North Korean Economy Watch

From the BBC:

North Korea has unveiled the terms under which foreign investors will be lured to a ground-breaking industrial zone near the tense border with South Korea.

Two South Korean companies – Korean Land and an arm of the Hyundai conglomerate – are developing an international business park in Kaesong, part of a package of cautious economic reforms in the Stalinist country.

So far, more than 1,000 South Korean firms have enquired about setting up shop in Kaesong, where labour costs will be a tiny fraction of those south of the border.

The North Korean Government now promises investors favourable tax rates, but there are still considerable concerns over whether it will allow businesses much economic freedom.

Most of the companies so far interested in Kaesong are in light manufacturing, particularly textiles.

Depending on their line of business, these firms will be taxed at up to 14%, less than half the rate levied in the South.

Pyongyang is, however, especially keen to lure hi-tech firms, which will be subject to a tax rate of just 10%.

Investors will have to pay a number of other smaller levies, and must adhere to a minimum monthly wage of $50.

Such incentives have sparked a flurry of interest in the South, but many companies remain wary.

They will be forced to hire workers through a North Korean state agency whose powers and attitude remain unclear.

And there is still little confidence in the fundamental stability of North Korea, which has turned to economic reform in recent years, but which remains virulently opposed to most forms of foreign influence.

The Kaesong development does, however, seem to be a relatively permanent arrangement.

It forms part of a large-scale construction project in the region, which is just 50 kilometres northwest of Seoul.

Elsewhere the focus is on tourism, especially scenic Mount Kumgang on the country’s east coast, which Hyundai has been trying to develop for five years, with mixed success.

There is also a Unification Park, which will be the venue for reunions of families split by the country’s division.

Most significant are major road and rail developments which mark the first time the two rival countries have re-established transport links since the end of the Korean war in 1953.

BBC
8/28/2003

North and South Korea have signed a landmark agreement to increase direct trade, the latest step in the slow economic thaw between the two enemies.

According to the agreement, made at bilateral talks unrelated to the simultaneous discussions over nuclear capability, South Korean firms will be encouraged to set up in the North.

The town of Kaesong, just north of the border, has been selected as the site of an industrial park, currently being built by South Korea’s Hyundai.

The two governments will open a corporate liason office in Kaesong, which will deal with the many southern companies keen to exploit cheap northern labour.

Slowly opening

Cross-border economic contacts have become frequent in recent years.

But almost all the $270m (£172m) in north-south trade so far this year has been conducted through intermediary countries, a formality the new agreement aims to dispose of.

The deal represents another step in the extremely slow economic opening of the stalinist North, which long operated in complete isolation from the world economy.

Over the past three years, Pyongyang has reformed its currency, invited visits from foreign investors, cautiously liberalised some prices and planned various – mainly abortive – schemes along the lines of the Kaesong industrial zone.

Reliance on aid

The motivation in much of this, analysts say, is the desperate economic situation in the north.

A series of natural disasters in the 1990s crippled northern agriculture, and the government has done little to put the sector back on its feet.

North Korea – which long rejected outside help – has become increasingly dependent on aid.

This latest agreement concedes to the South the right to oversee the distribution of food aid in the North.

from the BBC:

North Korea announces tough restrictions in a bid to prevent the spread of the deadly respiratory disease Sars.

It has introduced strict quarantine measures and suspended a shipping service to Japan as well as a joint tourism project with South Korea.

Public health officials have outlined some of the steps being taken on state TV.

Emergency anti-epidemic centres have been set up at national and local level and quarantine officers are implementing stringent checks at all points of entry into the country, said Choe Ung-chin, head of the State Hygiene Inspection Institute at the North Korean Public Health Ministry.

Travellers bear cost

North Korea’s proximity to China, where the outbreak was first recorded, is the cause of particular concern.

“Most North Koreans who make business trips abroad and foreigners who enter our country do so via China,” Han Kyong-ho, another senior health official, explained.

“When the international train that runs from Sinuiju [border station] to Pyongyang enters the station, all travellers are thoroughly checked to see if they have Sars symptoms such as fever and dry coughs.

“Furthermore, all travellers coming into the DPRK from the places of origin of Sars are strictly isolated for 10 days.”

Mr Han said that Sars germs could be present in travellers’ luggage or in insects such as cockroaches.

“Therefore, every one of the travellers’ possessions is thoroughly sterilised, and medical inspections of all workers at the station who have had contact with people who have travelled abroad are being carried out in detail,” he said.

At Pyongyang international airport, incoming travellers who display any Sars symptoms are hospitalised while those who do not are quarantined for 10 days at specially designated hotels.

Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reports that the cost of such unforeseen stopovers – 100 euros a night exclusive of meals – will be borne by foreign travellers themselves.

Services suspended

North Korea has also suspended the Man Gyong Bong-92 shipping service to Niigata Port.

Japan’s Kyodo news agency said the ship was slated to make three port calls to Japan in May, but two have already been cancelled.

The North Korean Government is also reported to have sent emails to thousands of pro-Pyongyang ethnic Koreans in Japan urging them not to visit their homeland for the time being.

And South Korea’s Hyundai Asan Corp was “stunned” to learn that North Korea had suspended a joint North-South tourism project it operates over Sars fears, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports.

