North Korean Economy Watch

According to Yonhap:

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said Tuesday it will help North Korea eradicate pests at forests near ancient tombs.

The Complex of Koguryo tombs, located in the North’s cities of Pyongyang and Nampo, has some 30 individual tombs from the late period of the Koguryo Kingdom, which controlled the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and northeastern China for more than 700 years until 668 A.D.

Read more about the UNESCO World Heritage sites in the DPRK here.

Read the full story here:
UNESCO to help N. Korea’s pest control efforts at ancient tombs
Yonhap
2012-1-24

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Academics from North Korea and Japan have unearthed a large tumulus from the Koguryo period in Pyongyang, providing valuable material for studying the history of ancient East Asia, Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Saturday. About 4.5 km away from the downtown Pyongyang, the tomb was discovered during construction work in Tongsan-dong, the Lelang District of the Koguryo era and is presumed to have been created around the 5th century.

According to the news agency, the mural paintings in the tomb show a man in horn-shaped headgear on horseback, a procession of men holding flags on armored horses, and warriors with swords. The antechamber and main chamber at the back are connected with a narrow passage, while the bones of a man and two women have been found in the back chamber. The tomb has some unique features, including the antechamber’s arched ceilings with three layers of triangular props and the mound created by piling up alternate layers of lime, charcoal and red clay to cover the stone chambers beneath, the report said. The mound is 35 m in diameter and 8 m high.

Pyongyang plans to register the tomb with UNESCO as a World Heritage site. Japanese scholars said the tomb’s murals are comparable to those of Tokhung-ri Tomb in Nampo, South Pyongan Province, which is included in the Complex of Koguryo Tombs inscribed in the World Heritage List in 2004.

The team also found relics offering a glimpse of how sophisticated Koguryo culture was, such as gold and silver ornaments, tiger-shaped pottery, bronze coins and nails for coffins. The celadon candlestick is the first of its kind to be excavated in the North, the report added.

The team consists of researchers with the Archaeological Institute of the North’s Academy of Social Sciences and Japanese scholars sent by Kyoto news agency including Prof. Masahiro Saotome, an archaeologist at the University of Tokyo, and Shigeo Aoki, a Cyber University professor specializing in the preservation of historic remains. Saotome said the tomb “was unearthed in an area where experts believed there would be no Koguryo mural tombs.”

Ahn Hwi-joon, a Korean art historian and professor emeritus at Seoul National University, echoed him saying, “It is the first time that Koguryo tomb murals have been unearthed in the area once controlled by the Chinese Han Dynasty Commander of Lelang. They are especially valuable as they were executed in the late fourth to the fifth centuries, immediately after Koguryo incorporated Lelang.”

Read the full story here:
N.Korean-Japanese Team Finds Koguryo Tomb in Pyongyang
Choson Ilbo
8/16/2010

Koryo Tours has been in the North Korea tour business for many years.  They have helped expand tourism in the DPRK and made three great documentaries in the country: The Game of Their Lives, A State of Mind, and Crossing the Line. 

They offer some interesting new information in their June newsletter:

1. Despite the recent nuclear test and missile launches it is still business as usual–and this is for tourist companies as well as for the various European Embassies in Pyongyang. Koryo has tourists going in almost every week and fully expect the Arirang Mass Games (info) to be going ahead from 10th August to the end of September and maybe into October, as previously confirmed. American tourists are welcomed during this time and tours are showing a high level of interest.

2. New tourism attractions:Koryo Tours has just made trips up and down the Taedong river in central Pyongyang available to tourists for the first time.  Several sizes and speeds of vessels are available for short jaunts in the city centre as well as longer cruises to the suburban scenic spot of Mangyongdae. They plan to add these trips to many of their tours.

3. Charity Projects: In addition to Koryo Tour’s long running relationships with the Rotarian Society and Love North Korean Children they have just launched an appeal to raise money for a couple of charitable projects in the DPRK, one to purchase the first ever shipment of Braille dictionaries for blind children, and one to buy playground equipment for orphanages. More details on these projects can be found on their website if you can help then please let them know.

