North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Daily NK:

There has been an upswing in prices and exchange rates in North Korea as East Asia moves towards the lunar New Year’s holiday, which falls on the 23rd.

A source from Hyesan in Yangkang Province told Daily NK this afternoon, “The number of people in the jangmadang is rising and trade is getting more active, and so the Yuan exchange rate and rice price are both on the up.” According to the source, the Yuan is trading for 680 North Korean Won, while rice is hovering at approximately 4,300.

A source from Musan in North Hamkyung Province previously reported similar circumstances to Daily NK on the 16th, with the Yuan at 780 Won and rice and corn at 4,500 Won and 800 Won respectively in the jangmadang there.

The current situation follows on from a price spike before Kim Jong Il’s death on December 17th [see here and here], the following mourning period (to the 29th) and criticism sessions (to January 8th). However, while at its height last month the price of the most expensive rice had hit 5,000 Won, by January 11th-14th it had declined to 3,000-3,500 Won in eastern regions. Now, however, with the holiday period ahead, prices are rising again.

“Although the self-criticism period ended, we still had to keep an eye on the security forces so the number of sellers in the jangmadang was what it used to be, but from a few days ago people started using the jangmadang as normal and the rice and Yuan prices started rising a bit,” the Hyesan source explained.

Interestingly, while the authorities have tried a number of measures to regulate the Sino-North Korean border and limit the use of foreign currency of late, sources report that the measures have only had a minor effect on prices and have not daunted the will of local people to trade at all.

Overseas currency is even being traded publicly somewhat more frequently now, sources report, showing the skepticism with which the people view official threats to stop the use of Yuan and U.S. Dollars in the market.

As the Musan source commented wryly, “People are saying that ‘If his dad couldn’t stop it, what is the young one going to do about it?’ and ‘As long as the Tumen River keeps flowing, they can’t stop the Yuan, the smuggling, or the defection.’”

Read the full story here:
New Year Seeing Active Trade
Daily NK
Lee Seok Young
2012-1-18

UPDATE 1 (2012-1-19): Writing in the Asia Times, Michael Rank offers an update on the Ponghwa group (Ponghwajo, 봉화조):

It is widely assumed that if anyone knows what the North Koreans are up to, it’s the Chinese, and Chinese-language Internet sites have provided news stories about drug smuggling and border-crossing refugees. But there seems to have been a clampdown in the last year or two and these sources have dried up.

However, the Beijing magazine Kan Tianxia published a noteworthy article after Jong-il’s death highlighting the so-called Ponghwa group consisting of the sons (and presumably the occasional daughter) of the Pyongyang elite.

This privileged clique, which was first formed around 2000, consists of people mainly in their 30s and, the magazine claims, included Jong-eun himself after he returned home from his studies in Switzerland.

It says the group’s purpose is to strengthen Jong-eun’s power base and to act as his backstage support.

The article quotes an informed source as saying the Ponghwa group are mainly graduates of Kim Il-sung University, Pyongyang Foreign Languages University and other elite institutions, and that they tend to work in the security and intelligence apparatus and in top government organs such as the supreme procuratorate (prosecutor’s office).

The word Ponghwa means “smoke of battle” and also has connotations of “advance guard”. It is the name of the area of Pyongyang on the Taedong River that was the home of Kim Il-sung’s mother Kang Pan-sok; it is also the name of Pyongyang’s most elite hospital and there is a Ponghwa underground station.

The group is said to be headed by the sons of two generals. One of these is O Se-hyon, the second son of General O Kuk-ryol, who, according to the North Korea Leadership Watch (NKLW) blog, participated in a crucial meeting hours after Jong-il’s death which “began the order of operations which publicized KJI’s [Kim Jong-il's] demise and taking on KJI’s remaining administrative and command mechanisms”.

The other leader is Kim Chol, son of General Kim Won-hong, who, according to rumors, was involved in various scandals but was nevertheless promoted to full general in 2009. General Kim, like the fathers of several Ponghwa members named in the article, belongs to the super-elite as is clear from his listing as a member of Jong-il’s funeral committee.

Ponghwa members also include the son of former veteran ambassador to Switzerland Ri Chol (Ri Tcheul) who is said to have been close to the young Jong-eun when he attended the International School in Bern, as well as the son of vice premier Kang Sok-ju. Kang was until 2010 the senior vice minister of foreign affairs and is, according to NKLW, a cousin of Jong-il; he also has has ties to Jong-eun’s mentors and uncle and aunt, Jang Song-taek and Kim Kyong-hui.

Members of elite groups such as the Ponghwa set are visible to the foreign community in Pyongyang where they frequent hard currency shops and restaurants, and have a clear parallel in China where the sons and daughters of top officials are assiduous in exploiting family connections.

Although Jong-eun is said to be as omniscient and omnipotent as his father and grandfather, almost nothing is known for sure about him. There is little doubt that he went to school in Switzerland, and the Chinese magazine claims this has been confirmed in North Korean “propaganda documents” – probably internal briefing materials distributed to senior officials.

Pyongyang watchers experienced a mild frisson when his mother was mentioned in a television documentary earlier this month, as this was the first time there had been official recognition that he has a mother. She has never been officially named, apparently because she was a Japanese-born Korean, and also because her relationship with Jong-il was not a happy one. She is said to have died in Paris in 2004.

Nobody is sure if Jong-eun was born in 1983 or 1984. According to a book written by his father’s former live-in chef [Kenji Fujimoto], his birthday is on January 8, but there were no signs of celebration in Pyongyang on that day. Perhaps it was considered unfitting to celebrate so soon after his father’s demise.

