North Korean Economy Watch

UPDATE: According to Yonhap, the aid shipment has left Virginia:

The latest food aid from the United States to North Korea, comprised of 25,000 tons of corn and other grains, has made its departure from the U.S. state of Virginia, a U.S. radio station reported Saturday.

The Mary-Ann Hudson, a U.S. cargo vessel carrying 20,000 tons of corn and 5,000 tons of beans, left from Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday and is scheduled to arrive at North Korea’s western port of Nampo on Nov. 18, Radio Free Asia reported, citing a spokesperson of World Vision.

In June, the U.S. started shipping the first batch of some 500,000 tons of food aid, which it pledged to deliver to the North over a year-long period, through the World Food Programme (WFP).

Previous shipments were organized by the WFP, but the latest round is conducted jointly by relief organization World Vision and four other relief agencies, according to the spokesperson.

Since the late 1990s, when an estimated 1-3 million North Koreans starved to death, the North has prioritized its agricultural sector while accepting foreign aid to help feed its population of 23 million people. (Yonhap, Latest U.S. grain shipment to N.K. departs, 10-19-2008)

ORIGINAL POST: Press release from Mercy Corps (10/16/2008):

A fourth shipment of U.S. food aid for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea sails this week to be distributed by five humanitarian agencies delivering urgent assistance to North Koreans suffering from severe food shortages. The commodities are scheduled to arrive before winter.

More than 894,000 of North Korea’s most vulnerable people – mainly children, pregnant and nursing mothers, and the elderly – will receive daily rations from this shipment of 25,060 metric tons of bulk corn and soy. The distributions are conducted in two North Korean provinces, led by Mercy Corps with World Vision as co-lead. Samaritan’s Purse, Global Resource Services and Christian Friends of Korea are the partner agencies.

“This new shipment of food will bring critical sustenance to many hungry people in North Korea,” said Nancy Lindborg, president of Mercy Corps. “We are very pleased with our success in getting food to needy people for the past few months, and are confident that efficient food distributions will continue into the winter.”

On arrival at the western port of Namp’o in the latter half of November, the food will be rationed to recipients through public distribution centers, orphanages, school, hospitals and nurseries in Chagang and North Pyongan Provinces. The program, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) office of Food for Peace, is the first U.S. food assistance program for North Korea since 2000.

“With North Korea’s people in a precarious situation facing low food stocks and the onset of a harsh winter, our primary concern is the country’s most vulnerable groups, children and mothers especially,” said George Ward, senior vice president of international programs for World Vision in the U.S. “We are moving urgently to ensure this assistance reaches those in most need at a critical time.”

The NGO partnership is on track to distribute 100,000 metric tons of the food aid during the year-long program, reaching 895,000 people, while the World Food Programme (WFP) is distributing another 400,000 metric tons in U.S. assistance. This week’s shipment is the first one entirely allotted for the NGO partnership to dispense.

The lack of food in North Korea became severe this year as floods devastated harvests, China erected barriers to food exports, and prices skyrocketed globally for staples such as rice and maize. In a June 2008 assessment, a team of experts from the partner agencies confirmed findings of food shortages and acute needs in North Korea. Malnourishment was prevalent, rations were reduced, and food stocks were dwindling. Separately, the WFP projected a shortage of 1.66 million metric tons of food, relative to the population’s needs.

The U.S. food assistance program includes clear provisions for monitoring distributions and conducting ongoing needs assessments. The partnership of humanitarian agencies has a staff of 16 based in the DPRK for the duration of the program to monitor activities continually and conduct random visits to distribution points.

UPDATE 2: Below are a list of materials from the US Department of State web site related to the DPRK’s list removal:

1. Existing Sanctions and Reporting Provisions Related to North Korea (thorough, but does not mention that the DPRK never obtained MFN or NTR status with the US, making it subject to the higher column 2, Smoot-Hawley, tarrifs.

2. Briefing on North Korea With Special Envoy for the Six-Party Talks Ambassador Sung Kim, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Sean McCormack, Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Paula DeSutter, and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Patricia McNerney.

3. U.S.-DPRK Agreement on Denuclearization Verification Measures.

4. U.S.-North Korea Understandings on Verification

UPDATE 1: Since being removed from the list, it is now easier for the DPRK to obtain avian flu vaccinations from the US:

Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated “state sponsors of terrorism.”

