North Korean Economy Watch

According to Yonhap:

North Korea’s Cabinet premier is visiting northeastern China to meet with ranking officials there and speed up joint economic projects between the communist allies, sources here said Wednesday.

Choe Yong-rim arrived in the city of Harbin in Heilongjiang Province earlier this week and visited the city of Changchun in a nearby province on Wednesday, the diplomatic sources said.

Choe, promoted by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il at a parliamentary convention in June, is seen as trying to consolidate the ties between Pyongyang and Beijing as the two countries seek to develop a joint economic bloc that draws from resources in China.

His visit comes after Kim visited the area in late August. During a summit between the North Korean leader and Chinese President Hu Jintao, the countries promised to boost their political and economic cooperation.

Choe’s trip, also reported by a local daily here, comes after 12 of the highest-ranking North Korean mayoral and provincial chiefs visited the same region in October, touring food, chemical and agricultural factories along with other major facilities.

Believed to be a key aide to North Korea’s next leader, Kim Jong-un, the premier inspected electronics and medicine companies and a agricultural research center in Harbin on Tuesday, the sources said.

Choe, 79, formerly chief of the Pyongyang department for the ruling Workers’ Party, has been noted for his rise to power in the past several months. He gave a speech at a mass rally on May 30, where as many as 100,000 North Koreans reportedly denounced South Korea and the United States for blaming Pyongyang for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

Read the full story here:
DPRK premier in northeastern China for economic cooperation
Yonhap
11/3/2010

Richard Stone writes in 38 North:

The curtain is rising on a bold experiment to engage North Korea’s academic community—and possibly shape the country’s future. On October 25, 2010, Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, or PUST, opened its doors to 160 elite North Korean students. By improving North Korea’s technical prowess, PUST might nudge the country’s tattered manufacturing-based economy toward an information-based economy.

“Our purpose is the globalization of North Korea through PUST. In that way, their economy can gradually develop, which will make it easier for reunification later,” says Park Chan Mo, former president of the National Research Foundation of Korea and one of four founding committee chairs of PUST. More initiatives are in store after South-North relations improve, says Oh Hae Seok, Special Adviser on Information Technology (IT) to South Korea’s President Lee Myung Bak. “The South is ready to assist the North by building an IT infrastructure and supporting IT education, as long as the North opens its door,” he says.

PUST will test North Korea’s appetite for engagement. Perhaps most discomfiting to the North is that the new university is led and bankrolled by devout Christians. The North Korean government espouses atheism and takes a dim view on South Korean evangelists, particularly for their role in an “underground railway” in northeastern China that steers defectors to safe havens. PUST leaders and professors, primarily ethnic Koreans, have promised not to proselytize.

PUST’s main mission therefore is to lead North Korea out of a scientific wilderness. The North is light-years behind industrialized nations in many areas of science and technology. It excels in a few spheres. For instance, North Korea is notorious for its skill at reverse-engineering long-range missiles and fashioning crude but workable plutonium devices. Less well known, the North has developed considerable expertise in information technology—and has staked its future on it. “North Korea has chosen IT as the core tool of its economic recovery,” says Park. But it has a poor grasp on how to translate knowledge into money. “Instead of just giving them fish, we will teach them how to catch fish,” Park says.

There are serious risks in giving North Korea a technical assist, according to PUST’s critics. Opinion in South Korea is split on PUST; many people have voiced concerns. The chief worry is that PUST students could feed information or lend newfound expertise to the North Korean military. To minimize these risks, PUST’s curricula have been vetted by government and academic nonproliferation experts.

To proponents, the new venture’s benefits far outweigh the risks. PUST has been promised academic freedom, the likes of which has been virtually unknown in North Korea, including campus-wide internet access. “We hope that PUST will open channels to the outside,” says Nakju Lett Doh, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Korea University in Seoul and member of PUST’s academic committee.

Few people of university age or younger can imagine a world without internet. But it’s rare a North Korean of any age has tasted this forbidden fruit. The government takes infinite care to shield innocent minds from corrosive facts about the Korean War, descriptions of life in modern South Korea, and western notions of freedom of expression, among other things. Instead, the Garden of Juche offers Guang Myung, or Bright Light: an Intranet not connected to the outside world.

When I visited Pyongyang on invitation from the DPRK Academy of Sciences in July 2004, my hosts gave me a tour of the Central Information Agency for Science and Technology’s computing center and showed me the Guang Myung home page, which reminded me of Yahoo. They claimed the system has tens of millions of records, including digital tomes on agriculture and construction as well as the complete writings of Kim Il Sung.

Since then, fiber optic cables have spread Guang Myung to the far corners of the nation. “The main purpose is to disseminate scientific and technological information,” says Lee Choon Geun, chief representative of the Korea-China Science & Technology Cooperation Center in Beijing. On a visit to Pyongyang a few years ago, Lee, an expert on North Korea’s scientific community, witnessed Guang Myung in action, including a live lecture broadcast over the Intranet. At the time, he says, Kim Chaek University of Technology had around 500 Pentium 4’s and 5’s connected to the system. He estimates that nationwide, tens of thousands of computers of all types are now linked in. However, it’s not clear how effective Guang Myung is outside Pyongyang, where clunky routers funnel information to ancient machines—remember 386s and 486s? Another major woe is an unstable electricity supply that regularly fritzes electronics. Lee, who has visited North Korea 15 times, says that when he asks what scientists need most, they request laptops, whose power cord adaptors and batteries can better handle electrical fluctuations.

Indeed, it’s a formidable job to erect an IT infrastructure inside a cocoon. South Korea has lent a hand. With the government’s blessing, private organizations in the South have sent approximately 60,000 IT publications—periodicals and books—to North Korean universities, and IT professors from the South have visited the North for lecturing stints, says Oh. South Korean groups have also helped train North Korean computer scientists in Dandong, China, just across the border from North Korea. The training center had to close earlier this year due to budget cuts, says Lee.

The juche philosophy embraces self-reliant efforts to gather technical information from abroad. North Korean diplomats are one set of eyes and ears. They collect journal articles, textbooks and handbooks, surf the Web and ship any seemingly useful information to Pyongyang, where analysts evaluate it and censors clear it for posting. When sent via internet, information is routed primarily through Silibank in Shenyang in northeastern China. North Korea has also deployed abroad around 500 IT specialists in the European Union and dozens more to China—in Beijing, Dalian, Shanghai, and Shenyang—to acquire knowledge for the motherland. “Through them a lot of information goes to North Korea,” says Park.

Such activity may seem like a packrat cramming its nest with equal portions of usable materials and shiny baubles. But it has paid off in at least one area: software development. “They are developing their own algorithms,” says Doh, an expert on control system theory. Even though North Korea’s programmers are almost completely isolated from international peers, they lag only about 5 to 6 years behind the state of the art in South Korea, Doh says. “That’s not that bad.” The Korean Computing Center and Pyongyang Information Center together have around 450 specialists, and universities and academy institutes have another 1,000 more experts on computer science, says Lee. And all told there are about 1,200 specialized programmers.

The programmers have enjoyed modest commercial success. The state-owned SEK Studios in Pyongyang has done computer animation for films and cartoons for clients abroad. And software developers have produced, among other things, an award-winning computer version of the Asian board game Go. “Their software is strong,” says Park, a specialist on computer graphics and simulation. “They are very capable.”