The only utterance attributed to Kim Jong-eun is a paean of praise to the joys of working all night. “Even when I work night after night, once I have brought joy to the comrade supreme commander, the weariness vanishes and a new strength courses through my whole body. This is what revolutionaries should live for.”

His father and grandfather were also fond of lauding the joys of working through the night, and there’s nothing North Korean leaders fear more than original thinking.

ORIGINAL POST (2011-4-18): Today the media was abuzz with rumors of the DPRK’s most exclusive club: Ponghwajo (aka: Bonghwajo, 봉화조).  This club is composed of the children of ruling elites, and according to the rumors, they not only generate substantial sums of hard currency, but they also know how to spend it.  Below are some stories about the group:

Choson Ilbo:

When Kim Jong-chol, the second son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, spent 10 leisurely days in Singapore in February going on a luxury shopping spree and attending an Eric Clapton concert, he was apparently joined by a brat pack of children of powerful officials in North Korea.

An official source here said Sunday intelligence information reveals Kim Jong-chol (30) and members of the so-called Ponghwajo or torch group not only visited Singapore, but also went to Macao and Malaysia to gamble and shop.

The Ponghwajo consists of the regime’s princelings, not to be confused with the children of early high-ranking officials who fought as revolutionaries along with former North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. These sons of the revolutionaries are now in their 50s and 60s and have recently been tapped to serve in key positions under North Korea’s heir apparent Kim Jong-un.

But the Ponghwajo are in their 30s and 40s and are not viewed favorably by the regime’s leadership. Though they are often engaged in activities that generate dollar revenues through drug sales, counterfeiting and black market trade, they apparently do not wield much political power.

The group was formed in the early 2000s by O Se-won, the son of Gen. O Kuk-ryol, a senior leader in North Korea’s powerful National Defense Commission, and Kim Chol, the son of Kim Won-hong, head of the People’s Army Security Command. Its members include Ri Il-hyok, the first son of Ri Chol, former North Korean ambassador to Switzerland and the official in charge of handling Kim Jong-il’s secret bank accounts, as well as Kang Tae-seung, the eldest son of First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju and Jo Song-ho, the eldest son of the late Jo Myong-rok, first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission who died last year.

Donga Ilbo:

Certain members of Bonghwajo, a club of the children of North Korea’s power elite, accompanied Kim Jong Chul, 30, the second son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, when the junior Kim attended Eric Clapton’s concert in Singapore in February.

Like “Crown Prince Party, or The Princelings,” a group of the children of prominent and influential senior communist officials in China, Bonghwajo is comprised of children of ranking officials of the North Korean Workers’ Party, military and senior members of its Cabinet.

Due to their parents’ influence, the children reportedly landed jobs at powerful organizations and are earning money through illegal activities such as counterfeiting and narcotics trafficking.

A source on North Korea said, “Kim Jong Chul is forming a closer relationship with Bonghwajo members after his younger brother Jong Un was named Kim Jong Il’s heir apparent.”

“When Jong Chul went to Singapore to watch Eric Clapton’s concert, certain Bonghwajo members accompanied him and paid all of the costs for his stay and shopping in Singapore.”

The source said, “Jong Chul and Bonghwajo members visited not only Singapore but also Macau and Malaysia in February,” adding, “Visiting the three countries, they gambled with up to 300,000 U.S. dollars and purchased expensive products at department stores.”

Formed in the early 2000s, Bonghwajo is reportedly led by O Se Hyon, second son of National Defense Commission Vice Chairman O Kuk Ryul, and Kim Chul, first son of the General Political Department Director Kim Won Hong at the People`s Army. Kim Jong Un joined the club when he turned 20, while Kim Chang Hyok, son of Kim Chung Il, deputy director of Kim Jong-Il`s personal secretariat, also became a member.

Bonghwajo was named after the village of Bonghwa in Pyongyang`s Kangdong County, where Kim Jong Il’s grandmother Kang Ban Sok lived. Bonghwa is construed as meaning “frontier” in North Korea.

Bonghwa Medical Center, the North’s top hospital, is where Kim Jong Il underwent treatment when he suffered a stroke in 2008.

Bonghwajo is also known to deal in illegal activities such as counterfeiting and drug trafficking. The Washington Times reported in May last year that Bonghwajo was involved in illegal activities, including circulation of “super notes,” or ultra-high precision counterfeit 100-dollar bills, and drug trafficking.

U.S. intelligence say O Se Hyon was entangled in the incident of the Bongsu-ho, North Korea’s drug trafficking boat that was caught by Australia in April 2003, and is related with counterfeit bills discovered in Las Vegas in 2004.

Bonghwajo members are said to be habitually taking drugs as well as trafficking them. Kim Chul, who works at the general surveillance bureau under the (North) Korean People’s Army Ministry, is earning money through drug trafficking in China and elsewhere and paying kickbacks to Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Chul.

The group is even called a narcotics club because drug use is so rampant among members, with leader O Se Hyon undergoing treatment at a detention facility due to heroine inhalation.

Daily NK:

The existence of ‘Bonghwajo’, a grouping of the children of North Korea’s highest leadership including Kim Jong Eun, has made headlines in South Korea in recent days, raising questions about what role this group of powerful youngsters might be playing in the succession.

‘Bonghwajo’ members are said to be involved in foreign currency-earning businesses, many of them illegal, while also working in key areas of the National Security Agency, General Bureau of Reconnaissance, Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces, Central Prosecutors’ Office and other high organs. They reportedly curry favour by financially supporting both Kim Jong Eun and elder brother Kim Jong Cheol.

