North Korean Economy Watch

According to Breitbart (via Breitbart):

Former North Korean Railways Minister Kim Yong Sam was executed in March last year for failing to maintain locomotive trains that had been in store for wartime, Radio Free Asia, a nonprofit radio station, reported Wednesday on its Internet edition.

A source on North Korean affairs said Kim got into trouble during an inspection by the National Defense Commission for scrapping locomotive trains that were in store for wartime.

After the inspection, carried out after celebrations were held to mark the country’s 60th birthday on Sept. 9, 2008, Kim was handed over to the State Security Department, report said.

He had been railways minister for 10 years from September, 1998.

The Choson Ilbo has more:

A nationwide campaign is underway recently in North Korea to get rid of photos and publications of executed former senior officials, Radio Free Asia claimed Tuesday.

This campaign was ordered by leader Kim Jong-il on July 2. The North’s Press Censorship Bureau is reportedly destroying documents and materials collected from across the country.

According to RFA, the campaign’s targets include Pak Nam-gi, the former director of the North Korean Workers Party’s Planning and Finance Department who was executed in March over the disastrous currency reform, and former railways minister Kim Yong-sam.

“Railway workers suffering from the food shortage stole copper and aluminum parts from locomotive trains that were in store for wartime and sold them as scrap metal. As a result, about 100 locomotives were scrapped,” it claimed. “This was revealed in an inspection by the National Defense Commission in 2008.” Kim Yong-sam was then taken to the State Security Department and executed in March the following year, it added.

Kim Yong-sam was appointed railways minister in September 1998 but has not been seen in public since October 2008, when he was replaced by current minister Jon Kil-su.

A Unification Ministry official said rumors about his execution are “rampant.”

Read the full stories here:
Former N. Korean railways minister Kim Yong Sam executed: report
Kyodo (via Breitbart)
7/14/2010

N.Korea’s Ex-Railways Minister Executed
Choson Ilbo
7/15/2010

According to the Daily NK:

As previously reported, the price of rice in North Korea, which declined in March, has started soaring again. But this rice price fluctuation looks different from those of previous years.

According to a source from North Hamkyung Province, rice in Hoiryeong market was between 450 and 500 won per kilogram until late June, but on July 13th it hit 750 won. Corn rice is also more than 400 won now.

At the same time, one Yuan is now worth 150 won.

Since the mid-2000s when the market economy started to spread, rice prices have risen during the spring poverty season in April and May. And then, in around late June, when potatoes and barley are harvested, prices stabilize, and then, in September, they decline in expectation of the harvest.

Therefore, traders in the jangmadang generally buy rice and other grains in November and December and then sell them in the jangmadang during April. Cadres also use that regular cycle of food price rises and falls to profit by buying rice late in the year and releasing it for a higher prices during the next spring. Therefore, poorer people also try to get rice and grain in winter time.

However, since the currency redenomination, the fluctuations have changed.

Immediately after the redenomination, the authorities released a measure shutting down the markets, so in January rice prices rose by around 60 times compared with before the redenomination. The markets have been open once again since February 5th, but food prices remained unstable through mid-March. That was because people did not buy grains until March, at which time demand promptly far outstripped supply.

In April this year, there was a limited amount of food distribution and some residents in some districts of Pyongyang received corn, which they were supposed to receive in May and June, in advance. Additionally, as a result of Kim Jong Il’s visit to China, rumor had it that a large amount of food would be delivered, so rice prices were relatively flat.

However, when the rumor turned out to be empty, a decree was handed down to lower units in May ordering food self-reliance at the local level. This only intensified anxiety about the food situation.

More serious problems may come in July and August, monsoon season. If the weather affects farming, anxiety about food for the last half of the year will grow. Make things worse, there was cold-weather damage to farming early this year, so a lost harvest is clearly going to be on people’s minds.

On this, one source said, “Food wholesalers predict that prices will go on rising until the harvest in August. And when rising food prices influence general products, big troubles can come, like they did in January of this year.”

 

Click image to see Hoeryong market prices.