The South Korean firm has run loss-making cruises for tourists to the North’s scenic Mount Kumgang since 1998 in a symbolic project to promote inter-Korean reconciliation.

The suspension of the tours heightens the possibility that all of Hyundai’s inter-Korean projects may come to a “screeching halt”, at a time when the company has been campaigning hard to revitalize the business, the agency adds.

From the BBC:

North Korea’s economy has been in the doldrums for more than a decade. Perhaps as many as a million people perished in a famine during the 1990s, and the food situation inside the country remains precarious today.

There are two hypotheses about why a country facing such problems has pursued nuclear weapons.

1. Its nuclear programme is merely a bargaining chip to be traded away to extract political and economic concessions from the US – a kind of atomic “trick or treat”.

2.  The North Koreans regard nuclear weapons as an end in themselves – a military deterrent and the ultimate guarantor of the regime’s survival.

North Korea’s foreign ministry said as much on 18 April when it declared, “The Iraqi war teaches a lesson that in order to prevent war and defend the security of a country and the sovereignty of a nation, it is necessary to have a powerful deterrent force only.”

Yet even from this perspective, there is an intriguing economic angle.

If a nuclear North Korea were to foreswear aggression toward South Korea, then its huge conventional forces would be redundant.

Its million-man army, an albatross around the economy’s neck, could be demobilised.

In fact, before the nuclear crisis erupted last October, North Korea floated trial balloons regarding the possibility of such a demobilisation.

But if the North’s army is to be demobilised, those troops have to have jobs to go to.

Last July, the government announced a package of policy changes designed to revitalise the economy.

These included marketisation, the promotion of special economic zones, and a diplomatic opening toward Japan, which the North hoped would pay billions of dollars in post-colonial claims and aid.

However, the rapprochement with Tokyo has stalled, and the expected capital infusion has not materialised.

The consensus of outside observers is that, so far, the reforms have largely failed to deliver.

Indeed, some of the policy changes, such as the creation of massive inflation and the demand that North Koreans surrender their holdings of dollars, could be interpreted as an attempt to re-assert state influence rather than reform the system.

Last month, Pyongyang introduced a new financial instrument it called a bond, though it is more like a lottery ticket. A mass campaign encouraging citizens to purchase these bonds suggests that politics, not personal finance, is the main selling point.

To make matters worse, the oil flow through a pipeline from China on which North Korea depends was interrupted earlier this month for several days.

The official explanation was that mechanical failure, not diplomatic arm-twisting, was the cause.

In sum, the economic situation remains dire.

However, both China and South Korea have indicated that while they want to see a negotiated resolution [to the nuclear issue], they are unwilling to embargo North Korea in the way the US envisions.

This reluctance to sanction Pyongyang undercuts the credibility of the US threat to isolate North Korea.

The Bush administration’s own rhetoric also calls into question its willingness to promote North Korea’s constructive integration into the global community.  

Marcus Noland is a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, and author of Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas.

from the BBC:

The BBC’s Kevin Kim joined the first overland tourist trip to North Korea, and reflects on his journey to the other side of the border.

“I was on board one of 20 buses that crossed the DMZ for the first time.

As a South Korean it felt really strange, because up to now we were strictly forbidden from getting near to the DMZ.

The mountains on the North Korean side looked totally different from the mountains on the South Korean side.

It was very barren. There were hardly any trees.

North Korea is in an energy crisis right now and every single tree is put to good use, for heating.

The South Korean guide told us that while travelling through the DMZ we must not take pictures, wave outside, or show any South Korean newspapers or magazines through the window.

I guess that is why everyone on the bus was talking in a very soft voice.

Every few hundred metres there were North Korean soldiers with their rifles just looking on as the buses went by.

I was really tempted to just open the window and say “hello” or “nice to see you”.

But I had been told by my South Korean guide that I could open the window but I could not say anything to them.

Like the words of the South Korean song, “Longing for Mount Kumgang”, getting to North Korea and seeing its natural beauty has been something that people in the South could only long for until now.

Unification, too, is something that Koreans have only dreamed about.

But having travelled through the most heavily fortified border in the world, I began to think that while unification in the Korean peninsula may seem impossible right away, it does not have to stay as a dream.

Who knows, in 20 years time we might actually be seeing the fences coming down.

It is wishful thinking. But Koreans are natural born optimists. ”

Also from the BBC:

The overland border between the two Koreas has opened for the first time since the Korean war ended half a century ago. The BBC’s Seoul correspondent Caroline Gluck was among the first to cross.

Fanfare, fireworks and balloons greeted us at a ceremony on the South Korean border, as we prepared to journey through the world’s most heavily fortified road border to the North.

This is the first land route for civilians since the end of the Korean war half a century ago.

The pilot journey is due to pave the way for regular overland tourist trips to the North’s scenic resort of Mount Kumgang, or Diamond Mountain – which has been developed by the South Korean company Hyundai Asan.

Hyundai Asan’s president, Kim Yoon-Kyu, described the trip as a historic moment.

“I can compare it to breaking the wall between East and West Germany,” he said.

Opening the border was also one of the ways to reduce tensions between North and South Korea, he said.

“I’m going to persuade (the North Koreans) not to have any nuclear power. We need money. Money is better than nuclear power,” he said.

At the demilitarized zone, there was a razor wire fence on either side, and signs warning that landmines were present.