Therefore, one analysis has it that the Bonghwajo, which is analogous with China’s ‘Princelings’ is both a group for the strengthening of Kim Jong Eun’s power and a private bank through which to finance the successor’s activities.

Cho Young Ki, a professor with Korea University, told The Daily NK today, “Bonghwajo can be read as being Kim Jong Eun’s support group. The Three Revolutionary Teams took the initiative in the establishment of Kim Jong Il’s power, and I presume that Bonghwajo might be performing the same role.”

Professor Cho added, “Kim Jong Cheol, who lost his practical power after publicizing the succession structure, is likely to be providing this group with his support.”

Head of World North Korea Study Center An Chan Il agreed, suggesting, “It appears that Bonghwajo may be intervening in personnel management while offering funds for Kim Jong Eun obtained from foreign currency-earning businesses.”

An went on to describe a group led by Kim Jong Il’s half brother Kim Pyong Il and Oh Il Cheong (the son of former Minister of the People’s Armed Forces Oh Jin Wu) at the time of Kim Jong Il’s elevation.

An said, “Even though we didn’t know their name, there was a group that came before ‘Bonghwajo’, and the nature of ‘Bonghwajo’ could be the same as that of the group led by Kim Pyong Il.” He went on, “Kim Pyong Il worked as the group’s main leader, but then he was put in a ‘sub-branch’ and got sent overseas. But Oh Il Cheong switched line and is now a Lieutenant-General.”

The ‘Bonghwajo’ group may well consider that it is in the same boat as Kim Jong Eun. Therefore, its members are likely to work to expand their power in the Party, military and foreign currency earning organs so to ensure Kim Jong Eun’s succession and their own access to power and money for the years to come.

The core members of the Bonghwajo are said to be Oh Se Hyun, the second son of Vice Chairman of the National Defense Commission Oh Keuk Ryul, Kim Cheol, who is the eldest son of Kim Won Hong (the vice director in charge of political organization in the General Political Department of the People’s Army), Kang Tae Sung, the eldest son of Vice Premier of the Cabinet Kang Suk Ju, Kim Cheol Woong, the second son of Kim Choong Il (a former vice director in Kim Jong Il’s Secretary’s Office), and Cho Sung Ho, the eldest son of Cho Myeong Rok (former first vice chairman of the National Defense Commission).

However, professor Cho pointed out, “Even if Bonghwajo make an effort to establish Kim Jong Eun’s smooth power succession, it is doubtful whether they can reign properly. The extent of their activities and legitimacy may decide whether or not they are able to support Kim Jong Eun.”

Meanwhile, Yonhap News has claimed that drugs are so prevalent within the group that it is known as a drug club, and Oh Se Hyun has reportedly been treated for addiction.

According to the Daily NK:

The North Korean authorities are currently employing various means to encourage frugality, an idea which has recently come to include ‘kwanhonsangje’ (the four ceremonial occasions; coming of age, marriage, funeral and ancestral rites).

In recent years there has been official criticism of the fact that engagement ceremonies, wedding gift exchanges between families and even the table for ancestral rites have become occasions full of over-spending, empty formalities and vanity.

Recently, Daily NK obtained a copy of the October issue of monthly magazine ‘Socialist Cultural Life’, to which social studies scholar Jang Seong Nam submitted a piece, ‘Let’s Perform Kwanhonsangje the Socialist Way’, in which he declared, “kwanhonsangje should be performed according to the demands of the Party and social development.”

The article emphasized, “We are taking the lead, seeing kwanhonsangje performed in the socialist way as a valid and unavoidable problem in the establishment of the new military-first socialist life.”

“Because old, feudalist, superstitious, empty formalities and bizarre foreign customs are not disappearing, we are strongly demanding action on this problem,” it went on, adding, “Rejecting bizarre foreign customs crushes the Imperialists’ policy of ethnic extermination under the banner of ‘globalization’.”

The article also looked in more detail at problem issues surrounding kwanhonsangjae.

“A sufficient engagement,” it proclaimed, “has two people and their parents meeting to confirm the marriage, and wedding ceremonies should be a gathering at someone’s home.”

Regarding funeral arrangements and ancestral rites, it recommended, “Commemorate a death by placing a medal or honorary certificate before an image of the deceased along with flowers, while the various commemorative services on the 3rd day or the birthday of the deceased should be eliminated.”

Getting into minutae, it added of a groom’s suit color, “Discard the convention of wearing a black or dark blue suit; men should wear bright colors according to season.”

In these ways, the article asserted, kwanhonsangjae becomes an aesthetic and modern set of customs with a uniquely Chosun ethnic color.

The piece appears to show both the state’s desire to restrain consumption but also to reassert ‘socialist’ attitudes and encourage nationalist attitudes, thus pushing back against the impact of foreign ideas coming in via overseas media, South Korean dramas and so on.

‘Socialist Cultural Life’ is distributed monthly to all official organs and enterprises. Its publisher, Labor Group Publishing House, publishes various other magazines including ‘Chosun Women’, ‘Worker’ and ‘Agricultural Worker’. As a part of the Party Propaganda and Agitation Department, its various publications are among the state’s most ubiquitous propaganda weapons after the daily Workers’ Party mouthpiece, ‘Rodong Shinmun’.