But the resemblance to IT as we know it ends there. “In North Korea, IT is quite different from what most people think,” says Lee. Most computing efforts these days are focused on computerized numerical control, or CNC: the automation of machine tools to enable a small number of workers to produce standardized goods. “Their main focus is increasing domestic production capacity,” says Lee. North Korea’s CNC revolution is occurring two to three decades after South Korean industries adopted similar technologies. And North Korea is struggling to implement CNC largely because of its difficulties in generating sufficient energy needed to make steel—so its machinery production capacity is a fraction of what it used to be—and it lacks the means to produce sophisticated integrated circuit elements.

Antiquated technology may be the biggest handicap for North Korea’s computer jocks. North Korea “doesn’t have the capacity to make high technology,” says Kim Jong Seon, leader of the inter-Korean cooperation team at the Science and Technology Policy Institute in Seoul. North Korea is thought to have a single clean room for making semiconductors at the 111 Factory in Pyongyang. Built in the 1980s—the Stone Age of this fast-paced field—the photomask production facility is capable of etching 3 micron wide lines in silicon chips. South Korean industry works in nanometer scales. The bottom line, says Kim, is that in high technology, “they have to import everything.”

That’s a challenge, because no country—China included—openly flouts UN sanctions on high-tech exports to North Korea. Any advanced computing equipment entering the country is presumably acquired through its illicit missile trade and disappears into the military complex. North Korea’s civilian computer scientists are left fighting for the scraps. One of only five Ph.D. scientist-defectors now known to be in South Korea, computer scientist Kim Heung Kwang, fled North Korea in 2003 not for political reasons or because he was starving—rather, he hungered to use modern computers.

To help North Korea bolster its budding IT infrastructure and not aid its military, PUST will have to walk a tightrope. School officials have voluntarily cleared curricula with the U.S. government, which has weighed in on details as fine as the name of one of PUST’s first three schools. The School of Biotechnology was renamed the School of Agriculture and Life Sciences because U.S. officials were concerned that biotech studies might be equated to bioweapons studies, says Park. North Korean officials, meanwhile, forbid PUST from launching an MBA program—a degree too tightly associated with U.S. imperialism. “So we call it industrial management,” Park says. “But the contents are similar to those of an MBA.”

Besides cleansing PUST of any weapons-grade information, Park and university representatives are working with the U.S. Commerce Department to win export licenses for advanced computing equipment and scientific instruments not prohibited by dual-use restrictions. Approval is necessary for equipment consisting of 10 percent or more of U.S.-made components. “You can attach foreign-made peripheral devices and reduce U.S. components to less than 10 percent, but that’s a kind of cheating,” Park says. “We want to strictly follow the law.”

This improbable initiative in scientific engagement was a long time in the making. PUST’s chief architect is founding president Kim Chin Kyung, who in 1998 established his first venture in higher education: Yanbian University of Science and Technology in Yanji, the capital of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in northeastern China’s Jilin Province, just across the border from North Korea. A businessman who studied divinity in university, Kim, who goes by his English name James, was accused of being a spy on a visit to North Korea in 1998 and imprisoned there for six weeks. He stuck with YUST, however, and in 2001, North Korean education officials visiting the university stunned Kim by inviting him to establish a similar university in Pyongyang. Kim got a rapturous response when he pitched the idea to YUST’s sponsors.

Progress came in fits and starts. PUST was originally envisioned to open in 2005, but work on the initial 17 buildings of the $35 million, 100-hectare campus in southern Pyongyang’s Rakrang district was completed only last year. North Korean education officials have promised the school academic freedom and internet access. Such startling privileges will be doled out byte by byte. “In the beginning, they are allowing us to do emailing,” says Park. Full internet access is expected to come after PUST earns their keepers’ trust. “To do research, really you have to use the internet. The North Korean government realizes that. Once they know students are not using the internet for something else, it should be allowed,” Park says.

While YUST and PUST may both have ardent-Christian backers and cumbersome acronyms, the atmosphere on the two campuses will be markedly divergent. In Yanji, encounters outside the classroom are common: faculty and students even dine together in a common hall. “YUST professors and students are like one family,” says Park.

In contrast, PUST students and faculty will inhabit two entirely different worlds that only merge in the classroom. The North Korean government handpicked the inaugural class of 100 undergraduates and 60 graduate students, including 40 grads who will study IT. All will study technical English this fall, then in March a wider roster of courses will become available after key professors and equipment arrive on campus. A student leader will shepherd students to and from class to ensure that no lamb goes astray. “There will be no way to teach the gospel,” says Doh.

PUST professors expect to be impressed with the students, selected from Kim Il Sung University and Kim Chaek University of Technology. “These are the most brilliant students in North Korea,” says Doh. PUST plans to ramp up enrolment to 2,000 undergrads and 600 graduate students by 2012. To expose these young, agile minds to a wide range of ideas, PUST plans to fly in a number of visiting professors during the summer terms. They also intend to seek permission for students from other Pyongyang universities to attend the summer sessions. As trust develops, PUST hopes that some of its students will be able to participate in exchange programs and study abroad.

PUST’s success may hinge on the disposition of North Korea’s leader in waiting. Kim Jong Un was tutored privately by a “brilliant” graduate of Université Paris X who chaired the computer science department at Kim Chaek University of Technology before disappearing from public view in the early 1980s, says Kim Heung Kwang, who studied at Kim Chaek before working as a professor at Hamhung Computer College and Hamhung Communist College. After defecting and settling in Seoul, Kim founded North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a group of university-educated defectors that raises awareness of conditions in North Korea.

According to internal North Korean propaganda, Kim Jong Un oversees a cyberwarfare unit that launched a sophisticated denial-of-service attack on South Korean and U.S. government websites in July 2009. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service blamed the North, which has not commented publicly on the attack. Kim Jong Un’s involvement cannot be confirmed, says Kim Heung Kwang. “But Kim Jong Un is a young person with a background in information technology, so he may desire to transform North Korea from a labor-intense economy to a knowledge economy like South Korea is doing.”

Another big wildcard is North-South relations. After the sinking of the Cheonan, South Korea froze assistance to the North. In the event of a thaw, “the South wants to build a digital complex” in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) or in South Korea similar to the Kaesong industrial complex, says Oh. This, he says, “would be the base camp of North Korea’s IT industry development.” North Korea has reacted lukewarm to the idea: It would prefer that such a venture be based in Pyongyang, says Lee. To facilitate denuclearization and help skilled North Korean workers adapt to market economics, the Science and Technology Policy Institute in Seoul has proposed the establishment of an Inter-Korean Science and Technology Cooperation Center modeled after similar centers established in Kiev and Moscow after the Soviet breakup.

Such projects, if they were to materialize, along with well-trained graduates from PUST, may help pull North Korea’s economy up by its bootstraps. “We are trying to make them more inclined to do business, to make their country wealthier,” says Park. “It will make a big difference once they get a taste of money. That’s the way to open up North Korea.”

Additional information:
1. Here are previous posts about PUST.

2. Here are previous posts about the DPRK’s intranet system, Kwangmyong.

3. Here is a satellite image of PUST.

Read the full story here:
Pyongyang University and NK: Just Do IT!
38 North
Richard Stone
11/1/2010

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 10-11-01-1
11/1/2010

The North Korean Ministry of People’s Security (MPS) recently issued an order restricting the use of automobiles and warning that any car or truck used to earn private income would be confiscated by the State. There were a few cases of authorities cracking down on the use of private buses in the mid-2000s, but this is the first time there has been a widespread crackdown on the private use of all vehicles.

According to a report from the Daily NK, a source from North Hamgyeong Province has revealed that “on an order from the MPS, a crackdown on privately-owned cars, buses, and 1.5-2 ton small trucks began last month,” and, “all traffic police were mobilized and are checking all registrations, car-use permits, and driving licenses.” According to the source, each regional transportation authority is filing comprehensive situation reports, which show that with the exception of cars used by the elite, all illegally-used cars are being confiscated. Even cars used by military-run foreign capital organizations are subject to inspection by police.