When we reached the military demarcation line, I could see the first North Korean soldiers watch the convoy – around 20 buses in all.

All around me I could see the mountains covered in snow.

It is a barren landscape but quite beautiful. Many believe that if the two Koreas reunify, it should be turned into an ecological zone.

On the North Korean side, a welcoming committee with a female brass band was waiting for us, playing the North Korean song Pangap-sumnida, or Nice to Meet You.

Around 150 North Koreans took part in the ceremony to welcome their southern counterparts.

Ro Chang hyup, a North Korean tourist official, said it was an important step forward in inter-Korean exchanges.

“This is a first step towards unification. It is helping to break the ice and I really welcome our south Korean brothers.”

Ri Jong-hyok, deputy head of the North’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee which handles the North’s joint ventures with South Korea, said: “People are here for tourism. Why are you talking about nuclear issues? I get a headache when people talk about that”.

Bang Jong-Sam, head of the Mount Kumgang international tourism company, had a similar message.

“We don’t have nuclear weapons. Let the crazy people say whatever they want. All we have to do is to continue tourism,” he said.

Since 1988, when tours by cruise boat to Diamond Mountain began, around half a million South Koreans have travelled to the area.

For most, it is their only chance to visit the Communist North. They come to explore the peaks of the fabled mountain – immortalised in songs, paintings and poetry.

Fenced-in resort

But contacts between the two Koreans at the resort is limited.

The Hyundai-built tourism site is fenced in, and North Korean guides are on hand to monitor all movements.

You can catch glimpses of North Korean villages and people travelling on roads only allowed for locals – but most visible are the soldiers.

A group of around 40 soldiers marched by our tour group, singing the praises of their leader, Kim Jong-il.

He’s our great commander, they said.

“His love is like the sun, reaching out to every corner.”

If the project is aimed at breaking down barriers between the two Koreas, there is clearly a long way to go.

But some ventures, like a locally run restaurant open only to South Koreans, at least help to allow more contact between the two sides.

“I’m sure unification will come,” said my waitress.

“It’s really good that so many South Koreans are coming here. I’m proud to work here – and I welcome them.”

Projects like this and the opening of the cross-border road between the two Koreas are full of symbolism.

But, in practice, it is clear that there is still a long way to go before the two sides can freely mingle.

BBC
2/5/2003

The two Koreas have re-opened their land border for the first time in half a century, despite continuing anxiety about the North’s nuclear programme.

About 100 South Korean tourism officials passed through the heavily fortified frontier by bus on Wednesday, travelling to the scenic Mount Kumgang tourist resort, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) to the north.

The opening of the first of a set of planned overland links came as the US made its strongest pledge yet to hold direct talks with the North to resolve the nuclear crisis.

North Korea says that the only way forward is for face-to-face talks with Washington, without pre-conditions.

Historic crossing

Buses carrying around 100 officials from the South Korean company Hyundai and invited guests snaked from Kosung on the South’s east coast for a 50-minute journey along a dirt road towards Mount Kumgang.

The 10 buses were escorted by a South Korea military jeep as far as the border.

The jeep then pulled over to allow the buses to make the historic crossing, and a military official from the US-led United Nations Command, which enforces the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War, followed their progress on the other side of the border through binoculars.

If the pilot visit is a success, tours will officially begin next week.

The road is the first of four planned overland routes between the two sides to be completed. A parallel rail link on the east, and a rail and road link on the west are still under construction.

Diplomacy

The links are a key part of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s “sunshine policy” of economic co-operation with the Stalinist state.

Seoul has been urging the US to pursue diplomacy rather than sanctions over the current nuclear crisis.

US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage on Tuesday gave a strong assurance that direct talks with Pyongyang would take place.

“Of course we’re going to have direct talks with North Korea. There’s no question about it,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

But Mr Armitage said that the consultations would only take place when Washington was confident that it had built a “strong international platform” from which to end North Korea’s nuclear programme.

He also warned that North Korea’s reported moves toward restarting a plutonium reprocessing facility could enable it to build four to six nuclear weapons within months.

Despite Washington’s assurances that it has no plans to invade North Korea, it has announced that is considering strengthening its military forces in the Pacific Ocean as a deterrent against Pyongyang.

US officials said the reinforcements would help signal that a possible war with Iraq was not distracting the US.

But the commander of the 37,000 US forces in South Korea, General Leon LaPorte, stressed on Tuesday that any deployment would be made in conjunction with Seoul.

Economic co-operation

Some analysts believe the nuclear stand-off is simply a blackmailing tactic by the North to obtain more aid for the impoverished nation.

In easing the North’s economic plight, Hyundai has played a key role. It has hitherto organised cruises to the North by boat, but they have lost the company money.

Hyundai hopes the cheaper overland trip will attract more tourists.

But its role in inter-Korean co-operation has not been without controversy.

The company became embroiled in a scandal last week when government auditors revealed that a Hyundai affiliate had sent nearly $200 million to North Korea just before the 2000 inter-Korean summit.

The company said the money was used to finance its business projects in the North; opposition lawmakers allege the money was a pay-off for the summit.

Members of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party have called on President Kim Dae-jung to make a public statement, while opposition politicians are calling for an independent counsel to investigate the fund transfers.

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Here are sections of interest:

About DPRK, Agriculture, China, Economy, Energy, Transition

A deal between the ROK and DPRK governments should allow construction to begin next month in Kaesong (Just north of the DMZ and former capital city).