The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.

Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan may not get the vaccines unless they apply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to the discretion and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations – Iran, Cuba and Sudan – also are subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.

Under normal circumstances it would take at least six weeks to approve export licenses for any vaccine on the list, said Thomas Monath, who formerly headed a CIA advisory group on ways to counter biological attacks. All such decisions would follow negotiations at a “very high level” of government.

That could makes it harder to contain an outbreak of bird flu among chickens in, say, North Korea, which is in the region hardest hit by the virus. Sudan and Iran already have recorded cases of the virus in poultry and Syria is surrounded by affected countries. Cuba, like all nations, is vulnerable because the disease is delivered by migratory birds.(Associated Press)

ORIGINAL POST:
As reported in the Associated Press Saturday morning:

North Korea has agreed to all U.S. nuclear inspection demands and the Bush administration responded Saturday by removing the communist country from a terrorism blacklist. The breakthrough is intended to salvage a faltering disarmament accord before President Bush leaves office in January.

“Every single element of verification that we sought going in is part of this package,” State Department Sean McCormack said at a a rare weekend briefing.

North Korea will allow atomic experts to take samples and conduct forensic tests at all of its declared nuclear facilities and undeclared sites on mutual consent. The North will permit experts to verify that it has told the truth about transfers of nuclear technology and an alleged uranium program.

Verifying North Korea’s nuclear proliferation will be a serious challenge. This is the most secret and opaque regime in the entire world,” said Patricia McNerney, assistant secretary for international security and nonprofileration.

Proponents of de-listing say it is an important step in accomplishing the goals of the six-party talks which are ultimately aimed at realizing a denuclearized Korean peninsula.  Critics of this agreement claim that it addresses only the DPRK’s plutonium program while ignoring nuclear proliferation and uranium enrichment.  

North Korea stepped up the pressure this week barring IAEA inspectors from the DPRK’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon:

North Korea “today informed International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that effective immediately access to facilities at Yongbyon would no longer be permitted,” IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire said today in an e-mail. The country “has informed the IAEA that our monitoring activities would no longer be appropriate.”

The demand that inspectors leave the whole complex, which is the source of the country’s weapons-grade plutonium, followed a Sept. 24 instruction that monitors quit the reprocessing plant. The new orders will prevent UN personnel from seeing whether North Korea is removing spent uranium fuel rods from cold-water holding tanks. Spent uranium can be turned into plutonium.

IAEA inspectors will remain in the town of Yongbyon until ordered to leave by North Korean authorities, the agency said. (Bloomberg)

UPDATE: According to Reuters, “North Korea said on Sunday it would resume taking apart its plutonium-producing nuclear plant and allow in inspectors in response to a U.S. decision to remove it from a terrorism blacklist and salvage a faltering nuclear deal.”

Despite these recent developments, or maybe because of them, the Bush administration quickly negotiated a de-listing agreement with Pyongyang and spent the last few days selling it to other governments involved in the six-party talks. Though South Korea supported the move, the Japanese government was divided.  Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa (a North Korea hard-liner) called the move “extremely regrettable” as Japan was using US terrorism de-listing as leverage to discover the whereabouts of kidnapped Japanese citizens.  This leverage is now gone since the next president of the US will not likely go through the effort of adding the DPRK to the list again.  Other members of the Japanese government, however, believe there will not be any resolution to this issue until the nuclear issue is resolved. 

De-listing marks the end of the second of three phases agreed to in the six-party talks.  The third stage includes completely dismantling Yongbyon and ending atomic development on the Korean peninsula.  This is likely to be even more difficult than the previous stages. (Bloomberg)

De-listing, however, carries more political than economic significance.  According to the State Department web site (here) countries are added to the list for the following reasons:

Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism are designated pursuant to three laws: section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act (which expred in August 2001), section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act (wikipedia), and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act. Taken together, the four main categories of sanctions resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.

Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors. Currently there are five countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

As discussed before (here and here), the DPRK still faces a myriad of legal barriers which restrict it from accessing global trade and financial markets, including the US Column 2 tariffs (Smoot-Hawley Tariffs), US Treasury sanctions, bilateral Japanese sanctions (renewed on Friday), and recent UN resolutions 1695 and 1718.  In other words, the DPRK does not have much to gain financially from de-lisitng.

Here is the initial executive order to begin de-listing.  Now that the US terrorism list is one country shorter, who remains? Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan.

Read the full article here:
N Korea off US blacklist after nuke inspection deal
Associated Press (via Washington Post)
Matthew Lee
10/11/2008

N. Korea Removed From U.S. List of Terror Sponsors
Bloomberg
James Rowley and Viola Gienger
10/11/2008

(The Wilson Center’s North Korean International Documentation Project (NKIDP) does innovative historical work collecting, translating, comparing, and analyzing records kept on the DPRK in the archives of formerly (and some currenty) communist countries.  They recently held an innovative conference where they brough in period policy makers to discuss and comment on these archival records.)

NKIDP publishes document reader from international conference “Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula: 1968-1969”
September 8-9, 2008

Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula: 1968-1969 focused on the two tumultuous years which saw the capture of the U.S. Navy’s intelligence ship USS Pueblo by the DPRK, the North Korean attempt to assassinate ROK President Park Chunghee with a cross-border commando raid on the Blue House, and numerous other provocative incidents.

The conference’s document reader—a 1200 page collection of newly declassified documents from South Korean, American, and former communist bloc archives–is the most comprehensive collection of primary source materials on US-ROK-DPRK relations during the late 1960s ever assembled, and it is now available for download free of charge from NKIDP.

Armed with this document reader, scholars from around the world, and former policy-makers from the United States, South Korea, and the former communist bloc gathered at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington for two days of discussions.

These discussions gave historians the opportunity to interact with the very officials whose reports and memoranda comprised the document reader, and will result in a more nuanced understanding of US-ROK-DPRK relations during the late 1960s.

The DPRK’s recent efforts to reconstruct the Yongbyon 5MW nuclear reactor seem to have brought implementation of the “second” Agreed Framework to a halt, though it was already behind schedule.  This week the US sent Chris Hill to Pyongyang to try and rescue the process which is hung up on verification protocol.   The North claims to have sufficiently declared their nuclear capabilities and believe they should be removed from the US list of state sponsors of terror.  The US does not believe this condition has been met and seeks to establish a protocol to verify if the North’s declaration is accurate.

Japan is also set to extend sanctions (due to expire) on the DPRK.  According to Bloomberg:

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party decided to extend sanctions against North Korea for six months after their Oct. 13 expiration date, Jiji Press reported.

LDP lawmakers agreed to extend the sanctions because North Korea took steps to reactivate its nuclear program and made little progress in an investigation into Japanese nationals abducted by North Korean agents, Jiji reported.

Prime Minister Taro Aso’s Cabinet is likely to endorse the extension by Oct. 10., the Japanese wire service said.

The sanctions include a ban on North Korean imports and the entry of North Korean ships into Japanese ports. The extension will be the fourth since sanctions began after North Korea’s October 2006 nuclear test, Jiji said.

Just as the DPRKs hopes of restoring/establishing relations with Japan and the US start to dim, however, they have reached out to South Korea, with whom political relations had recently gone sour due to the South’s policy change from unsupervised aid provision under the “sunshine policy” to a quid-pro-quo relationship under a “policy of mutual benefits and common prosperity“.  Additionally, the fatal shooting of a South Korean tourist in Kumgangsan led to a deterioration in cooperation between the two governments and suspension of the inter-Korean project (a cash cow for the North).

How much was the Sunshine Policy worth to the North?  South Korean GNP lawmaker Jin Yeong, who analzed data submitted by the Unification Ministry and the Export-Import Bank of Korea, claims that the Kim and Roh administrations oversaw the transfer of 8.38 trillion South Korean Won in aid and loans since 1998.

Taking office in February 2003 after the second North Korean nuclear crisis emerged in September 2002, Roh doled out 5.68 trillion won to Pyongyang over his five-year term, double that of his predecessor Kim (2.70 trillion won).

Kim and Roh gave to North Korea 2.4 trillion won for building light-water reactors and in food aid; 2.5 trillion won to pin the price of rice aid to that of the global market; 2.8 trillion won for other aid including fertilizer; and 696 billion won in aid from advocacy groups and provincial governments.