Read the full story here:
Food Price Cycle Twisting in the Wind
Daily NK
Yoo Gwan Hee
7/13/2010

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No.10-07-08-2
7-8-2010

As inter-Korean commerce has all but dried up in the wake of the Cheonan incident, trade between North Korea and China appears to have continued to grow. According to Chinese customs statistics released on July 6, trade with North Korea from January to May amounted to 983.63 million USD; 18.1 percent more than the 833.07 million USD reported for the same period last year.

North Korea imported 727.192 million USD-worth of Chinese goods (29 percent increase over the same period last year), but exports dropped by 4.9 percent, amounting to only 256.438 million USD. This indicates a 60 percent increase in North Korea’s trade deficit with China, which was 470.757 million USD in the first part of 2009. With South Korean sanctions against the North halting all inter-Korean trade outside of the Kaesong Industrial Complex following the sinking of the Cheonan, it is expected that Pyongyang will become even more economically dependent on Beijing.

During this period, crude oil accounted for most of North Korea’s imports from China, as Pyongyang bought 254,000 tons (slightly more than the 247,000 tons in early 2009). However, due to rising international fuel prices, this oil cost the North 157.097 million USD, a 76 percent increase over what Pyongyang spent during this period last year.

In addition, rice (24,400 tons), corn (31,400 tons), beans (20,500 tons), flour (34,000 tons) and other necessary food imports totaling 11,300 tons reflected a 41 percent increase over the same period in 2009. The cost of fertilizer imports also jumped sharply, amounting to 81,943 tons, or 115.6 percent more than the 38,004 tons imported from January to May 2009. Increasing imports of food and fertilizer are a result of the growing agricultural difficulties being faced in the North. Based on current prices, aviation fuel imports also grew by 46.8 percent, freight trucks by 98.7 percent, automobile fuel by 47.4 percent, and bituminous coal by 137 percent.

The top ten official imports of Chinese goods by North Korea were as follows: crude oil (21.6 percent); aviation fuel (3.1 percent); freight trucks (2.9 percent); automobile fuel (2 percent); bituminous coal (1.9 percent); fertilizer (1.8 percent); beans (1.6 percent); flour (1.6 percent); rice (1.5 percent); and corn (1.1 percent).

North Korea’s exports to China were mainly underground natural resources. The top ten exported goods were: iron ore (17.1 percent); anthracite (16 percent); pig iron (9.6 percent); zinc (5 percent); Magnesite (3.6 percent); lead (2.4 percent); silicon (2.3 percent); men’s clothing (2.2 percent); frozen squid (2.1 percent); and aluminum (1.9 percent).

According to the Telegraph:

Previously considered to be among the regime’s most important assets, the North Korean People’s Army has always been well provisioned in order to ensure the troops remain loyal.

But a poor harvest and the disastrous revaluation of the North Korean currency in November of last year has worsened the nation’s already dire economic straits.

Defectors have claimed that they were required to survive on noodles made of ground corn and that meat or fish were a luxury, a journalist for Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported from the Chinese  city of Shenyang.

On one stretch of the border, Chinese troops apprehended five North Korean soldiers in May alone. Prior to the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan in March, allegedly by a torpedo fired from a North Korean submarine, it was rare for troops to be taken into custody on the Chinese side of the Yalu River.

The defectors have claimed that senior members of the party and the armed forces were stockpiling provisions, another indication that the regime is steeling itself for a military confrontation.

“In the past there have been cases of North Korean troops crossing the border and plundering Chinese farms for their food, which they then took back to their posts in the North,” Kim Sang-hun, a human rights activist in Seoul, told The Daily Telegraph.

However, these soldiers chose to return to the North with the supplies.

Robert Dujarric, a professor of international relations specialising in North-East Asia, said the situation in North Korea was “very bad” at present, due to the poor harvest, but a more dramatic indicator of the scale of the problem would be if military officers or members of elite military units opted to follow in the footsteps of these soldiers.

The defectors apprehended by the Chinese were reportedly returned to North Korea, where they face execution.

Read the full story here:
North Korean soldiers defect to China fuelling fears of imminent military clash
Telegraph
Julian Ryall
7/12/2010

According to Yonhap:

Production at a South Korea-financed factory park in North Korea fell for a second straight month in May, figures showed Tuesday, as manufacturers complained of a decrease in orders amid tension between the divided states.