In North Korea, the lack of electricity has led, since the mid~2000s, to the sharp drop in the use of trains and a rise in reliance on the so-called ‘service car’ as the primary method of moving people and goods around the country. This crackdown on service cars will be carried out in two phases: Phase 1 will run until the end of the year, then Phase 2 will be carried out until April 2011. The ownership and use of cars by organizations and businesses will also be investigated, while other cars will be inspected one at a time as they travel the roads. If any illegal use is discovered, the car will be impounded.

This kind of measure appears to be one aspect of North Korean authorities’ on-going battle against “anti-socialism.” Cars and other government property being put to private use is problematic, but a crackdown of this size indicates that organizations and government workers are abusing the rules on such a scale that the government can no longer tolerate their corruption. In order for these service cars to exist, authorities must break laws, forge documents, and pay bribes to get a car registered, purchase gas, and handle profits.

However, a crackdown on these cars is expected to have many side-effects. Service cars began replacing trains in 2004, but the people’s reliance on them grew so quickly that they are now the primary means of transportation throughout North Korea.

Ultimately, the North can not avoid significant aftershocks of the measure; without service cars, not only will businesses suffer production problems, those people who make their living through wholesale and retail markets will suffer, and the standard of living for people across the country will take a hit.

Previous posts on this topic cna be found here and here.

According to the Daily NK:

The North Korean authorities consider both prostitution and drugs to be serious problems and are actively seeking ways to combat them, according to an internal document obtained by The Daily NK.

Obtained on the 28th, the document, “Measures against Young Women Earning Money through Prostitution,” produced internally by the People’s Safety Ministry (PSM), reveals that the PSM has instructed local offices to crackdown on prostitution and drug-related crimes more vigorously.

This document was reportedly distributed to provincial committees of the Party and local PSM offices in July this year.

According to the document, “Anti-socialist phenomenon, young women and college students taking part in prostitution included, are appearing,” adding, “Strong measures to overcome this situation must be prepared.”

“At commuting times, women in large groups have been seen taking part in prostitution around bus stops or train stations,” the document states. “Law enforcement officials must not yield to these actions.”

The PSM document also focuses on drug crimes, reporting that, “The circulation and use of illegal drugs is increasing. We must establish measures to overcome drug-related activities.”

The document represents a tacit admission by the PSM that both prostitution and drug use have expanded to the point of becoming social problems in North Korea, a fact which the authorities have never admitted publicly.

As in many other countries, economic difficulties in North Korea tend to lead to an increase in the number of young women entering prostitution, because it represents one of the few ways to make ends meet. Inside North Korea sources say that the March of Tribulation led to a significant increase in prostitute numbers, and last year’s confiscatory currency redenomination is said to have had a similar effect.

As a result, sources say that regardless of the authorities’ will to crack down on prostitution and other illegal activities, it will be impossible because they are now an ingrained part of North Korean society.

Furthermore, even though public trials of persons accused of prostitution-related offences are held regularly in provincial areas, the law is unable to reach the most powerful prostitution rings because they are tacitly protected by paid-off PSM officials.

Read the full story here:
PSM Admits to Seriousness of Social Ills
Daily NK
Shin Joo Hyun
11/1/2010

UPDATE 18 (11/08/2010): South Korean aid will finally be delivered to the DPRK on 11/09.  Here is more from the PRC’s People’s Daily:

Some of South Korea’s first government-financed rice aid in almost three years will be delivered to the flood-hit Democratic People’s Republic of Korea ( DPRK) starting Tuesday, the unification ministry said Monday.

Some of the 5,000 tons of rice currently in the Chinese city of Dandong will be sent to the northwestern DPRK city of Sinuiju, a city reeling from heavy rains in August, and the delivery will be completed by the end of next week, according to the ministry.

Three million cups of instant noodles, also part of the flood aid, have already been sent to Sinuiju, while some of the pledged one million tons of cement will reach the city later in the day, the ministry said.

As he took office in 2008, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak cut a free flow of rice aid to Pyongyang, which once amounted to 300,000 to 400,000 tons each year. A hard-liner toward Pyongyang, he also ended a decade of rapprochement under his liberal predecessors by linking aid to dismantlement of the DPRK’s nuclear programs.

UPDATE 17 (1o/29/2010): Here and here are photos of the aid arriving in China. 

UPDATE 16: According to the Korea Times, the shipment was delayed due to weather.

UPDATE 15: First aid shipment to go today (10/25).  According to Yonhap:

A shipment of rice was to depart a South Korean port en route to North Korea Monday, which will mark Seoul’s first government-financed rice aid to the communist nation in more than two and a half years.

A cargo ship carrying 5,000 tons of rice was scheduled to depart the port city of Gunsan for the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong on the border with North Korea. Another ship was also set to head from the port of Incheon to the Chinese city, carrying 3 million packs of instant noodles.

The Red Cross aid, which is aimed at helping the North cope with the aftermath of floods, marks South Korea’s first government-funded provision of rice to the North since President Lee Myung-bak took office in early 2008 on a pledge to link aid to progress in efforts to end Pyongyang’s nuclear programs.

Seoul also plans to send a shipment of 10,000 tons of cement to the North later this week.

A total of 13.9 billion won (US$12.3 million) came from the government coffers to finance the flood aid.

Also Monday, three Red Cross officials prepared to fly to the Chinese city to receive the rice and instant noodles there and transport the relief supplies by truck to the flood-hit North Korean border city of Sinuiju, according to officials from the Red Cross and the Unification Ministry.

The cargo ships are expected to arrive in Dandong around Wednesday.

Rice will be delivered in five-kilogram packages, and each package is marked with “Donation from the Republic of Korea,” South Korea’s official name.

In August, South Korea first offered to provide relief aid to the North after devastating floods hit the communist nation. North Korea later asked for rice, heavy construction equipment and materials.

UPDATE 14: S. Korea to send rice aid to N. Korea next month.  Accrording to Yonhap:

South Korea’s Red Cross will begin the shipment of 5,000 tons of rice and other aid materials next month to North Korea, which has been battered by summer floods, officials here said Sunday.

It would mark South Korea’s first government-funded provision of rice to the hunger-stricken communist neighbor since the conservative president, Lee Myung-bak, took office in early 2008 on a pledge to link inter-Korean ties to Pyongyang’s denuclearization.

The South’s government plans to convene a committee on inter-Korean exchanges on Tuesday to approve the use of taxpayers’ money earmarked for projects to improve relations with the North, the officials said.

“(The government) will report to the National Assembly on Sept. 28 and the committee will approve the aid worth 8 billion won (US$6.9 million) from the South-North Cooperation Fund (on the same day),” a Unification Ministry official said.

The rice shipment will depart from the port of Incheon, west of Seoul, on Oct. 25 and it will be delivered to the North Korean city of Sinuiju bordering China via Dandong, an adjacent Chinese town, he added.

Other aid items to be sent to the North in stages include 10,000 tons of cement, three million packs of instant noodles and some medical goods.

South Korea has ruled out the shipment of construction equipment, which the North requested, taking into account the possibility of the equipment being used for military purposes.

Seoul’s rice aid, although officials here stressed it is purely a humanitarian move, has been seen as a possible sign of a thaw in chilled inter-Korean relations. Military tensions have risen sharply since the sinking of a South Korean warship in March, which the South attributed to a North Korean torpedo attack.