Read the full story here:
Celebrate the Socialist Way!
Daily NK
Lee Seok Young
2011-12-9

Andrei Lankov writes in the Asia Times:

It is often overlooked how much North Korea has changed over the past 20 years. Its Stalinist and militaristic facade is carefully maintained by the state, but in the new circumstances it is increasingly misleading. Behind this official veneer of militant posters and goose-stepping soldiers, the society itself has changed much.

In a nutshell, the past two decades were the time when the state was steadily retreating from the private life, and also was losing its ability (perhaps also its will) to control the daily activities of its subjects as well as how they made a living. One of many significant changes has been the steady decline in the significance attached to family background (known as songbun in North Korean parlance) – once the single most important factor that determined the life of a North Korean.

Family background did matter in other communist countries as well, but to a much lesser extent. For example, in the Soviet Union immediately after the 1917 communist revolution, scions of aristocrats, descendants of priests, and merchants faced many kinds of discrimination. It was more difficult for them to enter a college or to be promoted, and they were more likely to be arrested for alleged political crimes. However, this discrimination had disappeared by the late 1940s, so in the days of my youth, in the 1970s and 1980s, it had become quite normal in the USSR to boast about real or alleged aristocratic family roots.

North Korea is very different. In 1957, the authorities launched a large-scale and ambitious investigation of the family backgrounds of virtually all North Korean citizens. As a result of this and subsequent investigations, by the mid-1960s the entire population was divided into a number of hereditary groups, somewhat akin to the estates of medieval Europe. Career chances and life prospects of every North Korean were determined, to a very large extent, by his membership in one of these strictly defined groups.
The major criteria of classification were quite straightforward: the songbun (origin) of the North Korean was largely defined by what his or her direct male ancestors did in the 1930s and 1940s.

The official songbun structure was quite elaborate and changed over time. However, at the first approximation, there have been three groups in North Korea, usually known as “core”, “wavering” and “hostile” classes. Every single North Korean had to belong to one of these groups.

The “hostile class” included people whose ancestors in or around 1945 were engaged in activities that were not to the regime’s liking. Among others, this group included descendants of clerks in the Japanese colonial administration, Christian activists, female shamans, entrepreneurs, and defectors to the South. Members of the hostile class faced the greatest number of restrictions: They could not live in Pyongyang or other major cities and they could not be admitted to good colleges or universities. People whose songbun was exceptionally bad would not even be drafted into the military.

Members of the “core class” included those whose direct male ancestors contributed toward the foundation and strengthening of the Kim family regime. They were descendants of anti-Japanese guerrillas, heroes of the Korean War, or party bureaucrats. For all practical purposes, over the past half-century, only these people could be promoted to key positions in the North Korean state and party bureaucracy. They constituted the hereditary elite.

In the days of Kim Il-sung’s rule, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s, songbun was of paramount significance. It determined where people lived and worked and even what they ate. Most marriages were also concluded between people of the same or similar songbun.

It was also important that the songbun was, in essence, unchallengeable. It was inherited from one’s father and was then bestowed on one’s children. The mother’s songbun did not matter. I know a couple where the husband’s songbun was bad (he was a “landowner’s grandson”), but the wife had the best songbun imaginable, being a descendant of a family that once was involved with the anti-Japanese guerrillas of Kim Il-sung. Frankly, such a marriage was rare and unequal – in most cases women of such standing would be as reluctant to marry a man of low origin as, say, a European noble lady from the 17th century. However, in this particular case the marriage did take place, much against the resistance of the girl’s parents.

In due time, though, the spouses discovered that the wife’s songbun did not really matter. Their daughter, a promising athlete, could not be sent for further training, since her songbun was bad: the great-granddaughter of a minor landlord could not compete on the national level and, for that matter, could be accepted only to a junior college.

In Kim Il-sung’s era – that is, before 1994 – the state was in near-complete control of an individual’s life. The only way to achieve high status and affluence was to climb the official bureaucratic ladder. As a North Korean friend put it in the late 1980s: “I hate officials, but I want to become an official, because in our country, only officials can live well.” Indeed, in Kim Il-sung’s North Korea all material goods were distributed by the state and almost all income was derived from work in state industry or the state bureaucracy.

But things started to change dramatically in the early 1990s. The state sector, suddenly deprived of Soviet subsidies, collapsed. North Koreans suddenly discovered that food rations were no longer forthcoming and their official monthly salary would only buy 1 or 2 kilograms of rice. Predictably, mass starvation followed, killing at least a half-million people.

To survive, the North Korean people literally rediscovered capitalism. Estimates vary, but the consensus is that over the past 10-15 years, the average North Korean family has come to draw most of its income from what can be described as black-market activities. Actually the so-called black market is not particularly black, since the government – in spite of occasional crackdowns – has tacitly tolerated its existence since the mid-1990s. Nowadays North Koreans work on individual fields on steep mountain slopes, they establish private workshops to produce garments and assorted consumer goods, and they smuggle and trade.

The new and increasingly dominant unofficial economy is in essence capitalist. As such, it rewards those who are sufficiently industrious, greedy, intelligent, ruthless and disciplined – and in some cases, it rewards them handsomely. Social inequality is growing and many a successful merchant or workshop owner lives better than a middle-ranking bureaucrat. A successful entrepreneur might have all trappings of luxury – including, say, a Chinese motorbike or a refrigerator, which in North Korea can be seen as roughly equivalent to a Lexus and a yacht.

The success in the emerging new economy is usually unrelated to one’s songbun. In fact, sometimes it seems that people with bad songbun tend to be more successful nowadays – perhaps because back in the 1990s they had no expectations of the state and were the first to jump into the murky waters of the emerging North Korean market economy.