The DPRK has designated the area as a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), giving companies a free hand there.

A little more here…

Time
Donald McIntyre
10/19/2002

Lee Mi Young crossed the Tumen River from North Korea into China a month ago. Now she is hiding in a safe house in China, getting help from a Chinese-Korean missionary, and hoping to start a new life. She is terrified to be talking to the first foreigner she has ever seen, more so because she is painting a negative picture of her country. She could be executed in North Korea for this conversation (Lee Mi Young is a pseudonym).

In her mid-30s, with pretty, bright brown eyes and carefully stenciled eyebrows, Lee says she left North Korea because she was tired of never having quite enough to eat. Things are better than they were during the famine of the mid-’90s, but they have begun to deteriorate since July when North Korea announced a series of economic reforms that many observers said signaled the start of a serious effort to fix the country’s collapsed command economy. The government raised the salaries of workers such as miners and teachers, increased the cost of state rations such as rice and allowed the North Korean won to fall to about 150 to the dollar, much closer to its real black-market value than the 2.5 won to the dollar at which it had previously been pegged.

Lee says that in her hometown north of Pyongyang (she prefers we don’t name it) the price of grain in the black market has risen, but people can’t afford to buy it: Although salaries have been raised, the government has only actually paid them once since July. People need to supplement meager government rations with rice bought at exorbitant prices on the black market. “This was a reform for the rich,” says Lee. “Things are worse than before.”

Kim Jung Il is still fully in control of the country, analysts say. There are periodic reports of small signs of dissent — anti-government leaflets and graffiti, for example. Some defectors say family members will complain among themselves and possibly with friends. But North Korean defectors say that everyone is aware that anybody caught protesting publicly will be sent to a harsh prison camp, where they will be joined by members of their family. Lee, the young woman who fled last month, says she saw an old lady standing in line waiting for rations in August who suddenly said: “It is so difficult to live here. I can’t stand this.” Almost immediately, a man came up, tapped her on the shoulder and led her away. Other members of her family later disappeared without explanation.

What has changed in the past few years is the amount of knowledge about the outside world flowing into the country. Hundreds of aid workers have been in and out of the country in recent years, bringing with them new ideas and information. Thousands of North Koreans have crossed across the Tumen River into China attempting to flee or simply looking for food. Many come back not only with food, but also bearing tales of the wonders of China’s booming cities and stores brimming with goods. According to one defector, Chinese-Koreans are bringing cell phones into North Korea, using them along the border and even leaving them behind for relatives to use — in a country where ordinary people don’t have landline phones in their homes.

For impoverished North Koreans, China’s flashy modern cities seem like paradise and many dream of going there. There is much more knowledge about South Korea as well. North Korean propaganda for years portrayed the South as a land of beggars oppressed by a rich elite. Many average North Koreans now know that isn’t true, according to defectors. One reason: North Korean sailors, traders and workers who have been to places like Cuba and Libya come back with video tapes of American action movies. These are secretly circulated, with eager audiences gathering at the house of the very rare family rich enough to have a VCR player, sometimes with an English-speaker on hand to translate the dialogue. A record 600 North Korea defectors arrived in Seoul last year — this year’s figure could top 1,000.

Some analysts argue the clash in the West Sea on June 29 (in which North Korea patrol boats fired on South Korea naval vessels, killing five sailors) was the work of disgruntled military leaders trying to warn Kim Jong Il to keep a lid on change. The conventional wisdom has always been that North Korea is afraid to open the door a crack because the system could unravel so quickly. Some defectors and aid workers report that there is a sense of instability and uncertainty in the country right now. Rather than the start of reform, we may be seeing a country starting to unravel already.

When I visited Pyongyang in August, it looked better than it had even six months earlier. There were open-air restaurants offering grilled meat — just like in Seoul — and people looked healthy and even vibrant. But the capital has always been an oasis reserved for party members and North Koreans loyal to the regime. Aid workers and diplomats say smaller cities lack regular electricity and people still can’t get enough to eat. They probably aren’t starving but malnutrition remains widespread.

North Koreans who live in the countryside may be marginally better-off than their urban cousins, because they are able forage for wild plants in the mountains and are allowed to grow vegetables on small private plots. Life is harsh for city dwellers dependent on the industrial economy. On the road from Pyongyang to the northeast corner of the country, you pass mile after mile of rusting factories — probably less than one third of the country’s factories are actually running.

A Korea-American businessman who visited the city of Kaesong recently was shocked to learn it had had no electricity for 10 days. The only electric lights shining at night in Kaesong those illuminating monuments to the late “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung. Many city have electricity at certain times of the day. Foreign reporters who visited Shinuiju last month, for the unveiling of a plan to turn it into a free economic zone designed to lure investors, were struck by the contrast with the neighboring Chinese city of Dandong. Dandong at night is a blaze of lights; across the river, Shinuiju is in near-total darkness. Apartment blocks in Pyongyang are lit at night these days, but there are few lights outdoors — except, of course, those illuminating the gigantic statue of the “Great Leader.”

