking what U.S. critics called “eye-washing measures.”
The unification minister, however, said the tourism program must “continue” and “be developed further.”
“We must never take a break from trying to ease tension between the North and South Korea, no matter how difficult the times and conditions are,” the minister said while meeting with reporters at the North Korean resort,
“In that sense, these projects (with North Korea) must continue to be developed and widened,” he added.
Seoul was never expected to halt, let alone suspend, the tourism program, but the minister’s remarks come amid international efforts to punish the North for its nuclear test.
Shortly after the Oct. 9 test, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that prohibited the transfer to North Korea of any financial resources or assets that can benefit the communist nation’s nuclear and weapons of mass destruction programs.
Millions of dollars have been paid to Pyongyang since the Mount Geumgang resort opened in 1998, while Hyundai Asan, the South Korean developer of the resort, regularly pays large amounts of money to the North in the form of admission fees levied on South Korean tourists traveling there.
The South Korean government claims the money is unlikely to be used for the North’s nuclear or WMD programs, though it admits there is no way of knowing for certain.
The U.N. Security Council has yet to decide whether Seoul’s continued, and apparently renewed, support for the Mount Geumgang tourism program runs counter to its North Korea sanctions resolution.
“I believe no one can dispute the positive effects that the Mount Geumgang tourism program and the Kaesong industrial complex project have had on North-South relations,” said Lee.
The unification minister has offered to step down from his Cabinet post and is expected to be replaced next week by Lee Jae-joung, senior vice chairman of the presidential National Unification Advisory Council.
He was scheduled to arrive in Seoul later in the day.
Yonhap
12/6/2006
South Korea is set to announce its participation in a U.S.-led campaign to stop container-borne radioactive materials after refusing to help interdict North Korean ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.
A Foreign Ministry official confirmed Wednesday that Seoul decided to join the International Container Scanning Network, or ICSN.
“The government plans to formally announce the decision later this week,” the official said, asking not to be identified.
The ICSN calls for its members to install state-of-the-art radioactivity detectors at their major ports so customs officials can screen the contents of containers without opening them.
International efforts to curb the flow of nuclear materials have gained more urgency since North Korea conducted a nuclear test in October.
Seoul’s decision to join the ICSN was widely interpreted as designed to offset its limited participation in the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI).
South Korea said last month that it would stay away from any PSI-related activity in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula, citing its unique geopolitical situation. South Korea remains technically at war with the communist North and the two sides are vulnerable to military clashes especially in the poorly-demarcated West Sea.
South Korea described its position in the PSI as “special status,” as it kept the door open for PSI activities in remote areas.
Government officials, however, said the PSI was not considered when it made the decision to join the ICSN, a project still being tested.
Yonhap
12/3/2006
South Korea gave North Korea a record amount of aid in the first 10 months of the year but most of it had been shipped before tension spiked over the communist country’s missile and nuclear tests, a government report showed Sunday.
South Korea has virtually suspended its regular aid shipment to North Korea, mostly fertilizer, since Pyongyang test-launched multiple missiles in July. Its Oct. 9 nuclear test further strained inter-Korean relations.
From January to October, the Seoul government supplied 211 billion won (US$227 million) worth of goods, mostly fertilizer, to North Korea, breaking the previous full-year record of 185.4 billion won in 1995, according to the Unification Ministry report.
In 2005, the Seoul government shipped aid supplies worth 135.9 billion won to the North suffering a chronic food shortage.
More than half of this year’s aid supplies, or worth 141.3 billion won, were shipped in the first half when the government sent 35,000 tons of fertilizers to Pyongyang. The remainder was send between July and October to help flood victims there.
The cumulative value of South Korean aid since 1995 reached 1.2 trillion won as of the end of October, the report said.
Private South Korean donors gave the North 69.4 billion won worth of aid during the January-October period, pushing their cumulative donations since 1995 to 620.1 billion won, it said.
Yonhap
12/2/2006
North Korea completed its crop harvest, and results suggest the country will need at least 1 million tons of food aid from the outside, according to a report released Thursday by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
In “Crop Prospects and Food Situation,” the fourth such report put out by the FAO, North Korea was categorized as a nation with widespread lack of access to food.
“The 2006 cereal output is estimated lower than in the previous year, reflecting floods in July and October in parts of the country,” said the report.