In 2003, South Korean aid to the North reached a high of 1.56 trillion won. Then after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il declared that his country had gone nuclear in 2005, the Roh administration sent 1.48 trillion won to the North.

Jin said, “South Korea gave a loan with rice first in 2000. Payments on the loan are deferred for 10 years. Thus, we are to receive the first repayment installment in 2010. But most of the 2.4 trillion won in loans seem irrecoverable.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers Korea audited the fiscal 2007 accounts of Seoul`s inter-Korean cooperation funds, saying, “Considering the characteristics of the North Korean government, grave uncertainty exists over the possibility of redeeming the loans given to the regime. The ultimate outcome depends heavily on the conditions around the Korean Peninsula.”

Since President Lee Myung-bak took office this year, exchanges between the two Koreas have been rare. Still, aid to the light-water reactor and the Gaesong industrial complex projects and civilian donations have continued, amounting to a combined 211.3 billion won. (Donga Ilbo)

It appears the Russians are doing their part to bring the North and South together through a project they can all agree on—building a natural gas pipeline from Russia to South Korea via the DPRK:

South Korea plans to import $90 billion of natural gas from Russia via North Korea, with which it shares one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders, to reduce its reliance on more expensive cargoes arriving by sea.

State-run Korea Gas Corp. signed a preliminary agreement with OAO Gazprom, Russia’s largest energy company, to import 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas over 30 years starting in 2015, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in a statement. The accord was signed in Moscow during President Lee Myung Bak’s three-day visit that began yesterday.

Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller said after talks today between Lee and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that the exact delivery route hasn’t been determined and that shipments could begin as early as 2015.

“Russia suggested a pipeline via North Korea, which is expected to be more economical than other possible routes,” the minister said in a news briefing. “Russia will contact the North to discuss this.”

“Transporting gas through North Korea could be risky for South Korea,” said Kim Jin Woo, a senior research analyst at Korea Energy Economics Institute. “But the project will ease tensions on the Korean peninsula if Russia successfully persuades North Korea” to accept the plan.

North Korea could earn $100 million a year from the gas- pipeline project, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said.

“Russia will supply the fuel in the form of LNG or compressed natural gas if negotiations with North Korea do not work out,” according to the ministry’s statement. South Korea and Russia will sign a final agreement in 2010 when a study on the route is completed.

South Korea is turning to Russia, holder of the world’s biggest proven gas reserves, as it faces intensifying competition for energy resources from China and Japan. Asia’s fourth-largest economy depends on gas for 16 percent of its power generation.

Under the agreement, a pipeline to South Korea will be laid via North Korea from gas fields on Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East. The pipeline would initially carry 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year, or about 20 percent of South Korea’s annual consumption. The cost of the gas link’s construction is estimated at $3 billion, the ministry said.

Read the full articles here:
South Korea Seeks $90 Billion of Russian Natural Gas
Bloomberg
Shinhye Kang
9/29/2008

Liberal Gov`ts Gave W8.38 Bln to North Korea`
Donga Ilbo
9/30/2008

I have updated the list of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports published on North Korea and posted them here.  I have also added a hyperlink under “pages” on the menu tab to the right.

Updates include:
US Assistance to North Korea: July 31, 2008
North Korean Ballistic Missile Threat: January 24, 2008
North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program: January 21, 2008
North Korea’s Abduction of Japanese Citizens and the Six-Party Talks: March 19, 2008
The Kaesong North-South Industrial Complex: February 14, 2008
The North Korean Economy: Leverage and Policy Analysis: August 26, 2008

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)

UPDATE:  (Reuters) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Japan that Washington would not remove North Korea from a US list of state sponsors of terrorism on the initial deadline of Monday, Japan’s foreign minister said.

ORGINAL POST: Marcus Noland comments in a Newsweek International op-ed how recent US policy changes towards North Korea (delisting the DPRK as a state sponsor of terror and exempting sanctions under the Trading with the Enemy Act) amount to very little:

Lifting the trade restrictions will have a minimal impact. North Korea will remain one of a few countries that does not have normal trade relations with the United States, meaning its exports will continue to be subjected to punitive tariffs of up to 90 percent.