Of late, the previously attractive career avenues have lost much of their allure. For example, in the past, many North Koreans were willing to do their long and tedious military service, which lasted some seven to 10 years. This popularity was easy to explain: For a person with average songbun, this would be the only way to get into the bottom tiers of the bureaucracy. As a North Korean told it, recalling the time of her youth, the 1970s: “The only way to become somebody was to go into the military, join the Korean Workers Party while on the active service, and then come back to become an official.”

Recently, however, military service has lost much of its popularity. Few people would be willing spend 10 years in a squalid barracks so as eventually to become a minor official in the city administration. Such a job is still attractive, to be sure, but it seems preferable to become a smuggler or a merchant, whose income far exceeds that of a petty bureaucrat.

Still, on the very top, songbun is important, since the key administrative positions are held by those with good songbun, and a mid- or high-level official can make a nice income by milking the private economy. Hence people with good songbun still often think about capitalizing on the real or alleged contribution of their ancestors to the establishment of the North Korean regime. However, for a majority the emergence of markets opened a new, faster and more attractive (but also more risky) avenue of social mobility.

North Korean society has become defined by one’s relationship to money, not by one’s relationship to the bureaucracy or one’s inherited caste status. Money talks, and for better or worse, in North Korea, money talks ever louder. As a female refugee in her early 40s put it recently: “Under Kim Il-sung, songbun was very important, it decided everything. Under Kim Jong-il, things are different – your family background still matters, but money nowadays is more important than social background.”

Read the full story here:
North Korea’s new class system
Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
2011-12-3

1. “Relying on One’s Strength: The Growth of the Private Agriculture in Borderland Areas of North Korea”
Andrei Lankov，Seok Hyang Kim ，Inok Kwa
PDF of the article here 

The two decades which followed the collapse of the communist bloc were a period of dramatic social and economic transformation in North Korea. The 1990-2010 period was a time when market economy re-emerged in North Korea where once could be seen as the most perfect example of the Stalinist economic model. The present article deals with one of the major areas of socioeconomic change which, so far, has not been the focus of previous studies. The topic is about the growth of private agricultural activities in North Korea after 1990. This growth constitutes a significant phenomenon which has important social consequences and also is important from a purely economic point of view: it seems that the spontaneous growth of private plots played a major role in the recent improvement of the food situation inside North Korea.

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3. Korea Sharing Movement anti-malarial program (Via Cancor)
Read a PDF of on the project here

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4. What is it like to teach at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST)?
Find out from one instructor here. More on PUST here.

Pictured above (Google Earth): A street market in Rakrang District (락랑구역), Pyongyang.

According to the Korea Herald:

A market economy and new business class have emerged in North Korea since the 1990s even though their government will not acknowledge it publicly, a panel of experts said Wednesday.

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Center for Free Enterprise in Yeouido, Seoul, professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University said that the populace was forced into adapting to a new market economy after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Following the collapse of its main benefactor, there are sources that suggest that the North’s industrial output was halved by 2000 compared to what it had been in 1990, and that half a million to 1 million North Koreans perished, he said.

Unlike in former communist countries where the government chose to adopt capitalism or the people demanded it, “in North Korea it was just a way to stay alive,” he said.

“Only top officials survive on salary,” he added.

Walter Klitz of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty said that in his periodic visits to North Korea he has seen the effects of the new market economy on the populace, as those in some rural areas of the nation are relatively well off.

“They don’t have a food problem, they have a distribution problem,” he said. Furthermore, he has witnessed traffic jams in urban areas apparently spurred by increased economic activity, something unheard of just a few years ago.

This also indicates that sanctions imposed on the North have been bypassed, particularly through increased investments from China.

The increase in this market activity, however, does not mean that the nation is no longer a planned economy, as the main institutions are still in place, they said. For example, laws against activities such as traveling outside of one’s home county or exchanging foreign currency are no longer enforced.

The North Korean government attempts to contain such market activity, but no longer attempts to clamp down on it since the botched currency reform of late 2009, Lankov said.

Furthermore, the presence of this new business class ― primarily made up of women because men are required to keep up appearances at their state-approved jobs ― does not mean the nation is more prepared for reunification than before. Lankov said that North Koreans who have succeeded in business would likely be swamped by competition for the South, and much of the nation would form a “permanent underclass” should unification take place.

“You would see much of North Koreans disadvantaged and never recover,” he said.

After each member of the panel made their remarks, they took questions from guests, with many questions relating to the succession process from current leader Kim Jong-il to his son and heir apparent Kim Jong-un.

Lankov said that he does not like to talk about succession often.

“I don’t know anything about Kim Jong-un, period,” he said. Whether or not he is more reform-minded than his father or grandfather, though, may not matter.

“His logic … will be much more defined by the political situation than by his own inclinations,” he said.

Another panel member was Donald Kirk, Korea correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. In response to a question comparing the unification of the two Koreas to East and West Germany in 1990, Kirk called a comparison between North Korea and East Germany “fallacious.”

“East Germany was the most powerful economy in Eastern Europe,” he said. “It was not a starving country. It was certainly not a failed state.”

Read the full story here:
Signs of market economy in N.K. emerging: expert
Korea Herald
Rob York
2011-9-28

Back in 2002 the price of gold was approximately US$300/oz. Today it is closer to US$1,600/oz. Here is a chart:

The rapid increase in the price of gold is having a supply side effect of stimulating more gold mining across the planet, and North Korea is no exception.  Though the DPRK leadership has traditionally kept a watchful eye on the nation’s gold mines, reports began surfacing back in March that individual North Koreans were getting into the prospecting business:

Located at the base of Mt. Nokbong, near Hyesan in Yangkang Province, one particular village of 24 households saw its schools, public facilities and all other vestiges of welfare disappear following the construction of the Samsoo Power Station in 2004, which deprived the area of power.