“The total cereal import requirement in 2006/2007, including commercial imports and food aid, is expected to be at least 1 million tons.”
The 2006 harvest season was completed in October, the report said, but food rations for millions of people will remain reduced as a result of a suspension of food aid.
South Korea, on the other hand, was expected to have 3 million tons in cereal stock in 2007, slightly up from 2.8 million tons this year.
Asia Times
(abridged)
11/30/2006
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1718 has had no impact on the economic activity in the remote northeastern corner of North Korea where Russians and Chinese are building transportation infrastructure for future industrial-development projects. As was planned before the nuclear test, the Russians began repairing a dilapidated railway line, while the Chinese continued with their highway-construction project.
There were no delays in the normal operations of the Kumgang (also transliterated Geumgang) project, a joint tourist venture on the border between two Koreas. Every day many hundreds of South Korean tourists travel about 20 kilometers into the North to visit the picturesque mountains and spend a few days there, leaving their currency in the accounts of the North Korean government. The project has always been a major money-earner for the cash-hungry North. The Americans tried to stop Kumgang operations, but the South Koreans refused, and business continued as usual.
It was reported this month that a number of the North Korean workers employed by South Korean companies in Gaesong industrial park exceeded the 10,000 mark. Gaesong industrial park is the largest cooperative venture between two Koreas. It is the place where South Korean capital and technology use cheap North Korean labor to produce internationally competitive stuff – or at least this is what is supposed to be going on there.
In spite of optimistic talk, so far the project has been a money-losing enterprise for the Southerners, and most companies stay in Gaesong only because their government is willing to back them financially. Still, Seoul, even when it talked tough, did not do anything to slow down the project. On the contrary, the Gaesong project is growing fast, and so, one might suspect, are revenues it provides to the Pyongyang regime.
By now it has become patently clear. No international sanction regime against North Korea worthy of its name is in place, and there is no chance that such regime will emerge in future. China, Russia and, above all, South Korea do not want to punish North Korea for going nuclear.
China is not happy about a nuclear North Korea, but probably sees it a lesser evil than a unified Korea that is likely to be under US influence and will perhaps even have US military bases. Beijing does not want this. It also does not want a collapse of another state under communist rule – this might be a bad news for domestic propagandists.
And last but not least, in recent years Chinese companies have moved into North Korea, taking over mining and infrastructure, so such gains need be protected as well. At the same time, the North Korean nukes are not seen by Chinese strategists as an immediate problem: the Chinese assume (correctly, perhaps) that these weapons will never target China and will not be transferred to China’s enemies. So for China, keeping North Korea afloat is a strategic imperative.
Russia is not a major player in the Korean game nowadays, but it has some leverage as a potential “blockade breaker”. Without sincere cooperation from Russia, no efficient sanctions regime will be possible, and such cooperation seems unlikely. Moscow does not want the North Korean regime to collapse. The country’s leader Kim Jong-il is potentially useful for numerous diplomatic combinations, and also as a deterrent against the Americans, who are increasingly seen by President Vladimir Putin’s Moscow as dangerous global bullies.
However, it is South Korea whose policy is decisive in these issues. Indeed, in recent years North Korea was kept afloat by generous Southern aid, with some 500,000 tons of grain and a large amount of other supplies being sent north every year. This aid saved countless lives in the North, but it also contributed to keeping the regime in control.
It has been clear for a decade that South Korea, in spite of all the rhetoric, does not want unification to happen too fast or too soon. The German experience demonstrated how vastly expensive unification might become, and Koreans have good reasons to believe that their situation is much worse than that of Germany. After all, the per capita gross national product in East Germany was roughly half of the West German level, while in the case of North Korea, per capita GNP is less than one-tenth of the South Korean level.
Judging by the experience of the 1990s when the North Korean regime was more isolated than now, economic pressures alone will not necessarily lead to its collapse. During the great famine of the late 1990s, between a half-million and a million people starved to death without causing any inconvenience to the regime. There are no reasons to believe that sanctions would achieve much either, apart from producing another famine and many more deaths.
In contrast, the ongoing exchanges bring to North Korea information about the outside world, and this information is subversive by definition, making more and more people wonder whether something should be done about their country’s political and economic system, so clearly inefficient and anachronistic. Thus the current situation surrounding the so-called “sanctions” might be a rare case when the hypocrisy and duplicity of so-called “collective diplomacy” is doing more good than harm.