To make a go of “special economic zones” such as Shinuiju, North Korea needs to massive foreign investment to rebuild its electrical grid and other key infrastructure. The country has never been self-sufficient in food and needs an industrial economy to make fertilizer to boost agricultural yield and to finance food imports to make up the shortfall. But the disappearance of foreign subsidies following the collapse of the Soviet Union saw a rapid de-industrialization — until the late 1960s, it had been ahead of South Korea economically. North Korea is now dependent on international food aid and donations of fertilizer, and desperately needs to get on the right side of the U.S. in order to get the loans it desperately needs from the World Bank — loans that the U.S. is now blocking. That has many South Korean analysts suggesting that the reason Pyongyang sudden nuclear confession is precisely that it hopes to put its nuclear weapons program on the table and trade it away for economic gains and security guarantees from Washington.

West-Bound Train Leaving the Station: Pyongyang on the Reform Track
Marcus Noland
October 14-15, 2002

Marketization

The North Korean economic reforms that began in July 2002 have four components: marketization, inflation, special economic zones, and aid-seeking. Marketization, in turn, has several features. The government appears to be attempting to adopt a dual-price strategy similar to what the Chinese have implemented in the industrial sphere. In essence the Chinese instructed their state-owned enterprises to continue to fulfill the plan, but once planned production obligations were fulfilled, the enterprises were free to hire factors and produce products for sale on the open market. In other words, the plan was essentially frozen in time, and marginal growth occurred according to market dictates.

The government has announced a scrapping/downsizing/attenuation of the system of distributing goods and services through rationing (including the public distribution system (PDS) for food), meaning that at the household or retail level, the allocation of goods will increasingly occur through markets and on market terms. (Two exceptions are health care and education that will continue to be supplied gratis by the state.)

One can question the extent to which this is a real policy change and how much this is simply a ratification of system—fraying that had already occurred—there is considerable evidence that most food, for example, was already being distributed through markets, not the PDS. In this respect, the North Korean move could be interpreted as an admission that the genie is out of the bottle.

On the production side, enterprises have been instructed that they are responsible for covering their own costs—that is, no more state subsidies. Modest changes in the organization of production have been introduced in agriculture and there are rumors that more dramatic changes in the agricultural sector are on their way. Yet it is unclear to what extent managers outside of agriculture have been given the power to hire, fire, and promote workers, or to what extent remuneration will be determined by the market. Moreover there has been no mention of the military’s privileged position within the economy and domestic propaganda continues to speak of a “military-first” political path.

The state has administratively raised wage levels, with certain favored groups such as military personnel, party officials, scientists, and coal miners receiving supernormal increases. (For example, while it has been reported that military personnel and miners have received wage increases on the order of 1,500 percent, the increases for office workers and less essential employees are less, and the estimated income increase for agricultural workers may be on the order of 900 percent.) This alteration of real wages across occupational groups could be interpreted as an attempt to enhance the role of material incentives in labor allocation.

The state continues to maintain an administered price structure, though by fiat, the state prices are being brought in line with prices observed in the farmers’ markets. This is problematic (as it has proven in other transitional economies): the state has told the enterprises that they must cover costs, yet it continues to administer prices, and in the absence of any formal bankruptcy or other “exit” mechanism, there is no prescribed method for enterprises that cannot cover costs to cease operations, nor, in the absence of a social safety net, how workers from closed enterprises would survive. What is likely to occur is the maintenance of operations by these enterprises supported by implicit subsidies, either through national or local government budgets or through recourse to a reconstructed banking system. Indeed, the North Koreans have sent officials to China to study the Chinese banking system, which although may well have virtues, is also the primary mechanism through which money-losing state-owned firms are kept alive.

Inflation

The likelihood is increased by the second component of the economic policy change, the creation of enormous inflation. At the same time the government announced the marketization initiatives, it also announced tremendous administered increases in wages and prices (Table 1). To get a grasp on the magnitude of these price changes, consider this: when China raised the price of grains at the start of its reforms in November 1979, the increase was on the order of 25 percent. In comparison, North Korea has raised the prices of corn and rice by nearly 4,000 percent. In the absence of huge supply responses, the result will be an enormous jump in the price level and possibly even hyperinflation.

Moreover, when China began its reforms in 1979, more than 70 percent of the population was in the agricultural sector. (The same held true for Vietnam when it began reforming the following decade.) In contrast, North Korea has perhaps half that share employed in agriculture. This has two profound implications: first, the population share, which is directly benefiting from the increase in producer prices for agricultural goods, is roughly half as big as in China and Vietnam. This means that reform in North Korea is less likely to be what economists call Pareto-improving (in other words a change in which no one is made worse off) than the cases of China or Vietnam. Instead, reform in North Korea is more likely to create losers and with them the possibility of unrest. Second, the relatively smaller size of the agricultural sector suggests that the positive supply response will not be as great in the North Korean case as compared to China or Vietnam either. Again, this increases the likelihood of reform creating losers and unrest.

In the short run, the initial jump in the price level is usually accompanied by an increase in economic activity, as households and enterprises mistake increases in the overall price level for changes in relative prices. This is likely to be particularly acute in North Korea, where many households and enterprises can be expected to be relatively naïve about market economics, and where significant alterations in the structure of relative prices will be coincident with the rapid increase in the price level. So in the short run, there may be an increase in economic activity.

