North Korean Economy Watch

(h/t CanKor)  According tot he Concern Worldwide web page, they are engaged in the following projects in the DPRK:

Sanitation
Concern has recently begun work on an EU-funded programme in Phyongan province.

This work is focusing on sanitation and waste disposal in Hoichang town. We’re building water systems and improving sewage treatment systems and latrines in the area.

Over 55,000 people will benefit from this work.

Nutrition
Another EU-funded Concern programme is focusing on nutrition. We are aiming to increase sustainable food production in Hoichang and Koksan, and in two neighbouring cooperative farms. 

To do this, we are establishing urban greenhouses, irrigation systems and goat milk processing facilities. We are also working with locals to increase their technical and management skills.

This programme will benefit over 43,000 people.

Water works
An important part of our work is focused on water, sanitation and hygiene promotion.

Between 2004 and 2009, Concern provided 252,500 people in the country with clean drinking water. We did this by renovating pump stations and providing household connections. Key innovations have included gravity-fed water systems and the use of solar powered water pumping systems.
 
In addition, 46,800 people have benefitted from improved sanitation facilities, especially in institutions such as schools, kindergartens, nurseries and the county hospital.

Forestry
In the rural communities where we work, our focus has been on halting deforestation and improving farming techniques.

We have provided 270,000 potted tree seedlings to three community-run nurseries. These potted seedlings grow quickly – in three to nine months – with undamaged root systems.

This is a major improvement on the more traditional bed-grown seedlings that were previously used. Traditional seedlings usually take one to three years to grow and often suffer from damaged roots.

As a result of the success of the potted seedlings, the Ministry of Lands and Environmental Protection is now keen to extend their use countrywide.

As part of our forestry work, we have also supplied nurseries with tools, pots and fuel.

Improving crops
With supervision from the Academy of Agricultural Research, we undertook a series of crop trials. We wanted to find out what types of crops could flourish on the lower slopes of hills and mountains.

The crops included new varieties of rice, sweet potato, sorghum, soya bean, millet, hybrid maize and ground nuts.

The trials were successful. There were positive results: the hybrid maize produced twice the normal yield; the millet produced standard yields using only half the normal amount of fertiliser. These crops are now being incorporated into the annual co-operative crop plans.

The ability to grow these crops on lower slopes will alleviate the pressure to produce crops on the higher steeper slopes.

Food production
Another EU-funded project aims at improving food production for people living on sloping land.

As part of this project, we are introducing conservation agriculture, which will increase yields, reduce soil erosion and reduce labour requirements to produce food.

We are also improving crop storage to reduce the post-harvest losses, and conducting crop trials for improved varieties of maize, winter wheat, soya bean, upland rice and potatoes.

UPDATE: According to Yonhap:

A group of five South Koreans on Tuesday crossed the heavily armed border into North Korea, an official here said, delivering 400 million won (US$340,000) worth of anti-malaria aid despite tension between the divided states.

The crossing marked the first South Korean civilian visit to the communist state since Seoul banned trips to North Korea three months ago in protest over the sinking of a South Korean warship in March near their Yellow Sea border.

A doctor and four others, including two drivers, traveled to the North Korean border city of Kaesong on Tuesday morning, Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters. The doctor was needed to explain to North Korean authorities how to use the aid kits, Chun said earlier this week.

ORIGINAL POST: According to Yonhap:

South Korea will allow a doctor to travel to North Korea next week in the first approval of a civilian visit on a humanitarian mission to the communist state since Seoul banned exchanges with Pyongyang in May over the sinking of a South Korean warship, an official said Friday.

The doctor, accompanied by two drivers, will visit the North Korean border town of Kaesong next Tuesday, Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters in a briefing. The group is transporting 400 million won (US$336,100) worth of anti-malaria aid from a civilian relief group, Chun said.

“The doctor’s visit has been granted because he needs to explain to the North how to use the aid kits,” he said, adding any spread of malaria in the North has the potential to affect South Korean residents south of the border.

Read the full story here:
S. Korea to allow rare civilian visit to N. Korea amid tension
Yonhap
Sam Kim
8/13/2010

UPDATE 2 (11/22/2010): Apparently the boy has not given up on his dream and is now protesting in China (well for one minute).  Really.  According to the AP:

A 13-year-old American boy campaigning to turn the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea into a peace park tried to get the Chinese president’s attention Monday, staging a brief protest near Tiananmen Square before being led away by police.