South Korea suspended an annual shipment of 300,000-400,000 tons of rice to the North in 2008, citing little progress in efforts to end the North’s nuclear program.

UPDATE 13: Incheon Gov’t, Civic Group Sign MOU on NK Aid.  According to KBS:

The Incheon city government has signed a memorandum of understanding with a civic group to send 700 tons of corn to North Korean flood victims in Sinuiju.

The aid is worth 300 million won.

The city government and the Korean Sharing Movement obtained permission to provide the food aid from the Unification Ministry on September 14th.

The first shipment of corn will arrive late this month via an overland route linking the city of Dandong in China to the North Korean city of Sinuiju.

The remaining food aid will be delivered to North Korea by year’s end.

Previously, the Incheon city government announced a plan to send six shipments of milk and infant formula by December. The aid is valued at 100 million won.

The first shipment left Incheon port for North Korea on Saturday.

UPDATE 12: First shipment of aid has headed north.  According to the New York Times:

The nine trucks in the convoy carried 203 tons of rice that civic groups and opposition political parties in South Korea had donated for the victims of recent flooding in North Korea. The flooding is expected to worsen food shortages in the North, which even in a year of good harvests, cannot produce enough to feed its estimated population of 23 million people properly.

The shipment, coming just before the Korean harvest festival of Chuseok next week, also seemed to symbolize a newfound South Korean good will toward the North. It followed 530 tons of flour that a South Korean provincial government and civic groups sent on Thursday.

After President Lee Myung-bak came to power in Seoul in early 2008, South Korea had been reluctant to provide rice or any other major aid shipments to the North until its government in Pyongyang took significant steps to give up its nuclear weapons. The sinking of the warship, the Cheonan, further soured relations.

But in the past week, the South approved the civic groups’ donations, as well as a separate Red Cross plan to send 5,000 tons of rice. The approval followed conciliatory gestures by North Korea, including a plan to resume a Red Cross program of arranging temporary unions of families split by the 1950-53 Korean War.

The nine trucks in the convoy carried 203 tons of rice that civic groups and opposition political parties in South Korea had donated for the victims of recent flooding in North Korea. The flooding is expected to worsen food shortages in the North, which even in a year of good harvests, cannot produce enough to feed its estimated population of 23 million people properly.

The shipment, coming just before the Korean harvest festival of Chuseok next week, also seemed to symbolize a newfound South Korean good will toward the North. It followed 530 tons of flour that a South Korean provincial government and civic groups sent on Thursday.

After President Lee Myung-bak came to power in Seoul in early 2008, South Korea had been reluctant to provide rice or any other major aid shipments to the North until its government in Pyongyang took significant steps to give up its nuclear weapons. The sinking of the warship, the Cheonan, further soured relations.

But in the past week, the South approved the civic groups’ donations, as well as a separate Red Cross plan to send 5,000 tons of rice. The approval followed conciliatory gestures by North Korea, including a plan to resume a Red Cross program of arranging temporary unions of families split by the 1950-53 Korean War.

UPDATE 11: North Korea complains that it did not receive enough aid from South Korea.  According to UPI:

North Korea complained Sunday that a planned shipment of flood-relief aid from South Korea is much smaller than expected.

The state-controlled weekly Tongil Sinbo said the rice shipment the South Korean Red Cross said would feed 200,000 people for 50 days was not nearly adequate.

“After the lid was removed from the box of aid, there was only 5,000 tons of rice in it,” Tongil Sinbo said in a posting on the North’s official Web site.

The statement, which was monitored by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, said the shipment would not last “even for a day.”

The Red Cross aid package, which includes rice and cement, was consigned to Sinuiju, a town near the Chinese border in a region hit hard by rain and flooding last month.

The shipment had been seen by diplomatic analysts as an easing of tensions between the two Koreas, Yonhap said. North Korea relies heavily on donations of rice and other supplies to prop up its economy.

Also, see this Yonhap story.

UPDATE 10: The Ministry of Unificaion is opposed to large scale food assistance—drawing a distinction between flood relief and large-scale food aid.  According to KBS:

Unification Minister Hyun In-taek says he is opposed to large-scale food aid to North Korea.

He said large-scale food aid is separate from humanitarian aid, and that all aspects of inter-Korean policy and the sinking of the “Cheonan” naval vessel should be considered.

Hyun made the remarks at a budget committee meeting on Friday when a main opposition Democratic Party member urged the government to send 500-thousand tons of rice to North Korea.

Hyun said that South Korea had sent large amounts of food aid on multiple previous occasions for what was called humanitarian assistance, but it is doubtful whether the rice had been distributed to people in need.

Adding to political pressure against further donations, the Choson Ilbo reports that the North Korean military is warehousing quite a bit of rice:

In a party caucus at the National Assembly on Thursday, Grand National Party floor leader Kim Moo-sung said calls for humanitarian food aid for the North are “inappropriate” at a time when the North “has as much as 1 million tons of rice in storage in preparation for war. We have to take this into consideration.”

The figure apparently comes from a report by the National Intelligence Service for the ruling-party leadership.

South Korea worries about a rice surplus when it stores only about 1.49 million tons this year. If it is true that the North is really holding back 1 million tons of rice for the military, it could have a profound effect on the ongoing debate over whether to increase aid for the North.

UPDATE 9: The first aid shipment has arrived.  According to Arirang News:

The first round of civilian emergency aid since recent flooding in North Korea was delivered to the border town of Gaeseong on Thursday.

The transport of 530 tons of flour on two dozen large trucks by Gyeonggi Province and non-governmental groups is also the first aid package from the South after it enforced punitive measures on Pyeonyang in May, in response to its sinking of the warship Cheonan.

And five South Korean personnel were permitted to cross the border to transfer the goods.

Kim Moon-soo, Governor Gyeonggi Province: “Many South Koreans have been wanting to provide assistance and there’s been a delay but we’re finally sending aid today. There are factors other than intent to consider.”

The group had been waiting since July for the government to give the green light to supply food aid worth about 240-thousand US dollars… enough to feed some 30-thousand children and other vulnerable groups for a month.

It is estimated that some 28 million square meters of agricultural land was swamped by rainfall of up to 324 milimeters in Gaeseong.

Kim Deog-ryong, Co-chair, Korean Council for Reconciliation & Cooperation: “Following the first round of aid, we plan to send additional second and third rounds in October. We hope nongovernmental efforts will eventually lead to continuous government-level assistance.”

The resumption of aid delivery to the North on humanitarian grounds will likely be succeeded by a series of foodstuffs, such as rice and corn, being transported through the Dorasan Customs, Immigration and Quarantine office, on top of the South Korean Red Cross’ pledged shipments of rice, cement and other supplies.

On Friday, more civilian aid consisting of 203 tons of rice is scheduled to be delivered to the flood-ravaged Shinuiju region.

Choi You-sun (reporter) “The South Korean government is maintaining a firm stance concerning its set of stringent measures against North Korea. But officials here say there are more applicants wishing to send provisions forecasting that there will be a significant increase in the amount of nongovernmental aid to the impoverished North.

UPDATE 8: The Ministry of Unification seems to have approved the private aid donations mentioned in UPDATE 7.  According to the AFP:

South Korea’s government said Wednesday it has approved a plan by local groups to send flood relief aid to North Korea, amid growing signs of a thaw after months of tension on the peninsula.

The Unification Ministry said it approved Tuesday requests to send emergency supplies worth a total of 2.24 billion won (1.2 million dollars) including 203 tons of rice.