In the longer run however, once households and enterprises begin to distinguish more clearly between changes in relative and absolute prices, it will become apparent that some parts of the population have experienced real increases in income and wealth, while others have experienced real deteriorations. The North Koreans have not announced any mechanism for periodically adjusting prices, so in all likelihood, disequilibria, possibly severe, will develop over time. Access to foreign currency may act as insurance against inflation, and in fact, the black market value of the North Korean won has dropped approximately 50 percent since the reforms were announced.

Those with access to foreign exchange such as senior party officials will be relatively insulated from this phenomenon. Agricultural workers may benefit from “automatic” pay increases as the price of grain rises, but salaried workers without access to foreign exchange will fall behind. In other words, the process of marketization and inflation will contribute to the exacerbation of existing social differences in North Korea. Given how stressed a society North Korea has become, the implications for “losers” could be quite severe. It would not be at all surprising to observe a significant increase in mortality rates.

Make no mistake about it: North Korea has moved from the realm of elite, to the realm of mass politics. Unlike the diplomatic initiatives of the past several years, these developments will affect the entire population, not just a few elites. And while there is a consensus that marketization is a necessary component of economic revitalization, the inflationary part of the package would appear to be both unnecessary and destructive. (If one wanted to increase the relative wages of coal miners by 40 percent, one could simply give them a 40 percent raise–one does not need to increase the overall price level by a factor of 10, and the nominal wages of coal miners a factor of 14 to effect the same real wage increase.)

So why do it? There are at least three possible explanations. The first, as alluded to above, is the most benign: by creating inflation, the government hopes to provide a short-run kick-start to the economy, the long-run implications be damned. (From the standpoint of North Korean policymakers, Keynes’ aphorism, “in the long run we are all dead” may apply with a rather short time horizon.) Given the extremely low levels of capacity utilization in the North Korean economy, this argument has a certain surface plausibility. Yet the problems of the North Korean economy run far, far deeper than underutilized resources. In large part the economy is geared to produce goods (televisions and radios without tuners, to cite one example, or Scud missiles, to give another) for which there is only limited demand. Unless there is a significant reorientation in the composition of output, it is unlikely that inflation alone will generate a sizeable supply response. Even agriculture is problematic in this regard: North Korean agriculture is highly dependent on industrial inputs (chemical fertilizers and agricultural chemicals, for example) and agriculture could be disrupted if the farmers find themselves getting squeezed on the input side.

A second possibility is that the inflation policy is intentional, and is a product of Kim Jong-il’s reputed antipathy toward private economic activity beyond state control. One effect of inflation is to reduce the value of existing won holdings. (For example, if the price level increases by a factor of 10, the real value of existing won holdings is literally decimated.) Historically, state-administered inflations and their cousins, currency reforms, have been used by socialist governments to wipe out currency “overhangs” (excess monetary stock claims on goods in circulation), more specifically to target black marketers and others engaged in economic activity outside state strictures, who hold large stocks of the domestic currency. (In a currency reform, residents are literally required to turn in their existing holdings—subject to a ceiling, of course—for newly issued notes.) In July it was announced that the blue won (Korean People’s Won) foreign exchange certificates would be replaced by the normal brown won, though it is unclear if these are convertible into foreign currency. In the case of North Korea, the episode that is now unfolding will be the fourth such one in the country’s five-decade history.

The hypothesis has the strength of linking what appears to be a gratuitous economic policy to politics-Kim Jong-il not only rewards favored constituencies by providing them with real income increases and by going the inflation/currency reform route, but he also punishes his enemies. This line of reasoning is not purely speculative: it has been reported that one of the motivations behind unifying prices in the PDS and farmers’ markets has been to reduce the need of consumers to visit farmers’ markets, and to “assist in the prevention of “illegal sales activities” which took place when the price in the farmers’ market was much higher than the state price” (CanKor, 9 August 2002). A number of unconfirmed reports indicate that the government has placed a price ceiling on staple goods in the farmers’ markets as an anti-inflationary device. The increase in the procurement price for grain has reportedly been motivated, at least in part, to counter the supply response of the farmers, who were diverting acreage away from grain to tobacco, and using grain to produce liquor for sale.

The problem with this explanation is that having gone through this experience several times in the past, North Korean traders are not gullible: they quickly get out of won in favor of dollars, yen, and yuan. Indeed, even North Koreans working on cooperative farms reportedly prefer trinkets as a store of value to the local currency. As a consequence, this blow aimed at traders, may fall more squarely on the North Korean masses, especially those in regions and occupations in which opportunities to obtain foreign currencies are limited.

As an economist I am trained to assume rationality, and it is only with reluctance that I propose arguments that presume ignorance. But my personal experience in China suggests one more possible explanation for the North Korean policy. Demand and supply are not quantities or points—they are schedules indicating quantities as a function of prices. Market-determined prices are thus a signal of scarcity value reflecting underlying demand and supply. Conversations with Chinese officials in the early to mid-1980s, during the first stage of the marketizing reforms, however, revealed that fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of markets was widespread, especially among older officials who had spent many years in a planned economy.

The North Koreans have indicated that they are trying to unify (or at least reduce the differences between) state prices and those observed in the farmers’ markets. In a press report, one unnamed official laid out the logic of the price reform: the administered price of rice would be raised to the farmers’ market price, but since no one could afford rice at the market price, everyone’s nominal wages would be increased commensurately. What this official did not seem to grasp was that the amount of won in circulation was instantly increased by a factor of 10 due to the wage increase, unless there was an immediate supply-response, then the government had effectively caused a 900 percent jump in the price level.