Production at the joint complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong stood at US$27.79 million in May, a 1.2 percent decrease from a month earlier, according to the Unification Ministry in Seoul.

The number, however, marked a 56 percent increase from a year earlier, the ministry said, a sign that the complex is expanding on a yearly basis.

Despite the deadly March sinking of a South Korean warship, which was blamed on North Korea and ignited the ensuing tension along the border, the number of North Korean workers in the complex topped 44,000 recently. More than 120 South Korean companies employ the workers to produce labor-intensive goods such as utensils and garments.

The companies have recently called on the Seoul government to ease its restrictions on their operations, including a cap on the number of South Korean workers allowed to travel to Kaesong daily.

South Korea has also banned the companies from new investments in their businesses within the complex, which opened in 2004 and represents the last remaining major symbol of reconciliation between the Koreas.

According to Yonhap:
Output at inter-Korean factory park declines for second month
Yonhap
7/13/2010

According to the Economic Times of India:

Creditors stopped providing new loans Thursday to South Korea’s troubled Hyundai Group, which runs a shipping line and major business projects in North Korea, officials said.

Nine of the group’s 12 units will receive no fresh loans “until the group accepts our demands”, said a spokesman for Korea Exchange Bank, the largest of 13 creditors.

The decision does not affect Hyundai’s better-known operations such as automaking and shipbuilding, which were hived off from the original group into financially separate businesses after the 1997-98 financial crisis.

The Hyundai Group includes the country’s biggest bulk carrier Hyundai Merchant Marine and Hyundai Asan, which operates the troubled projects in the North.

The group was picked by creditors in May as a financially distressed conglomerate. But it has refused to sign a deal to sell non-core assets to reduce debts, insisting its financial health is improving.

Debt piled up last year as Hyundai Merchant Marine suffered heavy losses due to the global business slump. However the shipping line posted 154 billion won (126 million dollars) in operating profit in the second quarter of this year.

“Creditors have ignored our position that such a deal will weaken our competitiveness at a time when the group is improving its financial structure,” a group spokeswoman said, without giving total debt figures.

Hyundai, once South Korea’s largest business empire, has been dowgraded to a second-tier conglomerate since its automaking and shipbuilding arms were hived off in 2000 and 2002.

Hyundai Asan’s projects in North Korea, including the Mount Kumgang tourist resort, have been in trouble since a conservative government took office in Seoul in early 2008.

The Kumgang tours were suspended in July 2008 after North Korean soldiers shot dead a Seoul housewife who strayed into a military zone, causing losses to the South Korean company of tens of millions of dollars.

A day trip from the South to the North’s historic city of Kaesong was later also suspended.

Hyundai Asan also operates a jointly-run industrial estate in the North whose operations have sometimes been hit by political tensions.

Read the full story here:
S Korean banks end new loans to Hyundai Group
Economic Times
7/8/2010

Accroding to the Daily NK:

The 8th issue of Rimjingang, the periodical written by North Korean underground journalists, sheds light on North Korea’s private livestock industry.

One article, “Livestock Industry Developing from Private Means of Living into Private Enterprise,” describes how pig farming has developed during and since the famine period. It explains how, under the functioning planned economy, the “livestock industry” amounted to each household unit raising pigs to sell on the side, but now the planned economy is little more than a distant memory and the livestock sector has been specialized and systematized into sectors; breeding, butchery, distribution and sale.

That is why in North Korean markets 90% of goods are Chinese, but 100% of pigs and pork is North Korean.

Under the planned economy, roughly 20% of people in rural areas privately raised pigs and sold them to state meat procurement stores for two kilograms of corn per kilo of meat, the report notes. But from the mid 1980s, procurement stores bought them for cash, so competition grew and eventually the stores had to close due to increasing prices and their own lack of ready cash. Since the 1990s, distribution has stopped and more than 50% of people have started raising pigs in more specialized ways, it adds.

The report goes on to explain that during the March of Tribulation people figured out that their salaries, even when received, represented a mere tiny fraction of the labor value they could realize by trading illegally in the jangmadang. Many were unwilling to put up with it.