The aid for flood victims in Sinuiju and Kaesong also includes flour, bread, blankets and instant noodles, said spokesman Chun Hae-Sung, adding the first shipment of 400 tons of flour would be sent Thursday.

It was the second time this week that Seoul groups have announced help following floods that hit the city of Sinuiju on the China border and the town of Kaesong, just north of the inter-Korean frontier.

UPDATE 7: In addition to the aid offernd by the South Korean government (in the posts below),  private organizations in South Korea are offering flood assistance.  According to Yonhap:

The Korea Sharing Movement and the Join Together Society (JTS) plan to ship 400 tons of flour to the North Korean border city of Kaesong via an overland route on Thursday, an official said. The Gyeonggi provincial government helped fund the assistance.

Separately, the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, a coalition of pro-unification civic and social groups, also plans to send 130 tons of flour to the North on Thursday.

And in another Yonhap story:

An umbrella trade union said Wednesday it seeks to send about 100 tons of rice, possibly by land, to North Korea to help the flood-hit nation.

The Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), which claims up to 900,000 members across the country, said it is in talks with its North Korean counterpart to determine the exact delivery route and size of the aid.

UPDATE 6: The South Korean government is trying to figure out how to prevent aid from being diverted to the military.  According to the Choson Ilbo:

“Rice can be stored for a long time and is easy to divert to the military,” the official said. “But rice flour or noodles are harder to store for longer and are more likely to be given to the victims instead of being transported to military warehouses.”

The government offered the North 10,000 tons of corn following the reunion of separated families on the occasion of Chuseok or Korean Thanksgiving last year reportedly because this was less likely to be used for military rations. North Korean defectors say they were rarely given any rice supplied by the South, while rice bags with the lettering of the South Korean Red Cross stamped on were seen in military facilities close to the heavily armed border.

During the famine in the late 1990s, the North received corn flour aid from the U.S which the authorities then distributed through ration stations, a defector recalls.

But processing over 100,000 tons of rice into flour and other products may not be realistic as it would cost a lot of time and money, a Unification Ministry official said.

UPDATE 5: According to the Donga Ilbo:

Yoo Chong-ha, head of the (South) Korean National Red Cross, said in a news conference Monday that the Red Cross will send 10 billion won (8.6 million U.S. dollars) worth of aid comprising 5,000 tons of rice, 10,000 tons of cement, three million packages of instant noodles, and medicine.

He also suggested a working-level meeting of Red Cross organizations from both sides in Kaesong Friday on Pyongyang’s proposal for reunions of separate inter-Korean families.

On the volume of rice aid, Yoo said, “Around 80,000 to 90,000 people in (the North Korean city of) Shinuiju are known to be displaced, and 5,000 tons of rice can feed 100,000 people for 100 days,” translating into 500 grams a day per person.

The South’s Red Cross said it set the amount given that international aid organizations allocate 300 to 500 grams per person when they send rice assistance to the North.

The budget for buying the rice was 7.7 billion won (6.6 million dollars), or 1.54 million won (1,330 dollars) per ton based on the price of rice Seoul purchased in 2007.

Even if the South Korean government provides rice aid to the North, the combined amount will be around 10 billion won as the South’s Red Cross proposed to the North last month.

Excluded from the aid package was heavy equipment that the North requested. Most of the 10 billion won in aid will come from a South Korean government fund for inter-Korean cooperation.

UPDATE 4: And the picture becomes clearer.  According to the Guardian:

The $8.5m (£5.5m) package, to be funded by the government, is the south’s first aid shipment to its neighbour since the sinking of a warship in March reduced bilateral relations to their lowest point for years. Seoul says its vessel was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, a claim Pyongyang denies.

The countries may also resume reunions for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean war, which ended in an uneasy armistice but no peace treaty. The reunions were suspended after a South Korean woman was shot dead by a guard during a visit to the North Korean tourist resort of Mount Kumgang, in 2008.

UPDATE 3: Some specifics come out.  According to Yonhap:

S. Korea’s Red Cross announces 5,000 tons of rice aid for N. Korea’s flood victims

UPDATE 2: South Korean farmers demand ROK government send aid to DPRK to keep rice prices high.  According to the AFP:

Thousands of South Korean farmers rallied Friday, demanding the government stop a fall in rice prices by shipping surplus stocks in state silos to North Korea.

The farmers urged President Lee Myung-Bak to resume an annual shipment of 400,000 tonnes of rice to the North, which suffers severe food shortages. The shipment was suspended in 2008 as relations soured.

About 3,000 farmers took part in morning rallies in a dozen cities and counties, said the Korea Peasants’ League, which represents farmers, adding more were under way or planned in the afternoon.

“Resuming rice aid to North Korea is a short cut to stabilising rice prices and also improving inter-Korean ties,” league spokesman Kang Suk-Chan told AFP.

The government makes an annual purchase of rice from farmers to stabilise prices amid falling national demand, but is predicting a bumper harvest this year.

Unless some stocks are sold off, the agriculture ministry says the South’s strategic rice reserve will soon reach an all-time high of 1.49 million tons, twice the 720,000 tonnes considered necessary for emergencies.

Last week minister Yoo Jeong-Bok said the government would sell about 500,000 tons of the reserve this year to companies that make alcoholic beverages and processed food ingredients.

Farmers claimed the ministry’s move would fail to stop the fall in prices. They want the government to lift the 2008 ban and to purchase this year’s harvest at higher prices.

Subsidised farmers grow more rice than South Koreans want to eat. The country’s consumption of the staple fell in 2007 to its lowest level for decades as people ate more meat and vegetables.

Cross-border tensions this summer have run high over the sinking of a South Korean warship with the loss of 46 sailors. The North vehemently denies involvement but the South has cut off most cross-border trade.

Read the full story here:
S.Korea farmers demand rice shipment to N.Korea
AFP
9/10/2010

UPDATE 1: The DPRK accepts the ROK’s aid offer.  According to the BBC:

North Korea has responded to an offer from South Korea of emergency food and medical aid, saying it would prefer to receive rice and building materials.

The South Korean offer, worth more than $8m (£5m), was made last week after severe flooding in the North.

South Korea says it is considering the North’s request.

The aid would be the first large-scale shipment since South Korea blamed its impoverished northern neighbour for sinking one of its warships in March.

South Korea blames Pyongyang for sinking the Cheonan with a torpedo, killing 46 crew.

North Korea denies any role in the incident and has demanded its own investigation.

Food aid

North Korea’s Red Cross said it would prefer rice, cement and heavy construction equipment – items it said were necessary for flood recovery efforts, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry and Red Cross.

The South’s offer excluded rice – a staple which Seoul has stopped sending to Pyongyang amid strained relations.

North Korea has been hard hit by floods caused by heavy rains in July and August, especially in its northern areas bordering China.

This week a South Korean newspaper published pictures of people sleeping in tents and queuing for water in the city of Shinuiju.

They were taken by an undercover source who also reports rare public complaints that the North Korean leadership is not doing enough to help.

Read the full story here:
North Korea accepts flood aid offer from South
BBC
9/7/2010

ORIGINAL POST: South Korea offers flood aid to the DPRK. According to the BBC:

South Korea has made its first offer of aid to North Korea since it accused Pyongyang of sinking one of its warships in March.

South Korea’s Red Cross has offered 10bn won ($8.3m, £5.3m) worth of flood aid to its impoverished neighbour.

The offer came hours after the United States imposed new sanctions on the North in response to the sinking.

South Korea blames North Korea for sinking the Cheonan on 26 March with a torpedo, killing 46 crew.

North Korea denies any role in the incident and has demanded its own investigation.