Removing North Korea from the terrorism list means that Washington can now legally support it for membership in international financial organizations such as the World Bank. But the White House is under no obligation to actually do so. North Korea also remains excluded from US government programs that encourage trade and investment.

North Korea’s declaration will trigger a reconvening of the Six-Party Talks, which includes China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia. The inadequate nature of the declaration guarantees there will be yet another round of negotiations in which North Korea will reveal a bit more in return for further concessions. It is no accident that up to 50,000 metric tons of US food aid is expected to arrive in North Korea early this month. 

Writing in 2004 (yet relevant today), Marcus Noland wrote about these issues in depth.  Below are excerpts from his op-ed on US tariffs:

US importers of DPRK products are required to obtain prior approval from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets, certifying that the products were not produced by North Korean entities designated as having engaged in missile proliferation. Subject to this condition, approval is routine. US government officials report that they receive only a handful of such requests each year. Their impression is that business conditions in the DPRK pose a greater impediment to bilateral trade than the regulatory regime.

…

So, at present, with the exception of military-related products, there are few specific legal restrictions on the ability of Americans to export to or invest in the DPRK. Imports are subject to a prior approval process, but this is based on a transparent and narrowly delineated certification requirement.

Yet there is little trade between the United States and the DPRK. North Korea is among the few countries that the United States does not grant normal trade relations (NTR) status to, and North Korean exports are subject to the so-called column 2 tariff rates established by the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. These tariffs tend to be the highest on labor-intensive products such as garments, in which North Korea is conceivably competitive. Though their incidence is an accident of history, and not an intentional slap, the column 2 tariffs represent a serious potential impediment to trade. Some countries, notably China, have successfully exported to the United States despite being subject to the higher column 2 tariffs (though even China eventually gained NTR status on a year-to-year basis). Most countries that have recently obtained permanent NTR, such as China, have done so through the World Trade Organization (WTO) accession process. The DPRK has shown no interest in joining the WTO.

This disinterest is unfortunate. The United States does not grant the DPRK quotas under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA), a worldwide network of bilateral trade quotas on textiles and apparel (due to expire in 2005), and WTO accession could aid the DPRK in this regard. In the case of the similarly diplomatically problematic Burmese government, the US government found it politically easier to accept an increase in Burmese exports to the United States than to negotiate publicly a textile agreement under WTO auspices with the repressive regime. WTO membership has its privileges. In any event, the DPRK is one of the rare countries that chronically do not fill their MFA quotas in Europe, where there are no sanctions, suggesting that the problem lies in DPRK’s inability to compete, not in trade barriers.

However, should the DPRK obtain NTR status, the United States would likely classify it as a nonmarket economy (NME) and subject it to onerous antidumping rules on the Chinese template. The point is that improved diplomatic relations is no panacea—the United States can be protectionist on purely economic grounds, regardless of politics.

Conversely, the United States trades with some low-income countries preferentially, unilaterally granting them limited tariff-free access through the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), subject to standards concerning workers’ rights, intellectual property protection, and drug trafficking. Given North Korea’s disregard for internationally accepted labor standards, it is inconceivable that the United States would grant North Korea GSP privileges under current practices, even if diplomatic relations were normalized. Yet China, which has never received GSP privileges, vividly demonstrates that it is quite possible to prosper without such advantages.

Today, internal conditions and practices in North Korea, not legal restrictions, greatly impede bilateral trade. However, with sufficient reform and improvement in competitiveness, a broad range of policy issues would become increasingly relevant. In this regard, DPRK accession to the WTO would be advantageous. In the meantime, rather than complaining about US policy, North Korean officials would be better served by redoubling their reform efforts.

For more information, read the full articles below:
Partially True Confessions: How Big is the North Korea Deal?
Marcus Noland, Peterson Institute
Newsweek (Link via the Peterson Institute)
7/7/2008

The Legal Framework of US–North Korea Trade Relations
Op-ed in JoongAng Ilbo, via the Peterson Institute web site.
Marcus Noland
4/27/2004

NKeconWatch blogged earlier about the US-based organizations permitted to enter the DPRK and distribute US humanitarian relief.  A list of those organizations can be found here.