“Going through the March of Tribulation, the profit motive through the market has opened the door to new food lives which the Leader cannot open with his slogan, ‘reform food lives with meat,’” the report asserts. “Now, since a powerful supply and demand system has been spontaneously established, anybody can afford to eat meat as long as they can earn money.”

“’Leave us alone!’ is the real voice of the people of Chosun,” the report concludes, adding that the phenomenon of the Chosun pig farming industry implies the clear potential to develop modern industry in North Korea.

The 8th edition of Rimjingang was published in Korean on June 30th.

Read the full story here:
The All-North Korean Pig Farming Sector
Daily NK
Yoo Gwan Hee
7/10/2010

A (much appreciated) reader in Germany sent me an interesting article from the German publication Nachrichten fuer Aussenhandel (News for Foreign Trade), which is a government-sposored daily paper promoting foreign trade. 

The full article is available in German below, but in summary, the Vice Major of Rason, Mr. Chae Song Hak has started an initiative to promote the Rason free trade zone. The zone can be reached visa free and investors can obtain all required permits locally within the zone—without having to involve the central Government in Pyongyang.  Rason also, independently sets duty rates and local prices (I suppose for labour as well as for utility- and other local services) as well as applicable exchange rates within the zone.

If there are any German readers who care to provide a bit more informaiton about this article, I would appreciate it. 

Click image below for full story (in German and in JPG format):

According to the Daily NK:

Food price in North Korea at the end of spring held steady against food prices in March, and worries about an impending famine proved unfounded.

The Daily NK has looked at market food prices in Pyongyang, Shinuiju, and Chongjin over the first week of July. Everywhere, rice cost about 500 won while corn cost about 400 won. Compared to food prices in March, during the period when food is traditionally in the shortest supply, rice prices were much the same, whereas corn prices had risen by 50 percent.

A source inside North Korea explained, “Since the redenomination, some people have dropped from ‘middle income’ to ‘poor.’ As a result, demand for corn has increased, and that is the reason why corn prices have gone up. Some people still eat rice; however, many of those who used to eat rice are now feeding their families on corn.”

“Because of the planting battle, market hours were made shorter, but the market is running smoothly and food prices are stabilizing.”

However, the source conceded that the food security of senior citizens with no family support and homeless children seems to be very bad. The source said some of these people are indeed dying of malnutrition and disease, though not outright starvation.

So, while the food supply situation in North Korea is not in unusually poor shape, it seems that the aftereffects of last year’s redenomination are still taking effect,

Corn prices have increased by almost 100 won on average in the last month, and flour prices have also increased by about 200 won.

However, the price of fuels such as gasoline and diesel either remained the same or decreased slightly. Gasoline remains at 900 won, which is a hundred won less than it was in May. Diesel remains at 400 won, which is 200 hundred won less than it was.

Since last year, North Korea has been pursuing various construction projects as part of its goal of building a strong and prosperous state by 2012. It is possible that fuel heading for construction sites is finding its way into the markets.

Here is the data in JPG format!

Read the full story here:
Market Prices Holding Firm
Daily NK
http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=6568
Yang Jung A
7/7/2010
 

According to Yonhap:

Ten North Korean workers presumably died and about 40 others were injured last week when two buses carrying them collided with each other at the communist state’s border industrial complex joint run by South Korean firms, officials here said Wednesday.

The collision took place Friday evening at an intersection at the Kaesong industrial park where about 120 South Korean firms employ 42,000 North Koreans to produce labor-intensive goods.

Citing South Korean witnesses, police in the South Korean border city of Paju said that a commuter bus hit another on the side amid heavy rains but no South Koreans were aboard the buses.

“The case was reported by South Korean workers traveling to and from the Kaesong complex,” a police official said, declining to be identified. “The exact number of casualties and how the accident happened have not been ascertained.”

An official at the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean matters, said North Korean authorities blockaded the area after the collision, making it difficult to determine casualties.

“The North would not let us know about the accident,” he said, also declining to be identified.

The factory park is the last remaining symbol of reconciliation between the two Koreas, which remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

Its fate has increasingly hung in the balance this year as tensions rise along the inter-Korean border over the deadly March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship off the west coast.

Read the full story here:
10 N. Koreans presumed killed in bus collision at joint factory park with S. Korea
Yonhap
7/7/2010