4. Mt. Myohyang named UNESCO site: UNESCO recently awarded the Mt Myohyang area in the DPRK the status of Biosphere Reserve. The area is a sacred site as, according to legend, it was the home of King Tangun, forefather of the Korean people. The scenic mountainous area rises nearly 2,000 metres above sea level. Its spectacular rocks and cliffs provide a habitat for 30 endemic plant species; 16 plant species that are globally threatened and 12 animal species that are also endangered. A wide variety of medicinal herbs also grows in the site.  For tourists, it is well known for the International Friendship Exhibition which is a series of subterranean halls housing the gifts which were given to the 2 leaders by people from all over the world.

If you would like to receive the Koryo Tours newsletter, visit their home page and click on the newsletter link in the upper right corner of the page.

Kyodo News
4/20/2007

About 16 million children and adults have been immunized against measles in North Korea in one of the fastest responses to a major outbreak of the disease, it was revealed Friday.

The mass vaccination was organized by the U.N. Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and North Korea after the government asked for help in February.

According to the international organizations, the immunization campaign was done in two phases, with 6 million children aged 6 months to 15 years vaccinated last month and 10 million people aged 16 to 45 years immunized earlier this month.

The campaign was arranged following the appearance of several cases of measles in North Korea last November. By February this year two adults and two children had died and more than 3,600 had been infected.

Measles had not been reported in North Korea before this outbreak since 1992, according to a joint press release from the international organizations involved, and many health workers in the country were unfamiliar with the disease.

“This was a remarkable example of good cooperation between different organizations,” said Jaap Timmer, the International Federation’s head of delegation in North Korea.

“The Red Cross mobilized more than 15,000 of its volunteers to visit families and explain the importance and benefits of the vaccination campaign.”

Measles is spread by contact with fluid from an infected person’s nose or mouth and is highly contagious. Symptoms include fever and a rash.

Sending vaccines and syringes to North Korea cost about $6 million, the press release said.

Yonhap
12/8/2006

A South Korean textbook publisher has donated a second-hand rotary press to North Korea to help the communist state publish school textbooks, Seoul-based UNESCO Korea said Friday.

“North Korea has requested that UNESCO assist with textbook printing presses and paper since 2000, and (South Korea’s) Daehan Printing and Publishing Co. expressed its intention to make the donation,” a UNESCO Korea official said.

The press was used in printing textbooks for South Korea’s elementary and secondary school students until 2000, the official said.

The donation is the second project UNESCO Korea has sought to help North Korean students. In 2002, UNESCO and Daehan Pulp Co. provided the North with 200 tons of paper for middle-school English textbooks there.

Yonhap
China won’t unilaterally seek World Heritage status for Mt. Paekdu: Chinese Amb
11/17/2006

China’s top envoy to South Korea said Friday that his country will consult with a concerned country before seeking UNESCO World Heritage status for Mount Paekdu on its border with North Korea.

The remarks by Ning Fukui came amid growing concern that China has taken steps to solidify its historical claim over the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula, nearly half of which is in Chinese territory.

Joong Ang Daily
China tries to ease Paektu concern
11/18/2006

China’s top envoy to South Korea has said his country will consult with a concerned country, apparently referring to North Korea, before seeking World Heritage status for Mount Paektu on its border with the North, embassy officials said Friday. The World Heritage list is maintained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The remarks by Ning Fukui came amid growing concern that China has taken steps to solidify its historical claim over the highest peak on the Korean Peninsula, nearly half of which is in Chinese territory.

“Even though China will put Changbaishan on the World Heritage list, it will do so in consultation with a concerned country,” the ambassador said in a speech during an academic forum at Seoul National University on Thursday, using the Chinese name for the mountain.

He did not directly mention North Korea during the speech, but has previously suggested several times that North Korea is the concerned country on the Mount Paektu issue.

In September, Beijing issued a directive to about a dozen hotels operating there, including four run by South Koreans and one by an ethnic Korean resident of Japan, to close their businesses and leave by the year’s end. The move was part of an initiative to make the Paektu area a World Heritage site nominated by Beijing, critics said.

In related news, northeastern Jilin Province, which administers the Chinese part of the mountain, unveiled an ambitious plan Friday that would make the mountain a 5A scenic spot, the highest of China’s tourism zone levels. China is bidding to host the 2018 Winter Olympics on its side of the mountain.