FOOD AID
North Korea has relied on food aid from China, South Korea and aid agencies to feed millions of its people since a famine in the 1990s resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.

But the communist country has been hard hit by floods caused by heavy rains in July and August, especially in its northern areas, bordering China.

“The aid includes medical kits, emergency food and supplies,” a Unification Ministry official said, quoting the Red Cross message sent to North Korea.

The offer has yet to be accepted by the North.

Under President Lee Myung-bak, the South has stepped back from its earlier “sunshine” policy of unconditional aid and has linked the provision of aid to progress from the North on ending its nuclear programme.

A South Korean offer of about 10,000 tonnes of corn to North Korea in October 2009 was the first official aid to its hungry neighbour for almost two years.

The year before, the South had offered 50,000 tons of corn but the North rejected the shipment amid high tensions.

‘TOO EARLY’
The offer came after North Korea reportedly indicated it was ready to return to six-party talks over ending its nuclear ambitions.

Parts of North Korea have been badly affected by severe flooding Leader Kim Jong-il told the Chinese president that he wanted to see negotiations resumed during a visit to China last week, Chinese state media said.

The talks – which involve the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the US – have been stalled since December 2008 over Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear tests.

But South Korea is demanding an apology for the warship sinking before any return to the negotiations.

Japan also says the time is not right to resume talks.

On Tuesday its foreign minister, Katsuya Okada, told China’s visiting nuclear envoy, Wu Dawei, that it was still “too early” to think about a return to talks.

On Monday the US imposed additional sanctions on North Korea, targeting trade in arms, luxury goods and narcotics.

Read the full story here:
South Korea offers aid to flooded North
BBC
8/31/2010

Aidan Foster-Carter wrties about the recent increase in China-DPRK “friendship” activities in the Asia Times: 

Over a month ago, in an article in these columns, I suggested a number of reasons why North Korea may well become a quasi-satellite of China.

Well, it’s happening even faster than I expected. In all the excitement about Kim Jong-eun’s coming-out for a second time, at the 65th birthday of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) on October 10, we risk missing another key aspect of that big Pyongyang parade.

The “reptile press” – one of my favorite North Korean phrases; yup, I’m a lizard and proud – all oohed and aahed at their first glimpse of the “young general”. Most paid less attention to a middle-aged chap also standing on the podium, not far from the clearly ailing Kim Jong-il. The one without a badge – meaning he isn’t North Korean. A rare privilege for a foreigner.

How now, Zhou
Meet Zhou Yongkang. Hardly a household name, yet ranked ninth in China’s politburo. A former minister of public security (2002-2007), he still has responsibilities in that key area.

Now Zhou has a new role too: he is China’s point man on North Korea. This seems to have been his first trip there, but it won’t be his last. Barely a week later, back in Beijing, he was on the job again, this time hosting a large visiting North Korean delegation (of which more below).

Zhou has been parachuted in above Wang Jiarui, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s international liaison department, who in recent years had been China’s most frequent flyer to Pyongyang. Wang is still on the case: he was part of the October 10 delegation too, but clearly ranked below Zhou.

This seems less a demotion for Wang than a broadening of Beijing’s agenda. Wang’s main task, a thankless one, was and is to try to chivvy the Kims into line on the nuclear issue. That remains a key goal, but now in a wider context. China wants to deepen its overall relations with North Korea. To that end, bringing in a new more senior figure to take charge flatters the Kims, while Zhou’s background in public security is doubtless meant to reassure them.

China means business
Who else did Zhou bring along? Not the usual cross-section of the great and the good, but the neighbors: meaning senior figures from the three Chinese provinces – Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang – which border or are close to North Korea. This trio had a special dinner with a quartet who are their North Korean equivalents: the party secretaries – provincial governors in all but name – from North Pyongan, Jagang, Ryanggang and North Hamgyong, the four provinces which adjoin China across the Yalu (Amnok in Korean) and Tumen rivers.

Not only dinner, but a deal. On the eve of Pyongyang’s parade, the two sides signed a trade agreement. No details were given, but again each side’s border bigwigs were in evidence.

Nor did it end there. A week later, one of North Korea’s rising stars led a big delegation to China, with provinces again prominent. Aged only 53, much younger than most of North Korea’s gerontocratic elite, Mun Kyong-dok is a new alternate politburo member. He also holds the key job of party secretary for Pyongyang. As such, on September 30 he gave a keynote speech in front of 150,000 people, congratulating Kim Jong-il on his re-election as leader.

October 16 saw Mun on the road, shepherding all 11 of North Korea’s provincial or big city party secretaries to – where else? – Beijing. Welcoming them, Zhou Yongkang – who else? – noted that this was “the first time that the secretaries from all the WPK provincial and municipal committees have visited China”, adding, “I wish that you will expand exchange with various Chinese regions you’re visiting and achieve success from your tours.” Mun replied that “We will study and learn the successful experiences from China.”

Maybe this time?
We’ve heard that before, even from Kim Jong-il – who forgets all about it as soon as he gets back home. But as Sally Bowles sings in Cabaret: “Maybe this time.” Sending such a large team – a full house, indeed – on the road in this way, including several younger and newly appointed provincial party bosses, looks like a real effort to take things forward. China won’t be impressed if its mendicant neighbor merely rattles the begging bowl again.

Mun’s team went on to – where else? – the northeast, visiting factories in Heilongjiang and Jilin. These provinces have in the past had bones to pick with their unneighborly neighbor, which too often fails to pay for coal or other goods – and sometimes doesn’t even return the railway wagons used to deliver them. That sort of tiresome trickery will have to stop. Time will tell whether North Korea has really turned over a new leaf in its business dealings.

Blood brothers
On another front, by a convenient coincidence October 19 was the 60th anniversary of China’s entry into the Korean War. The massed ranks of Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) – old British army joke: “I want three volunteers: You, you and you!” – turned the tide, saved Kim Il-sung’s bacon and stopped General Douglas MacArthur wiping the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) off the map.

Cue yet more love-ins. The state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) ran a stirring headline: “Friendship Forged in Blood in Anti-US War.” Special events included a photo exhibition, a Chinese film week and performances by a visiting art troupe from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). A delegation from the Korean People’s Army visited China, led by vice minister of the People’s Armed Forces Pyon Il-son: a hitherto obscure general, but evidently another name to watch.

China reciprocated by sending a better-known bigwig. (Speaking of which, he wears one – or so says Wigipedia.) Unlike Zhou Yongkang, who is new to this patch, General Guo Boxiong – vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission – has had North Korean links for at least a decade; he visited in 2001 with then-president Jiang Zemin.

Usually the CPV anniversary is marked by a low-key wreath-laying and a few press articles. But 60 is a big one, and this time Pyongyang pulled out all the stops. There was a mass rally – “held with splendor”, gushed KCNA – with Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-eun in attendance and much stirring rhetoric. The dear leader also hosted a dinner, again with his son present.

Even Arirang has got in on the act. North Korea’s striking yet introverted mass games have finally admitted (pace juche) that the Kims didn’t go it alone; they got by with a little help from their friends. KCNA on October 22 described a newly added scene, “Friendship Arirang”. This highlights the role of the CPV, portrayed with “drums of different sizes, ribbons, red flags and other hand props … several-dozen-meter-long dragons, pandas and lions.”

We helped you first
One wonders what Chinese visitors who are the mainstay of North Korea’s thin tourist trade make of such cliches – or the fact that, the way Pyongyang tells it, that is only half the story. For Arirang also, and first, depicts “the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army and Chinese armed units fighting together against the Japanese imperialists”. The implication is that this was somehow reciprocal: Korea helped China out, and then China repaid the compliment. Note also the disrespect: Korea had an army, China merely “armed units”. What, no PLA?