Again, political considerations increase the plausibility of this argument. By all reports, the economic policy changes being undertaken in North Korea are being devised by a small number of senior officials. Moreover, North Korea has a political system in which the political space of discussion and dissent is highly constricted, and the penalties for being on the wrong side of a political dispute can be quite severe. So while the logic of too many won chasing too few goods would seem elementary to those of us raised in market economies, under the circumstances that exist in North Korea, the possibility that economic decisions are being made by people who do not grasp the implications of their actions (or are afraid to voice their reservations and instead engage in preference falsification if they do) should not be dismissed too hastily.

Special Economic Zones

The third component of the North Korean economic policy change is the formation of special economic zones of various sorts. The first such zone was established in the Rajin-Sonbong region in the extreme northeast of the country in the mid-1980s. It has proved to be a failure for a variety of reasons including its geographic isolation, poor infrastructure, onerous rules, and interference in enterprise management by party officials. The one major investment has been the establishment of a combination hotel/casino/bank. Given the obvious scope for illicit activity associated with such a horizontally integrated endeavor, the result has been less Hong Kong than Macau North.

The 1998 agreement between North Korea and Hyundai that established the Mt. Kumgang tourist venture also provided for the establishment of an industrial park to be managed and operated by Hyundai. While the tourism project was obviously the centerpiece of the agreement, from the standpoint of revitalizing the North Korean economy, the establishment of the industrial park, which would permit South Korean small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to invest in the North with Hyundai’s implicit protection, was actually more important. In the long run, South Korean SMEs will be a natural source of investment and transfer of appropriate technology to the North. However, in the absence of physical or legal infrastructure, they are unlikely to invest. The Hyundai-sponsored park would in effect address both issues. (The chaebols, because of their size and political connections, would not be so reliant on formal rules—they could always go to the South Korean government if they encountered trouble in the North.) The subsequent signing of four economic cooperation agreements between the North and South on issues such as taxation and foreign exchange transactions could be regarded as providing the legal infrastructure for economic activity by the politically noninfluential SMEs.

The North Korean government and the South Korean firm then negotiated for 18 months over the location of the zone, with the North Koreans wanting it in Sinuiju, a city of some symbolic political importance in the northwest of the country on the Chinese border, and Hyundai wanting to locate the park in the Haeju district, more easily accessible to South Korea. In the end, it was agreed that the park would be located in Kaesong-a decision that was hailed at the time as reflecting an increased emphasis on economic rationality in North Korea.

The industrial park at Kaesong has not fulfilled its promise, however: Hyundai’s dissolution forced the South Korean parastatal KOLAND to take over the project, and the North Koreans inexplicably failed to open the necessary transportation links to South Korea on their side of the demilitarized zone (DMZ). Hence the September 2002 initiation of activity on the northern side of the DMZ could be an important step in the take-off of the Kaesong industrial park.

In September 2002 the North Korean government announced the establishment of a special administrative region (SAR) at Sinuiju. In certain respects the location of the new zone was not surprising: the North Koreans had been talking about doing something in the Sinuiju area since 1998. Yet in other respects the announcement was extraordinary. The North Koreans announced that the zone would exist completely outside North Korea’s usual legal structures; that it would have its own flag and issue its own passports; and that land could be leased for fifty years.

To top it off, the North Koreans announced that the SAR would be run by Yang Bin, a somewhat shady Chinese—born entrepreneur with Dutch citizenship who was under investigation for tax evasion in China, and had reportedly fled to North Korea-though he does not speak Korean—during two previous investigations. (Among his various business interests, Yang operates a Dutch-style village in Shenyang complete with a windmill and imitations of Amsterdam buildings. Kim Jong-il, who knows a thing or two about fantasylands, has visited it himself.) At the time of Yang’s appointment, trading in shares of his firm, Euro-Asia Agriculture Holdings, had been suspended on the Hong Kong stock exchange after crashing on the suspicion of fraud. When asked about Yang’s appointment, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson declined to endorse it. To paraphrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s memorable line from the 1988 US Vice Presidential debate, “Mr. Yang, you are no Tung Chee Hwa.” Indeed, Mr. Yang was subsequently arrested by Chinese authorities. Whether the zone will survive his arrest remains to be seen.

Assuming that these are mere growing pains, the question arises as to how important the Sinuiju SAR may prove to be. It should promote economic integration between North Korea and China, though one should keep in mind that China is a big place and that the most economically dynamic parts are in the southern coastal areas far from North Korea. But the North Korean economy is so far down that even integration with a comparative backwater like Dandong could be a boost.

More important is whether the SAR will generate any spillovers. In conventional terms this will depend on whether any lessons from the Sinuiju SAR experiment are generalized to the rest of the economy. (One ray of hope in recent events is the removal of the less than 50 percent foreign ownership ceiling in joint ventures.) More subtly the SAR might have a positive impact if internally it is regarded as giving Kim Jong-il’s unimpeachable imprimatur to the reform process. Bureaucrats and factory managers who have been reluctant to get ahead of the leadership may take this as a sign that change is safe. Conversely, by taking the SAR completely outside of the normal North Korean governing structures, Kim Jong-il can in effect end-run the party and the bureaucracy, and manage the zone directly out of his office.

