North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Korea is tightening surveillance of the population using tens of thousands of Chinese-made surveillance cameras. According to Chinese customs data, the North imported a total of 16,420 CCTV cameras worth about US$1.66 million from China from January to November last year.

In 2009, the first year China published statistics on bilateral trade, the North imported a whopping 40,465 surveillance cameras from China. In 2010 the figure was 22,987 and in 2011 22,118. Altogether the North has imported over 100,000 cameras worth about $10 million.

…

Meanwhile, crude oil and oil products were the major products the North imported from China between January and November last year with a total value US$526 million. Next came naphtha products ($101.7 million), cargo trucks ($92.2 million), and flour ($58.8 million).

Read the full story here:
Chinese Cameras Help N.Korean Regime’s Surveillance
Choson Ilbo
2013-1-14

According to the BBC:

There has been a significant decrease in the number of refugees from North Korea to South Korea in 2012 compared with 2011, data from South Korea shows.

Just over [1,508] North Koreans arrived in the South in 2012 compared to more than 2,700 the previous year, according to the South’s Unification Ministry.

Activists say that the North, under Kim Jong-un, is taking stronger measures to prevent people from trying to leave.

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The figure for 2012 is the first time that numbers have fallen below 2,000 since 2006, says Yonhap news agency.

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There are about 24,613 North Koreans who have arrived in South Korea since 1998, according to the Unification Ministry.

Additional Information

Andrei Lankov offers additional numbers and context here.

RFA reports that border guard rotations have been increased.

Read the full story here:
Drop in North Korean refugees to South Korea
BBC
2013-1-2

According to the Daily NK:

The number of North Koreans entering South Korea has dropped to its lowest level in many years, with the 2012 total unlikely even to reach 50% of the 2011 figure.

A government official met with reporters today to explain the background to the sharp drop, declaring, “Surveillance of defectors has been stepped up a lot, and the authorities have really cracked down on the major routes used as defection paths across the river to China.”

“That’s not all; overall monitoring and control of defectors in North Korea has been strengthened, and the same is true in China, notably in the three northeastern provinces,” he added.

Just 1,202 defectors have entered South Korea this year to date,, the official revealed. As such, the Ministry of Unification estimates that the total for 2012 will be just 1,400, only half of last year’s 2,706. It will certainly be the first time since 2006 that the number of defectors has not reached 2,000.

Previous posts on this topic can be found here 2012, 2011.

Read the full story here:
2012 Defector Numbers Just 50% of 2011
Daily NK
Jeong Jae Sung
2012-11-14

According to the Korea Times (Yonhap):

A total of 295 North Koreans are staying in South Korea’s overseas diplomatic missions worldwide on their way here, government data showed Thursday.

According to the report that Seoul’s foreign ministry submitted to the National Assembly for regular audit, Seoul’s overseas missions are currently protecting 295 North Koreans, who are waiting to be admitted into the South. In general, such defectors stay one to two months in Seoul’s overseas missions, the ministry said.

More than 2,000 North Koreans have settled in the South over the past five years, with 2,081 coming here in 2008, 2,401 in 2010 and 2,706 last year, according to the data. As of July this year, 915 North Koreans had arrived here, it showed.

Previous stories on this topic here. 2011 emigration stories here. 2012 emigration stories here.

Read the full story here:
Some 300 NK defectors stay in S. Korea’s overseas missions: data
Yonhap (Korea Tiems)
2012-10-4

The Wilson Center’s North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP) is pleased to announce the release of e-Dossier No. 11, “Explaining North Korean Migration to China.”

The North Korea/China border region is often portrayed as a place of recent North Korean migration that started in the wake of famine of the early 1990s. This common knowledge is, however, only partially true and obscures as much as it illuminates: It ignores and is ignorant of the pre-existing fluidity of legal and illegal migration between the northern DPRK and the northern provinces of China. Importantly, the dominant narrative fails to understand that what was very new about the 1990s was not inter-country migration itself but the reversal of migration flow patterns. Prior to the 1990s, migration between the two countries was mainly a one-way traffic of ethnic Koreans of Chinese nationality heading south towards North Korea.

NKIDP e-Dossier no. 11, “Explaining North Korean Migration to China,” is introduced by Hazel Smith, Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow and Professor in Humanitarianism and Security at Cranfield University, and features 11 translated Chinese documents which provide evidence of historical cases of legal and illegal migration between the DPRK and China.

For more information, click here.

The Daily NK offers some recent numbers on North Koreans that have arrived in the South:

According to Ministry of Unification statistics, the number of defectors arriving in South Korea is indeed beginning to rise slightly, going from 90 in February to 116 in March, 107 in April, 137 in May, 141 in June and 164 in July.

Hyun continued, “The cost of defection has risen to more than five million won, while there are almost no travel permits being issued and close checks being conducted on accommodations in the region. However, orders from above are only being kept at a low level and, as time goes by, will go slack and the number of defections will once again rise.”

“It is true that the number of defectors arriving in South Korea has fallen compared to last year, but because people cannot survive on state distribution and wages they are going to keep on trying to defect irrespective of the official controls.”