And yet this village is now overflowing with people. They are here from all over the country, cramming homes and the nearby valley with one purpose in mind; searching for gold. Housewives, workers, university students, farmers, children, drifters, criminals, soldiers and bureaucrats; men and women alike from all different classes are living in this one place with the same aim.

The majority of people dig, without permission from the authorities and with only rudimentary tools. Their only wish is to avoid having to leave town and, hopefully, find some gold. The soldiers and bureaucrats, on the other hand, do not dig, instead using their authority to cream a share of others’ profits. (Daily NK)

It appears that the gold rush continues to this day, though it may be a bit more organized, at least officially.  A recent visitor to the DPRK took the following picture:

The caption of the photo reads:

“There are hundreds of people working certain rivers in North Korea in what can only be described as a gold rush. The government is buying gold from people who work the rivers. This has expanded considerably from past years when dozens were working the rivers. In one area I saw heavy equipment used to mine the river. The guides explained what was going on yet I cannot help but think this is a form of individual capitalism since it is individuals and families doing the mining.”

I would be interested to know more about what mechanisms the DPRK is employing to manage (control) “spontaneous” gold prospecting–an industry that would be hard for any central authority to police (particularly a poor country with high levels of corruption).  Given the limited amount of information, I can conceive of  two broad institutional arrangements:

Option number 1: Individual families and/or groups are simply registering their “mining companies” as branch enterprises or subsidiaries of existing state owned enterprises and mines.  In this way they take on the legal protection of the state in exchange for some defined percentage of their output.  This is the way many de-facto private North Korean businesses are run.   Under conditions of weak oversight (likely), this would imply that substantial profits from mining can be retained at the lower levels of production (with the firm “owner” or the miners themselves).  Pyongyang would have to be policing the rivers pretty hard and effectively auditing all the enterprises involved if expected to see a substantial increase in revenue from these “spontaneous” mining operations.

Option number 2: The North Korean government has essentially set up a “gold board” that sets a single legal domestic price for the purchase of gold from its people (just as many [exploitative] agriculture boards are set up in developing countries).  The DPRK government would earn revenue by keeping the difference between the amount paid to the domestic miners and the international price at which it sells the gold abroad. This option might make more fiscal sense in a weak institutional environment because the only thing the DPRK needs to police really well is the Chinese border. Under this system, the government does not need to worry about who mines the gold (or where or how) since the “gold board” would ultimately be selling it abroad and retaining the earnings.

I have not heard anything about such and institution existing, however, so until I am told differently I am more inclined to believe that option 1 is being utilized despite its fiscal shortcomings. This would imply that the increase in gold prices will translate to a real increase in wealth for a number of “ordinary” North Koreans. Though the work is not likely to be long lasting, it will provide some with savings or potential operating capital for the next business idea down the line.

Are you aware of other options or do you have some specific knowledge on how the DPRK is managing (controlling) freelance prospecting and mining? Please let me know.

Pictured above: An annual index measure of economic freedom in the DPRK from 1995 to 2011, published by the Heritage Foundation’s and Wall Street Journal’s Index of Economic Freedom.

Andrei Lankov writes in the Asia Times:

[The] Heritage foundation and the Wall Street Journal recently published a new edition of their annual index of economic freedom, according to which North Korea has the world’s least-free economy. One can hardly argue about this – North Korea has for decades worked hard to take Stalinism to its logical extremes, and slightly beyond that.

However, one gets perplexed when looking at the grades of unfreedom that are given by the Heritage Foundation to the North through the 1995-2011 period. According to the index, the level of economic unfreedom in North Korea was essentially the same throughout the entire 1996-2005 period. Then, in 2005 it deteriorated considerably and has continued a slow downward slide until now.

This depiction is bound to raise the eyebrows of anyone who is familiar with actual economic trends in North Korea. The graph is correct when it says that the economy became more restrictive in 2005, when the government tried to re-introduce the rationing and reconfirmed the ban on the private sale of grain (such a ban had existed since 1957, but ceased to be enforced around 1990).

However, the 2005 measures were, essentially, a backlash, an attempt to reverse the half-baked reforms of 2002 – and those reforms can be described only as liberalizing.

On balance, the 2002 reforms should not be overestimated. Nonetheless, the 2002 reforms legalized a significant part of the black economy, and also granted managers of state-owned industrial enterprises a measure of managerial freedom they had not had for many decades.

If this was not an increase in economic freedom, what was it? But the Heritage Foundation graph does not give any hint of this change: the line that purports to depict the level of economic freedom remains on the same low level in 2002.

This is more interesting because 1997-2002 was when actual economic freedom increased dramatically. The old hyper-Stalinist laws remained technically effective, but nobody bothered to enforce these restrictions. It is estimated that in the early 2000s, the average North Korean family drew some 80% of its income from various market activities.

This was technically illegal, but the authorities were ready to turn a blind eye to the re-emergence of some form of a market economy, and in 2002 they even grudgingly and partially legalized the already flourishing market economy.

However, these improvements – both de-facto and, in 2002-2005 de-jure – find no expression in the flat line of the Heritage graph which, however, does not fail to notice that after 2005 the situation again began to deteriorate due to a government backlash against the private economy. The backlash was not particularly successful, but it lasted until 2009, and this is correctly reflected by the downward line at the graph.