Uncle Junichiro…

Meanwhile, as exciting as the establishment of the Sinuiju SAR might have been, its long-run significance is probably less than that of an event that had occurred the previous week—a meeting in Pyongyang between Kim Jong-il and Koizumi Junichiro, a manifestation of the fourth component of the economic plan, passing the hat.

At the first-ever meeting between the heads of government of Japan and North Korea, Kim stunned the world by baldly admitting that North Korean agents had kidnapped 12 Japanese citizens and that most of the abductees were dead. Each of the leaders then expressed regrets for their countries’ respective historical sins and agreed to pursue diplomatic normalization. It is expected that normalization will be accompanied by a large financial transfer from Japan to North Korea in the form of grants, subsidized loans, and trade credits. Japanese officials have not denied formulas reported in the press that would put the total value of a multiyear package at approximately $10 billion, despite the shaky state of Japanese public finances. Taking inflation, changes in the value of the yen, differences in population size, and other factors into account, this sum would be in the ballpark of the transfer that Japan made to South Korea in 1965 when the two countries normalized relations. Given the puny size of the North Korean economy, this is a gigantic sum. The critical issue for North Korea is whether these talks will proceed rapidly enough to generate aid inflows before the dislocations of marketization begin to bite. Given the Japanese public’s revulsion at the disclosure of the probable murders of some of the abductees, the process of normalization may be more protracted than either the North Korean or Japanese governments expected.

In connection with this process, there are rumors that the North Koreans intend to establish yet another special economic zone on the east coast, to be oriented toward Japan. Discounting the failed zone at Rajin-Sonbong, this would give the North Koreans three special economic enclaves, one oriented toward South Korea, one toward China, and one toward Japan, diversifying their portfolios so to speak. Again, given the centrality of politics to North Korean thinking, they may well envision playing the three off against each other. In the long run, however, it is integration with South Korea that will be critical to the development of the North Korean economy.

Uncle Sam

The Koizumi visit amounted to a kick in the pants to the Bush Administration. It brought to a head the disagreement between the hawks and the moderates in Washington. Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly was sent to Pyongyang with greater alacrity than he otherwise would have had. With its two allies in Northeast Asia moving forward with engagement, the “Axis of Evil” characterization will become increasingly difficult to sustain, and the United States will find its options more constrained.

For example, North Korea’s membership on the list of state sponsors of terrorism prevents the United States from supporting the DPRK for membership in international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, or Asian Development Bank. The North Koreans have fulfilled most of the terms set out by the Clinton Administration to secure their removal from the list. A major sticking point has been third-party claims by Japan associated with the Japanese Red Army hijackers and the abductees. If the hijackers are returned to Japan and the North Korean and Japanese governments resolve the abductee issue as now seems likely in the near future, a major obstacle to North Korea getting off the list of state sponsors of terror will have been removed. While it is quite possible that the Bush Administration will insist on keeping them on the list and barring their entry into the international financial institutions, this position will be increasingly hard to sustain in the face of South Korean and Japanese objections.

At the same time, the transfer from Japan to North Korea is the single biggest financial claim that North Korea maintains on the international system and dwarfs anything it could hope to get from the multilateral development banks. Unlike the sorts of carrots that the United States might offer, it also contains an element of irreversibility, and no matter how well conditioned the loans, money is at least partly fungible, raising the understandable worry in Washington that the Japanese settlement could be used for military modernization. The apparent lack of consultation between the United States and Japan in the run-up to the meeting has added to Washington’s concerns.

Conclusions

In the end, to understand the meaning of what has occurred in the last several months, one has to make some kind of assessment of the motivations behind North Korea’s policy changes. One argument put forward by some North Korea-watchers is that Kim Jong-il has long understood that the North Korean system is irretrievably broken, but that it has taken a long time for him to consolidate power and implement these far-reaching changes. This is hard to believe. Kim Jong-il was reputedly running the country on a day-to-day basis for ten years before his father’s death eight years ago. This means he has in effect been running the country for 18 years and was the uncontested supreme leader for the last eight. In a political system as hierarchical as North Korea’s, it is difficult to accept that it has taken him this long to consolidate his position.

Indeed, the opposite interpretation would seem more plausible, namely, that Kim Jong-il has reluctantly concluded that the old methods are inadequate to revive the economy and out of political necessity is embracing marketization, inflation, and the former colonial master in a desperate bid to revitalize a moribund system. If this interpretation is correct, then we should expect hesitancy in the implementation of reforms, and a strong reliance on the international social safety net supplied by the rest of the world. In certain respects the plans put forward thus far appear to be ill-conceived, but a combination of marginal increases in economic activity and international aid inflows may put enough goods on the shelves to keep the population pacified, at least in the short run. Ten billion dollars can buy a lot of transistor radios.

However, the initiatives undertaken in the last several months are qualitatively different from the diplomatic initiatives that the North Koreans undertook over the last several years. Marketization and inflation alter economic, political, and social relations on the ground, and raise far higher stakes internally. While the upside potential may be great, failure could mean the end of the regime. The train has left the station, but where it is headed and if it will derail are open questions—even for the conductor.

Table 1: Price Increases
     
Rice   4,000%
Corn   3,700%
Pork   700%
     
Diesel fuel   3,700%
Electricity   5,900%
     
Apartment rent   2,400%
Subway ticket   900%