Hyun added that in Hyesan the number of people defecting is beginning to rise because it has become harder to make money from smuggling in the face of increased border security.

Read the full story here:
North Korea Can’t Stop the Defections Forever
Daily NK
Mok Yong Jae
2012-9-17

Whenever North Koreans make their way to the DC area I do my best to interview them on Google Earth to learn more about the land from which they came.

Last week, Dr. Oh Kil-nam (featured in the video above) was gracious enough to speak with me for a few minutes to tell me about his life in Pyongyang. Although many defectors are hesitant about the details of their lives being made public, Dr. Oh gave me permission to post the information here. Because he only spent a year in Pyongyang, and had never really looked at satellite imagery before, he did not have much to share. What he did say, however, I post below for historical purposes:

Dr. Oh lived on Changgwang Street in Central Pyongyang in the building just south of the Koryo Hotel:

Dr. Oh worked at a radio station that broadcast propaganda into South Korea. Although his English was rough, I believe he stated the radio station is now closed. We were unable to locate the specific building, but he told me it was in hungbu-dong, Moranbong-guyok (Pictured in red below):

(UPDATE) In an interview with Kim Song-min of Free Radio North Korea, I was told that the Korean Workers’ Party Operational Department (6th Div.) 314 /128 Liaison Office is also located in this area. This organization performs communication jamming, radio disturbance and monitoring, decodement of overseas information agencies, and hacking into leading countries’ government websites.

Finally Dr. Oh mentioned that his daughters attended the Tonghung People’s School.  He was not sure of the exact building, but since I already knew the names of most buildings in in Tonghung-dong (동흥동: just NW of the Koryo Hotel),  I am 99% sure this is the place:

Equipment storage or worker housing for the Koryo Hotel convention center (underway now) seems to have been constructed on the school’s front lawn sometime after May 27, 2011.

Here is a recent media story following Dr. Oh’s visit to DC.

UPDATE (2012-8-3): Although just a month has passed since we received information on the number of North Koreans entering the ROK. According to the Choson Ilbo:

The number of North Korean defectors arriving in South Korea in the first half of this year dropped to half that of the same period last year. According to the Unification Ministry on Thursday, 751 defectors arrived from January to June, down 45.4 percent from 1,375 on-year.

The number of defectors arriving here mostly rose every year since 2001, when it first exceeded 1,000. The figure only dropped in 2005, by 27 percent, and in 2010, by 19 percent. But this is the first time that the number has fallen so drastically

ORIGINAL POST (2012-7-1): According to a report in Yonhap:

The number of North Korean defectors to South Korea tumbled 43 percent in the first five months of 2012 from a year earlier due to increased security along the North Korea-China border, the Seoul government said Sunday.

A total of 610 North Korean defectors arrived in South Korea in the January-May period, down 42.6 percent from the same period last year, according to data from the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs.

The number of arrivals in the January-May period last year reached 1,062, with the full-year total rising to 2,706.

January recorded the largest number of arrivals this year at 160, while February recorded the smallest number at 90, the ministry said. Last year, the number of monthly arrivals surpassed 200 in nine out of 12 months.

There are now more than 23,500 individuals of North Korean origin in the ROK.

Question to ponder: Does a decrease in emigration from the DPRK promote stability or instability for the North Korean system?

Previous posts on this topic here.

Read the full story here:
N. Korean defector arrivals drop 43 pct this year
Yonhap
2012-7-1

According to the BBC:

China has launched a drive against illegal immigration in a north-eastern region bordering North Korea.

The campaign in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin province mainly focuses on North Koreans fleeing poverty and persecution at home.

China is known to routinely repatriate North Koreans who often slip across the border undetected.

Human rights groups say many face punishment when they return.

“Foreigners who illegally enter, work and overstay are hidden troubles, and they might pose potential threats to social stability,” Li Yongxue, a police official from Yanbian, was quoted by state-run China Daily newspaper as saying.

The police say they want to stamp out criminal activities to maintain order. They add that those without proper documents will be sent back.

Many of these illegal immigrants have relatives in China, some come to work, while others use China as a staging post before moving to other countries, according to the BBC’s Michael Bristow.

A police officer from the province told the BBC that it was a sensitive year in China, with officials stressing the need for stability ahead of a leadership change this year.

Read the full story here:
China targets illegal immigration at North Korea border
BBC
2012-5-25

According to Yonhap:

A total of 366 North Korean defectors arrived in South Korea in the first three months of this year, down sharply from 566 in the same period last year, the Unification Ministry said Tuesday.

The North Koreans are composed of 119 men and 247 women, according to the ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs.

Rights activists said the number of new arrivals decreased as the defection of North Koreans has become more difficult due to crackdowns on defectors and increased costs in illegally crossing the border into China.

Many North Korean defectors in the South claim that they bribed North Korean guards to flee across the border into China.

South Korea is home to more than 23,500 North Korean defectors as a constant stream of North Koreans has fled their communist homeland to try to avoid chronic food shortages and harsh political oppression.

Read about 2011 emigration numbers here.

Read the full story here:
Arrivals of N. Korean defectors drop
Yonhap
2012-5-8