However, then the graph begins seriously misleading again – and again, seemingly due the same implicit assumption that in North Korea things can go only from bad to worse. The graph depicts 2009 as a year when the level of freedom went even lower – and this is a correct assumption, since in 2009 the authorities undertook currency reform.

The reform’s main, if not sole, purpose was to annihilate the private economy that had survived the 2005-2009 backlashes surprisingly well. There is little doubt that North Korean decision-makers really want, above all, to revive the hyper-Stalinist economy that alone guarantees the regime’s long-term political stability (or so they – and the present author – believe).

However, the 2009 bold attempt to go back to the Stalinist ways ended in complete and pathetic failure – and the government, fearful of the chaos its inept reform created, backpedaled immediately.

The failure of the 2009 currency reform was followed by another wave of economic liberalization. In May 2010, the government lifted all restrictions and bans on private retail trade that were introduced in the 2005-09 backlash. In fact, the North Korean economy nowadays is roughly as free (or rather unfree) as it used to be immediately after the 2002 reforms. But there is no hint of this roller coaster changes in the slowly descending line of the Heritage Foundation Index.

The same is applicable to the economic situation. Every year, we get reports about a looming famine in North Korea – and this year is no exception. A quick look through headlines of major newspapers can clarify that such reports surface with predictable regularity every year.

In March 2008, the International Herald Tribune ran a headline “Food shortage looms in North Korea”. In March 2009, the Washington Post headline said “At the Heart of North Korea’s Troubles, an Intractable Hunger Crisis”. One year later, in March 2010, the Times of London warned: “Catastrophe in North Korea; China must pressure Pyongyang to allow food aid to millions threatened by famine.” In March 2011, The New York Times wrote: “North Korea: 6 Million Are Hungry.” The predictions of gloom come every year, but famine does not.

Actually, from around 2002-2003, we have seen a steady but clear improvement in North Korea’s economic situation. North Koreans are still malnourished, and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, they are not starving any more – at least not in significant numbers.

However, opponents of the regime cannot admit that people are not starving or report about (however marginal) improvement of the food situation, since, as I have said, from their viewpoint nothing can possibly improve in North Korea. At the same time, supporters of the regime will not admit that the North Korean people are still malnourished, and the regime itself is active in presenting exaggerated evidence of a looming famine (or perhaps, even fabricating such evidence when necessary) – as this will help it get more free food from the outside, and this is what Pyongyang needs.

One can see the same trends everywhere. For example, human-rights non-governmental organizations keep telling us about a further deterioration in the human-rights situation in the North. However, the evidence tells a different story. Human rights are still by far the world’s worst, but they are better than 20 or 30 years ago.

Just one example of this under-reported improvement will probably suffice. Until the mid-1990s, the entire family of a political criminal – that is, all people who were registered at the same address as he or she, were by default shipped to a concentration camp. Some 10 or 15 years ago, this approach ceased to be universal, so families of many political criminals – including some prominent activists based in Seoul – remained free.

There is little doubt that families are harassed, and even distant relatives of dissenters are denied good jobs and/or the right to reside in Pyongyang and major cities. Nonetheless, there is a great difference between inability to live in a major city and incarceration in what might indeed be the world’s worst prison camp system.

However, this change is seldom reported. Human-rights advocacy groups obviously cannot bring themselves admit that something can get better under the Kim family regime. Probably, they think that such admission would make the situation look less urgent and thus would help the Kim family regime in some indirect way. These worries might be even well-founded – but the result is the tendency to ignore a particular type of “politically incorrect” news.

Paradoxically, regime sympathizers – whose presence is especially noticeable among the South Korean left – are equally reluctant to attract any attention to these minor improvements. It is understandable, since we are talking about changes from the awful to the very bad, and Pyongyang champions cannot bring themselves to admit how brutal and inefficient the regime actually is.

For example, if pro-Pyongyang media outlets report that the “family responsibility” principle does not apply in many cases, they would have to admit that in the supposed “paradise” of national purity and/or anti-globalist determination in North Korea, not only dissenters, but their families as well were shipped to concentration camps until quite recently. No member of South Korea’s radical nationalist left could bring him or herself to admit this fact.

One cannot imagine a pro-North Korean leftist blogger in Seoul triumphantly writing something like this: “In the past, if somebody watched a South Korean melodrama, he would be arrested, beaten unconscious and then sent to prison for life together with his entire family. Nowadays, things are so better: only his teeth – not ribs! – are likely to be broken during an investigation, and then he or she will spend in prison merely a couple years, and his family are now allowed to keep their freedom. What an improvement!”

The sad irony is that this change is actually an improvement, but neither side of the political debate is going to report it. This is confirmation to the old truism: political passions make people oblivious to the obvious. However, propaganda is a poor substitute for honest and objective analysis – even when such propaganda is produced by people who believe it themselves.

Read the full story here:
It’s not all doom and gloom in Pyongyang
Andrei Lankov
Asia Times
2011-9-23

Pictured above (Google Earth): An unofficial street market in Sinchon (신천) is bustling while the nearby official marketplace is closed.  See in Google Maps here.

The Choson Ilbo posted a few factoids about the official and unofficial economies of the DPRK:

The rationing system, the backbone of the socialist planned economy, has nearly collapsed. Some 4 million people still live on rations — 2.6 million in Pyongyang and 1.2 million soldiers.

But a senior South Korean government official said 20 million North Koreans rely absolutely on the underground economy.