Pull the other one, comrades. True, a small but gallant band of Korean communists under Mu Chong, a veteran of the Long March, were with Mao Zedong in Yanan. Separately, the young Kim Il-sung was one of a few guerillas – under Chinese command – who skirmished with the Japanese in Manchuria before being chased across the border into the Soviet Union. Kim came back in Soviet uniform and set about purging rivals – including Mu Chong, who had to flee to China. All quite a can of worms, which it seems unwise of North Korea to risk opening.

CPV casualty figures tell their own story. This year Beijing quantified these. A staggering three million Chinese troops fought in what China still calls the “War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea”. Over 180,000 never came back. PLA statistics show 114,084 killed in action or accidents, with another 25,621 missing. A further 70,000 died from wounds, illness or other causes. There are 183,108 registered war martyrs. Others put China’s losses as even higher. With all respect to Mu Chong, a few Koreans’ sacrifices for China don’t begin to compare.

Nuclear hopes and fears
China’s many and mixed motives vis-a-vis North Korea now include never to get dragged into war like that again. To that end, Beijing still professes faith in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program which it hosts, even though these achieved little tangible – despite many hopes, and much talking-up – over five long years. (They began in 2003 and have been stalled since 2008.)

Here too there is fresh activity. Hardly had the cheers echoing in Kim Il-sung Square died away than the North’s long-time nuclear negotiator Kim Kye-gwan, newly promoted to first vice minister, led a delegation to Beijing on October 12. There followed four days of what KCNA called “an exhaustive and candid discussion on DPRK-China relations, resumption of the six-party talks and the regional situation, etc.” It added: “The DPRK is ready for the resumption of the above-said talks but decided not to go hasty [sic] but to make ceaseless patient efforts now that the US and some other participating countries are not ready…”

True. South Korea and Japan, like the United States, see no point in dusting off the six-party circus without clear signals from Pyongyang on two fronts: a serious will to give up nuclear weapons, as against playing games; and an admission that it sank the South Korean corvette Cheonan in March.

That is a hard gap for Beijing to bridge – especially if there is any basis to recent rumors that North Korea, so far from disarming, may be planning a third nuclear test. Somehow I doubt this. China’s fresh embrace of its tiresome neighbor is not unconditional. I would expect its price for propping up the Kims to be twofold: Market reforms – and no more nuclear tests.

Another bang would sorely tax China’s patience with this tiresome thorn in its northeastern flesh. Beijing is still sheltering number one son Kim Jong-nam, who on October 12 rained (or an earthier verb springs to mind) on little brother’s parade by declaring that he personally was against a third-generation succession. Might anyone try to change his mind? Jong-nam may look ghastly, but he is pro-reform. If Jong-eun proves a pest or a dud, China has alternatives.

Read the full story here:
North Korea: Embracing the dragon
Asia Times
Aidan Foster-Carter
10/28/2010

According ot the Union of Catholic Asian News:

The Catholic Church in South Korea has sent rice aid to flood-hit areas of North Korea, the first aid since a South Korean naval ship was sunk reportedly by a North Korean torpedo.

The Korean Bishops’ Committee for the Reconciliation of the Korean People committees delivered 50 tons of rice worth 95 million won(US$85,000) on Oct. 22.

Uijeongbu diocese, the Korean Conference of Major Superiors of Men’s Religious Institutes and Societies of Apostolic Life and the Korean Catholic Farmers’ Movement also assisted with the shipment.

The rice was sent to the (North) Korean Roman Catholics Association, which organized distribution of the rice in the Kaesong (Gaeseong) district.

“This is the first rice support to North Korea since the Cheonan naval ship incident last March,” said Father Baptist John Kimm Hun-il, executive secretary of the Subcommittee for Aid to North Korea under the bishops’ committee for the reconciliation.

“The food condition of North Koreans is worsening and their government is unable to support them. We need to offer more help,” he added.

Following the sinking of the naval vessel, the South Korean government banned all economic exchanges with North Korea, except for the minimum humanitarian aid.

Read the full story here:
Bishops send food aid to flood-hit North Korea
Union of Catholic Asian News
John Choi
10/26/2010

According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Koreans were given the most extra supplies on Oct. 10, the 65th founding day of the Workers Party, since nation founder Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, Radio Free Asia in the U.S. claimed last Friday.

The so-called “holiday supplies” are various daily necessities sold at state prices or about 1/100 of market prices on major holidays such as Kim Il-sung’s and current leader Kim Jong-il’s birthdays.

On the day, two days’ supply of food and daily necessities were supplied at state prices, a senior party official in Daehongdan-gun in Yanggang Province was quoted by RFA as saying.

Each of about 9,500 homes in the county received two bottles of liquor, 1 kg of potato noodles, 1 kg of potato starch syrup, a bottle of vinegar, a bottle of soybean oil, 1 kg of pork, a cake of soap, a pair of shoes, toothbrushes and toothpaste, the official said.

Another North Korean source said the sudden bounty led to drunken accidents and an inebriated gang fight between youngsters, several of whom were taken to hospital. The source said a tractor carrying potatoes keeled over, killing four people.

Holiday rations/gifts are a time honored tradition in the DPRK, though their significance to the North Korean people has declined since the “arduous march” and the rise of markets.

Paradoxically, their importance to foreign observers of the DPRK has in fact grown since the “arduous march”.  This is because the composition of the gifts, or lack thereof, is important data for estimating the strength of the Public Distribution System and by extension the state’s finances.  By giving the most generous gifts since Kim Il-sung’s death, the DPRK government wants us, and the North Korean people, to believe its fiscal position is improving.

Here, here, here, here, and here are previous posts about holiday rations.

Here is a story in the Daily NK featuring pictures of holiday rations.

Read the full story here:
N.Korean Regime in Rare Show of Generosity
Choson Ilbo
10/25/2010

UPDATE: The New York Times also covers the opening.  According to the article:

In spite of all this, classes in technical English started Monday at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. A fuller curriculum in information technology, business management and agriculture is supposed to get under way in March.

“It’s amazing, and kind of a miracle,” said Park Chan-mo, one of the founders of the school, which was largely financed by contributions from evangelical Christian groups in the United States and South Korea. “Many people were skeptical, but we’re all Christians. We had faith.”

The driving force behind the school was Kim Chin-kyung, an American born in Seoul who founded a university in China in 1992. He made periodic trips from China into North Korea and in 1998 was arrested at his hotel in the capital and thrown into prison, accused of being an agent for the C.I.A.

The relentless interrogations went on for six weeks and almost broke him. “I was ready to die,” he said in a 2001 interview, even writing out a will and bequeathing his organs for transplants and medical study in Pyongyang.

He was finally released, he said, after convincing the authorities that “I was not the kind of person who would spy on them.”

In November 2000, a man appeared in his university office in China — oddly, the same man who had ordered his arrest for espionage in Pyongyang in 1998. But this time he had a proposal from the North Korean government: could he duplicate his Chinese technical university in Pyongyang?

“Doing business with North Korea is not for the faint of heart,” Mr. Kim said on the school’s Web site, “but the effort is ennobling and necessary.”

The first group of 160 undergraduate and master’s students has been chosen by the North Korean government, selected from its top colleges and from the political and military elite. Their tuition, room, board and books are all free, financed by foreign donors and individual sponsors. The plans call for an eventual student body of 2,600 and a faculty of 250, with classes in public health, architecture, engineering and construction.