UNESCO has listed a series of Koguryo burial sites on the world heritage list.

Here is a link to the list approved in 2004 (with coordinates for Google Earth):
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1091/multiple=1&unique_number=1269

Here is a list of accepted and “wait-listed” projects:
http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/kp

Here is a nice video of the sites on the UNESCO web page:
mms://stream.unesco.org/culture/nhk/north_korea.wmv

Here is a story in the BBC about North Korea’s additions to the World Heritage List.

Here is another great resource about the history of the move in the Korea Foundation Newsletter.

Apparently the job of overseeing these tombs is in the hands of the Management Bureau for Cultural Property Conservation (MBCPC) in the Korean Cultural Preservation Agency (KCPA)

Asia Times
Michael Rank
11/18/2005

Chinese companies are venturing into North Korea, and both countries hope to reap the rewards. North Korea’s heavy industry is in a desperate state, but Pyongyang is hoping that Chinese investment will come to its rescue, while China sees the North as a convenient source of minerals, from coal to gold.

China’s increasing investment also means that North Korea is casting off its rigid juche, or self-sufficiency, policy and overcoming its deep historical suspicion of its giant northern neighbor.

Border trade in consumer items from televisions to beer has been booming since the 1990s, but now the focus is turning to the industrial sector. Deals are being reached on mines, railways and leasing a North Korean port to a Chinese company, but North Korea is notoriously secretive and few details have been published outside China. The deals include an agreement to “completely open” North Korea’s railways to a Hong Kong millionaire, as well as moves to revive ailing coal, iron and gold mines.

Tumen-Chongjin rail link rumored
Hong Kong businessman Qian Haomin is reported to have reached a US$3 billion deal with North Korea that also involves the Chinese Railways Ministry building a new rail link between the Chinese border city of Tumen and the North Korean port of Chongjin. The agreement marks an end to long-running tension between the Chinese and North Korean state railway authorities over North Korea’s retention of up to 2,000 Chinese goods wagons and reluctance to repay loans.

The Hong Kong news magazine Yazhou Zhoukan recently reported that these issues had been resolved and that Qian’s grandly named company Hong Kong International has agreed to provide the North Koreans with 500 to 1,000 freight wagons. Qian told the magazine that “after six months of effort, there are now hopes of solving the railway transport bottleneck between China and North Korea”, and this would help to integrate the economy of the entire northeast Asian region.

Qian’s ambitions are not limited to railways. Not only has he expressed interest in investing in a North Korean coal mine, but Yazhou Zhoukan also reported that he hopes to set up a special economic zone in the North Korean border city of Sinuiju. He has clearly not been deterred by the unhappy case of Yang Bin, a Dutch-Chinese multi-millionaire who was made head of a similar development zone in 2002. Before Yang could take up his post, he was arrested by the Chinese authorities for tax evasion and other economic crimes and jailed for 18 years.

Qian, aged 41, is originally from the southern Chinese province of Guangdong and moved to Hong Kong in 1993. He has been involved in North Korea since the early 1990s, and has apparently established a fruitful relationship with Prime Minister Pak Pong-ju. He has said that “to invest in North Korea has been my dream” because three of his uncles fought in the Korean war; one was killed and one was seriously wounded. The Hong Kong investor has signed a plastics, tire and battery recycling agreement with North Korea and has expressed interest in investing in the country’s largest anthracite coal mine, which now produces only 1 million tons a year, compared with 3 million tons at its peak.

Tonghua Steel looks North
Meanwhile, state-owned Tonghua Steel or Tonggang, based in the northeastern city of Tonghua, expects to sign a 7 billion yuan ($865 million), 50-year exploration rights deal with the Musan iron ore mine, said to be North Korea’s largest iron deposit. Tonggang, Jilin province’s largest steelmaker, hopes to receive 10 million tons of iron ore a year from Musan as part of its plans to increase steel production from a projected 5.5 million tons in 2007 to 10 million tons in 2010.

The planned deal reflects China’s immense and growing appetite for steel. Although the country already produces 30% of global output, it is heavily reliant on imports and is concerned about rising prices. A Jilin provincial trade official said importing iron ore from North Korea was attractive because of low transport costs, which would increase Tonghua’s competitiveness.