“A North Korean family needs 90,000-100,000 North Korean won for living costs per month, but workers at state-run factories or enterprises earn a mere 2,000-8,000 won,” the source said. “So North Koreans have no choice but to become market traders, cottage industrialists or transport entrepreneurs to make up for shortages.”

Many stores, restaurants, and beauty parlors are privately owned. Private tutors teach music or foreign languages. Carpenters have evolved as quasi-manufacturers who receive orders and make furniture on a massive scale. They earn 80,000-90,000 won per month on average.

It is common to find people in front of railway stations or in markets who wait to earn a few extra won by carrying luggage or purchases in their handcarts. Like taxis, their fees are calculated on a basic fee and the distance covered.

In the countryside, people earn money by selling corn or beans grown in their own vegetable gardens in the back yard or in the hills. They can harvest 700 kg of corn a year from a 1,600 sq.m. lot. And by selling 50 kg of corn a month they make 30,000-40,000 won on top of their daily living costs.

“Ordinary North Koreans have become so dependent on the private economy that they get 80-90 percent of daily necessities and 60-70 percent of food from the markets,” the security official said.

Noland and Haggard’s recent book, Witness to Transformation, contains thorough and revealing data on market utilization in the PDRK. More here.

Pictured above: (L) satellite image of the Rajin Market, (R) a ground-level photo taken in 1999

Among the the flurry of activities that comprised the DPRK’s recent public relations campaign in Rason (Rajin-Sonbong), the Rajin Market appeared on the itineraries of a few visiting delegates. Alexa Olsen writes about the market for the Associated Press:

Chinese travel agents, potential investors and foreign journalists recently traveled into the North to get a look at the special economic zone Pyongyang is promoting in Rason. It lies in the far northeastern tip of North Korea, 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Pyongyang, but will be about an hour’s drive from China once the road is completed.

Rumbling Chinese cargo trucks already ply the route, churning up plumes of choking dust and ferrying containers of Chinese-made shoes, plastic toys, computer speakers, T-shirts and DVDs to the Rason Free Trade Market.

The market, a 13-year-old experiment in small-scale capitalism, has been so successful that the Chinese managing company, the Tianyu Group, is planning to expand the jam-packed 54,000-square-foot (5,000-square-meter) market to 320,000 square feet (30,000 square meters), Tianyu vice director Zheng Zhexi said.

“As I see it, this is the way of economic development, and it’s something that the people want,” Zheng said. “I think it’s reached a point where it cannot be reversed.”

North Korea declared the area a special economic zone 20 years ago. But after a brief flurry of activity and funding from the U.N. Development Program, the project languished without backing from Pyongyang’s leadership.

…

Rason has benefited from the shift in Pyongyang’s priorities. When Zheng arrived in 1997 to set up the market, people were hesitant to get involved. Now Tianyu doesn’t have the space to approve even a fraction of the applications from prospective vendors, he said.

“Ordinary people’s sense and the awareness of the market, and their views on the economy — all these have changed a lot,” Zheng said.

Foreign journalists, who typically are barred from local markets, were taken on a strictly controlled, 15-minute tour. No photos, no notes, the guide instructed: “Just use your eyes.”

Vendors, mostly women, stood behind stands loaded with freshly skinned rabbit and live chickens, as well as goods mostly imported from China: blouses, speakers, refrigerators, sofas, shampoo, playing cards, binoculars.

High heels went for 25 yuan (US$4), a Kim Jong Il-style beige suit for 85 yuan ($13) and a container of sea salt for 3 yuan ($0.47).

North Korean tour guide Mun Ho Yong, 25, said his family shops at the market several times a week to supplement state rations of rice, oil and fish.

Everything Mun wore — striped dress shirt, belt, polyester trousers and black dress shoes — was bought at the market except his pin of late President Kim Il Sung attached to his shirt, over his heart.

One major challenge will be to successfully leap from the market’s small-scale commerce to full-fledged manufacturing and trade.

(UPDATE) In an article published later in the New York Times (2011-10-12):

A Chinese company critical to Rason’s development, the Yanbian Tianyu International Trade Company, got involved here 13 years ago. It began by erecting the bazaar, then built the casino, a hospital, a bread factory and a telecommunications building. It is now working on a cement factory, and operates two iron mines.

“The policy environment has been improving continuously,” said Zheng Zhexi, 58, the company’s vice president. “It’s moving towards a market economy.”

He pointed to the official tolerance for the bazaar, where merchants rent stalls from the government to sell goods that they buy from Chinese traders. Prices fluctuate and shoppers haggle. The bazaar has proved so successful that it is expanding to six times the current size.

These kinds of markets have sprung up all over the country to supplement the government’s weak food distribution system. Still, the government is sensitive to their capitalist nature, and some top officials have tried to set limits on them. Foreign journalists were permitted a 15-minute tour of the Rason market on the condition that they not photograph it or take notes.

The market, open just a few hours each day, was bustling, with goods like skinned rabbits, sofas, Sony headphones and Dell computer mice. A soldier with a Kalashnikov slung over his back walked among the aisles, looking to buy, and women running stalls wore red vests, the uniform of officially registered merchants.

In one corner was an office with the English words “Foreign Exchange” above the door. In Rason, currency is exchanged at the market rate — one Chinese renminbi to 350 North Korea won — rather than at the official rate, which values one renminbi at 15 won.

Additional Information:

1. Previous posts on Rason can be found here.

2. Additional information can be found here.

3. Source:
Tending a Small Patch of Capitalism
New York Times
Edward Wong
2011-10-12