Sixteen professors from the United States and Europe arrived in Pyongyang over the weekend. For now, no South Korean professors are allowed because of recent political tensions between the Koreas.

It seems an unlikely marriage — the hard-line Communist state and wealthy Christian capitalists — and it remains to be seen how well the match has been made.

North Korea, while reluctant to expose its citizens to the outside world, has been seeking foreign investment for its decrepit educational system. For their part, the evangelicals, who have antagonized the North by encouraging defections and assisting refugees after they cross over, are seeking a foothold inside the churchless state.

North Korea has made a similar bargain before. The Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, not only a Christian but staunchly anti-Communist, operates a car factory in Pyongyang, for instance. But the church is allowed to make only cars, not Christians or capitalist converts.

There is no campus chapel at the new university, Dr. Park said, and there is not one in the plans. But neither, for now, are there any official portraits of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or his father, the late Kim Il-sung, which hang in every school and public building in the North.

The $35 million, 240-acre campus includes a faculty guesthouse and world-class dormitories and classrooms, all of which are said to have running water, power and heat. The school has its own backup generators, but with so little diesel and gasoline available in the North, fuel has to be trucked in from neighboring China.

Classes will be taught in English, and Internet access has been promised to all students. The campus has sirens that go off before rolling electrical blackouts, so work on computers can be saved.

“The Internet will be censored, and we can’t imagine that it won’t be,” said Dr. Park, who has been involved in educational exchanges with the North since 2000. “Even in South Korea things are blocked. I’m sure North Korea has been looking at my e-mails. I keep them businesslike.”

Dr. Park, the former president of the prestigious Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, said the university project could not have been completed without the approval of the United States government. Officials at the school, eager not to run afoul of international sanctions in place against the North, have even sent its curriculum to the State Department for vetting.

One request from Washington was that the name of the biotechnology course be changed for fear that it might be seen as useful in developing biological weapons, Dr. Park said. So the course title was changed to “Agriculture and Life Sciences.”

The United States government also was also “very sensitive,” Dr. Park said, about young North Korean scientists learning skills that could be used by the military or in developing nuclear weapons. “We can’t be fooled into teaching them those kinds of things.”

Several conservative lawmakers from South Korea called for Seoul, which gave $1 million to the school in 2006, to cut off all support. One legislator, Yoon Sang-hyun, was angered that the North insisted that future economics classes include lessons about juche, or Kim Il-sung’s founding philosophy of self-reliance.

Some critics also have suggested that there must have been heavy payoffs made to the North Korean government to move the project along, but Mr. Kim insisted that no deals had been made.

“Every brick we used, every bit of steel, every bit of equipment, we brought in from China,” Mr. Kim, who was in Pyongyang for the opening, said in an interview in Fortune last year. “I have never brought any cash into North Korea.”

“I have unlimited credit at the Bank of Heaven,” he added.

ORIGINAL POST: According to Yonhap:

The first university founded jointly by South and North Korea is scheduled to open next week in Pyongyang, a school official said Friday.

The project to build Pyongyang University of Science and Technology was launched in 2001 after the two countries’ governments approved a South Korean nonprofit organization to participate in it. The university’s stated aim is to promote reconciliation and prosperity among the Korean people, separated since the 1950-53 Korean war, and “help North Korea develop the necessary economic and intellectual infrastructure to function as a member of the international community,” according to its Web site.

“All the facilities and staff are ready, and we will officially open (next Monday),” said James Chin-kyung Kim, the school’s founding president and co-chairman. Kim, a U.S. citizen, also founded the Yanbian University of Science and Technology in the Chinese city of Yanji, a major Korean-Chinese population center.

“In time for the opening, 17 foreign professors will fly to Pyongyang from Shenyang (on Saturday). These professors come from the U.S. and Europe,” he said.

South Korean staff will also be able to teach, starting next semester, according to the school.

Instruction will be in English, and 160 students have been selected for the school’s undergraduate and master’s degree courses in agriculture, information and communication technology, and industry and management. Forty doctorate-level students began studying with four foreign academics in the summer.

The university plans to increase the number of students to 500 and open more departments to teach architecture, engineering, construction and public health care.

Here are previous posts about PUST including satellite imagery of the facility’s construction.

Read the full story here:
First university founded by two Koreas to open in Pyongyang next week
Yonhap
10/22/2010

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The senior secretaries of all North Korea’s 11 metropolitan and provincial party committees paid a rare collective visit to a senior member of the Communist Party of China in Beijing on Tuesday.

The North Korean delegation led by Mun Kyong-dok, the senior secretary of the Pyongyang municipal party committee, met with Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee who ranks ninth in the hierarchy, to discuss economic cooperation.

Zhou was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying it was “the first time” in the history of bilateral relations that senior secretaries of the Workers Party’s metropolitan and provincial committees have visited China as a group. “I wish that you will expand exchange with various Chinese regions you’re visiting and achieve success from your tours.”

The North Koreans also met with their Chinese counterparts to discuss investment in development projects in the North. The Chinese officials were in Beijing to attend the fifth plenary session of the 17th Communist Party Central Committee.

A South Korean government official said, “The North Korean officials’ visit to Beijing is equivalent to all 16 South Korean metropolitan mayors and provincial governors flying to Washington as a group to discuss exchange and cooperation with ruling-party lawmakers and state governors in the U.S.” He said since Kim Jong-il’s son Jong-un was established as the official successor to the leadership, the North and China have increased the frequency of personnel exchanges “to discuss more substantive matters than before.”

The profiles of the Chinese delegation that attended the 65th anniversary celebrations of the North Korean Workers Party were also exceptional. It included senior officials of the three Chinese northeastern provinces — Sun Zhengcai, the secretary of the Jilin provincial party committee, Chen Xi, the deputy secretary of the Liaoning provincial party committee, and Du Yuxin, the deputy secretary of the Heilongjiang provincial party committee.

They were welcomed at Sunan Airport by Ju Yong-sik, the senior secretary of the party committee in Jagang Province, a border region. The senior secretaries of the party committees in all four North Korean provinces bordering China — Ju from Jagang Province, Ri Man-gon from North Pyongan Province, O Su-yong from North Hamgyong Province and Kim Hi-taek from Yanggang Province — attended a dinner that evening in honor of the Chinese delegation.

“There have recently been more signs of the North and China deepening and developing economic cooperation, including various development projects focusing on the border areas,” a Unification Ministry official said. “It seems that after the North’s Workers Party and the Chinese Communist Party finished talks at headquarters level, their provincial party committees have now begun concrete cooperation.”

Military exchanges are also increasing ahead of the 60th anniversary of the day the Chinese joined the Korean War on Oct. 25.

The official North Korean Central Broadcasting Station on Tuesday reported a delegation of Chinese People’s Volunteer Veterans led by Wang Hai, a former Air Force commander, and the People’s Liberation Army’s art troupe arrived in Pyongyang for the anniversary.

O Kuk-ryol, vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, and Pak Jae-kyong, vice minister of People’s Armed Forces, hosted a reception for them.

On Oct. 14, a North Korean Army delegation led by Pyon In-son, another vice minister of People’s Armed Forces, visited China, to tour PLA units. Quoting the North’s official Rodong Sinmun daily, Xinhua said, “Friendship bonded by blood in the previous generations is being handed down to the next generation.”

A South Korean security official said, “The North is apparently trying to counter the South Korea-U.S. military alliance, which has been strengthened since the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan in March, by intensifying military ties with China, as well as attempting to escape international economic isolation by leaning on China.”

Mike has more at NK Leadership Watch.

Read the full story here:
N.Korea, China Grow Ever Closer
Choson Ilbo
10/21/2010