Tonggang officials say they expect the deal to be signed soon, and that of the 7 billion yuan (US$866.1 million) pledged, 2 billion yuan will be invested in transport and power lines. Company president An Fengcheng said agreement had already been reached with China Development Bank on 800 million yuan worth of soft loans and 1.6 billion yuan of hard loans, while “the remaining investment will come in in stages”.

Rajin deal to give China Sea of Japan access
China’s export boom is one of the great economic success stories of the past 25 years, but it is constrained by a lack of suitable ports. In particular, the country lacks a port on the Sea of Japan, but after attempted deals with Russia came to nought, the inland Chinese border city of Hunchun has reached an agreement for a 50-year lease with the nearby North Korean port of Rajin.

The ceding of Rajin, an ice-free port with a handling capacity of 3 million tons a year, will give access to the sea to inland areas of northeast China which, at present, must send freight long distances by rail to the port of Dalian on the Bohai gulf. The agreement also provides for the construction of a 5-10 square kilometer industrial zone and a 67 kilometer highway, and envisages that the Rajin area will become a processing zone for Chinese goods which will then be re-exported to southeast China.

A Hunchun economic official stressed that the leasing of the port is “a business deal and not a government deal”. The South China Morning Post reported from Hunchun that the man behind the deal is Fan Yingsheng, a property developer from Hunan province who put up half the initial capital investment of 60 million euros (US$70 million). The sum could not be denominated in dollars for political reasons.

The paper quoted the United Nations Development Program as saying this sum would only be enough to build the road to Rajin, and far more would be needed to rejuvenate the port. The deadline for final agreement is December 30, 2006, and it remains to be seen if a final deal will be reached in time.

An unusually frank North Korean trade official noted the possible pitfalls as well as the advantages of such deals. Kim Myong-chol, head of the Korean Council for the Promotion of Foreign Trade, said the deals would have to involve importing “highly advanced technology and equipment”, and added: “These agreements are not easy to put into actual practice and can run into many problems so far as funding and bilateral cooperation are concerned.”

“Because the amount of money involved in these cooperative projects is quite large and [North] Korea will be investing ports, roads, etc, there are rather great risks in such investment, and in addition because the domestic Korean economy and its policies, laws and regulations, etc, are unclear, many problems are likely to arise in carrying out these plans,” Kim told a Chinese website.

Coal and gold
Such concerns may have been in the mind of the president of China Minmetals Corp, Zhou Zhongshu, when he signed “an agreement on setting up a joint venture in the coal sector of the DPRK” [North Korea]. The deal was signed in October when Chinese deputy premier Wu Yi visited Pyongyang, and is said to be the first of its kind. North Korean Vice Minister for Foreign Trade Ri Ryong-nam urged the Chinese side to “provide advanced technology and set up a good model for other joint ventures and cooperation between the two countries”.

North Korea also has substantial gold deposits, and a Chinese company plans to invest in a “semi-paralyzed” North Korean gold mine and refine the metal at its base in Zhaoyuan in Shandong province. Guoda Gold Co Ltd reached a preliminary agreement last year with Sangnongsan gold mine, which is said to have gold deposits totaling at least 150 tons.

Guoda deputy manager Lin Deming said his company was attracted to North Korea because of low labor, energy and transport costs as well as the “highly favorable” investment terms offered, but gave no details. Chinese investment in North Korea is certainly increasing, but final agreement on a number of deals has not yet been reached, and political factors such as uncertainty over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program may well discourage Chinese companies from moving too fast.

BBC
7/1/2004

A complex of ancient tombs across North Korea and China has been recognised by the UN’s World Heritage List.

Two sites from the Koguryo dynasty – one in each country – are recognised for their special cultural value. It is North Korea’s first entry on the list.

The UN’s cultural body, Unesco, says it is trying to balance the bias towards Western sites on the list so far.

Forty-eight sites are being considered for the list by the World Heritage Committee at a meeting in China.

Political agenda

The annual meeting, where the sites are being discussed, is taking place Suzhou and will last until 7 July.

An official said the final choice should be limited to 30, but political considerations may mean it exceeds that.