Early this month a market riot happened in the remote North Korean city of Hoeryong. Perhaps for the first time since 1945, a large group of North Koreans openly and vocally protested an unpopular decision of the local administration. This was a minor incident, but in the long run it might be more significant than all the meaningless invectives delivered by the well-dressed people in the UN Assembly Hall.
From Yonhap
11/6/2006
Seoul to resume flood aid for N. Korea if separated family reunions restart
South Korea may resume its humanitarian assistance for impoverished North Korea following an improvement in inter-Korean relations, the head of South Korea’s National Red Cross said Monday.
The Red Cross chief’s remarks come amid international efforts to punish the communist nation for its nuclear test on Oct. 9. Pyongyang agreed last week to return to international negotiations over its nuclear weapons program.
“I believe the Red Cross societies of the North and the South would be able to discuss the issue of resuming shipments of (South Korea’s) remaining flood recovery aid to the North once the most desperate humanitarian issue (between the two Koreas), which is the issue of separated family reunions, is resolved,” Han Wan-sang told reporters.
Han’s remarks came partly in response to an alleged offer by North Korea’s No. 2 official Kim Yong-nam to hold Red Cross talks to discuss the resumption of separated family reunions. The offer was made public by a group of legislators and officials from South Korea’s minor opposition Democratic Labor Party (DLP) who visited Pyongyang last week.
North Korea unilaterally called off a scheduled round of the Red Cross-sponsored programs to reunite families separated by the division of the Koreas in July. The cancellation came after Seoul’s suspension of its regular humanitarian assistance, mostly rice and fertilizer, for the communist nation following the North’s launch of seven ballistic missiles earlier that month.
Analysts here believed the North would demand the resumption of Seoul’s humanitarian aid for the communist state in return for holding a new, or delayed, round of separated family reunions as the North Korean official, who serves as president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, was quoted as telling the visiting DLP officials that the Koreas must jointly work to resolve various humanitarian issues between the two.
Han said the reunions must be held without any conditions, also adding that the resumption of his country’s regular economic assistance for the North is a political issue.
He, however, said the sides could discuss resuming at least part of Seoul’s humanitarian assistance to the North at the next round of the separated family reunions when, or if, they are held.
“But issues that can be discussed from a humanitarian perspective can be discussed while pursuing other humanitarian projects,” he said.
The South Korean government pledged to give the one-time flood recovery aid, consisting of some US$50 million worth of rice, medicine and construction equipment, to the North in August, but has delayed its shipments since the North’s Oct. 9 nuclear test.
The Unification Ministry refused to comment on the North’s alleged offer, saying it has yet to receive any official report from the opposition party or an offer from the communist state.
The Koreas have held 14 rounds of separated family reunions since the historic inter-Korean summit in 2000, but over 90,000 people from the South alone remain separated from their loved ones since the end of 1950-53 Korea War.
The countries officially remain in a state of war as the Korean War ended with a cease-fire, not a peace treaty.
Korea Times:
Kim Sue-young
10/26/2006
South Korean broadcasting stations have paid North Korea up to $1 million since 2003 in return for permission to produce programs in the North, a lawmaker said yesterday.
Citing a report of the Ministry of Unification, Rep. Kwon Young-se of the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) said that local broadcasters have been engaged in a price competition, as they pay a large amount of money to the North.
“A total of 10 inter-Korean broadcasting cooperation projects have been approved since 2003,” the lawmaker said. “The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) paid Pyongyang $1 million for the production of a singing contest program in July 2003 and a performance by pop singer Cho Yong-pil in May last year, respectively.”
Those companies have also paid between $500,000 and $800,000 for other television programs on North Korean food or the remains of the Koguryo Kingdom (37 B.C.-A.D. 668), Kwon said.
A ranking official of the Korean People Artist Federation said last September that three major television broadcasters _ KBS, SBS, and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) _ raised the level of the financial support, according to Kwon.
“Minor cable channels that cannot afford to pay the large amount of money don’t even contact North Korea,” the official was quoted as saying. “The government should regulate the soaring prices.”
The lawmaker also quoted an official of the Korea Development Institute complaining of Seoul’s difficulty negotiating with Pyongyang because of the large sum of money.
“Broadcasters gave North Korea a lot of money to attract events for their programs, which made North Korea indifferent to economic cooperation projects,” Kwon said.