Number three on the list, Samaritan’s Purse, is headed by “US religionist” Franklin Graham, son of Rev. Billy Graham, who just arrived in Pyongyang for a 4-day humanitarian relief tour.  Franklin visited the DPRK once before, in 2000 according to KCNA, and met with Kang Yong Sop, chairman of the central committee of the Korean Christian Federation, Paek Nam Sun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kim Kye Gwan, vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Kim Yong Dae, vice-president of the presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and delivered a sermon at Pyongyang’s Pongsu Protestant Church. 

Since Franklin’s mother spent 1934 living in Pyongyang, the family seems to have taken a special interest in the DPRK.  In addition to the relief they are distributing now, Samaritan’s Purse chartered a 747 cargo jet from Charlotte to deliver $8.3 million in medicine and other emergency supplies in August of 2007. It was the first private flight directly from the U.S. to North Korea since the Korean War.

Graham’s organization has been posting information on his trip here and here.  Greta Van Sustern has been posting video here: hospital visit (the most informative), monument 1, monument 2, Grand People’s Study House, Mass Games (most inaccurate), Mr. Graham’s work, taking off from Sunan Airport (interesting), Franklin Graham video 1, Video 2, and interview transcript.

Read more here:
Evangelist Franklin Graham to preach in North Korea
McClatchy Newspapers
Tim Funk
7/31/2008

I had never heard of fellow American Zang Gi Hong, the first US citizen naturalized from the DPRK, until a few days ago when a colleague relayed his story to me.  I have been unable to find much information on him via the Internet, except from one article (here) and the Google archive version (here). 

Excerpts from the article:

It was Vienna, Austria, in late December of 1956. Two months earlier, heroic Hungarians next door to the east had erupted against their Soviet oppressors, and for ten glorious days Hungary was in Hungarian hands.

The Kremlin feared that one satellite turned into a shooting star could infect and unravel their whole communist empire. The Red Army rolled back into Hungary with 200,000 troops and 2,000 tanks and flattened the uprising. Hordes of Hungarians fled west to freedom in Austria.

…

After two years at the University of Budapest this young “enemy” soldier began to view communism not as a submissive North Korean but more as a repressed Western European. When the fighting started, he and 200 other North Koreans helped the Freedom Fighters.

Hungarian youths had not yet had military training. The North Koreans knew how to work every piece of captured and donated communist ordnance, from a hand grenade to a tank!

After the Soviet putdown of the uprising, special squads of Soviet troops helped the Hungarian communist police round up every Korean in Budapest. It’s hard to disguise a Korean in Budapest. Of the 200 young Koreans, only four made it to freedom. The others were shipped back to certain doom in North Korea.

When he and I and a young Hungarian woman interpreter went to the American Embassy the next day, I would have bet even money that President Eisenhower would send the Columbine (His presidential plane, before they thought of Air Force One) over to Vienna to take him and me both back to America. I was stomp-down certain they’d find a quick way to let him into America.

We were led into an upstairs office at the Embassy and I started telling the story to the official behind the desk. Do you know how a comic feels when the laughter doesn’t come through early in the act? Or when the young woman arranges for her hand to be unholdable when you reach out? That’s the feeling I got early in the narrative.

The Embassy official looked on like a zombie. No comments. No questions. If there’d been a little strip-screen across his forehead, it would have read “Non-Reacting!”

Even absent the euphoria of the Hungarian Revolution, as you read this I expect you to feel what I felt. When I finished this incredibly fortunate story for our side, the diplomat-zombie impassively opened his desk drawer and pulled forth a little booklet.

“Your friend can’t come to America as a Hungarian refugee,” he intoned, leafing to a page of rules, “because he’s not Hungarian. And he can’t come in as a North Korean because we’re at war and there’s no quota!”

At least the 200,000 Hungarian refugees in Vienna would be processed and admitted to a free country. My Korean friend was now diplomatically stateless and weightless.

Thanks to the subsequent intervention of broadcaster Tex McCrary and the supposedly villainous immigrant-hating Congressman Francis E. Walter of Pennsylvania, we got that young man into America with a scholarship to Syracuse from which he graduated with honors and became a millionaire architect and builder.