Jonathan Lee unfurled a sign saying “peace treaty” and “nuclear free DMZ children’s peace forest” as he stood outside Tiananmen Gate just north of the square in central Beijing.

The scene of numerous demonstrations over the years, the gate and square remain some of the most tightly controlled public spaces in China and all protests on it are quickly snuffed by security agents, sometimes violently. In 1989, tanks and troops rolled into the square to crush a student-led pro-democracy movement, killing at least hundreds of people.

Less than a minute after Lee began his demonstration, a man presumed to be a plainclothes police officer grabbed the boy’s sign and waved away watching journalists, who had been contacted by Lee’s family ahead of time. Three or four uniformed police officers then hurriedly escorted Lee and his mother away without commotion.

Police held the pair and a few hours later Lee and his mother, Melissa Lee, returned to their hotel where they were joined by the boy’s father and sister. The family arrived unaccompanied at Beijing airport Monday evening to catch a Korean Airlines flight to Seoul, but declined to comment to The Associated Press.

The Lees’ treatment by Chinese authorities was relatively mild compared with the often rough handling and swift, forced deportation given to most foreigners who try to stage protests in China. It was not clear if they were forced to leave the country or had already planned to do so.

The boy, from Ridgeland, Mississippi, is trying to persuade the leaders of North and South Korea, China and the United States to work for reunification of the two Koreas.

“Hopefully my picketing will touch them in a way, so they’ll really consider peace, you know, between North and South Korea,” Lee said in an interview Friday with Joel Clark, a documentary filmmaker who traveled to China with the Lees, that was provided to the AP. “I guess I’m just trying to do, you know, what God would want, making peace.”

His Korean-born father, Kyoung Lee, said in a written statement Monday that his son has sent letters to President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak but had not been able to give a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. That, the father said, made the Tiananmen protest necessary.

Passionate and strong-willed, Lee is the latest, and perhaps youngest, activist to try to bring peace to the heavily militarized Korean peninsula, divided since the 1950-53 Korean War in which both the U.S. and China fought. The U.S. is Seoul’s ally, stationing troops in the well-off nation, while China is the main economic and diplomatic backer of the isolated, impoverished North.

Lee made a rare visit to North Korea in August to propose his idea of a “children’s peace forest” in the demilitarized zone and was taken on a tour of the 2.5-mile (four-kilometer)-wide buffer zone, which is sealed off with electric fences and studded with land mines. A hoped-for meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il did not materialize, although Lee said the officials forwarded to Kim a letter from him.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman declined to comment on the case, saying Lee family members had not signed privacy waivers.

UPDATE 1 (8/19/2010): According ot the AFP:

A US teenager who spent a week in North Korea to promote an idea for a peace forest on the tense Korean border said Thursday his trip had given him “hope” for the future of the peninsula.

Jonathan Lee, a 13-year-old ethnic Korean, said he felt safe and had been treated well during his visit to one of the most secretive states in the world.

Lee said that he headed to Pyongyang with a letter for North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, proposing the creation of a “children’s peace forest” in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) dividing North and South.

The trip comes amid high cross-border tensions, which grew after South Korea and the United States accused the North in May of torpedoing one of Seoul’s warships with the loss of 46 lives.

“My letter suggesting this (idea) was passed on to Chairman Kim Jong-Il along with my book as a gift to him,” Lee told reporters at Beijing airport, where he stopped for a layover with his parents before flying to Seoul.

“I went to several places but the place that made the biggest impression on me was the DMZ,” said Lee, who hails from the southern US state of Mississippi.

“While at the DMZ, I spoke of my hope of having a children’s peace forest. My suggestion for the motto is ‘Above politics, above conflicts, above borders, above ideology’.”

Lee has sent letters to South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak, US President Barack Obama and China’s President Hu Jintao, explaining his idea for the peace forest of fruit and chestnut trees on the world’s last Cold War frontier.

The surrounding area is heavily fortified with concrete, barbed wire, land mines and soldiers from both North and South Korea.

His visit recalled the efforts of 11-year-old US schoolgirl Samantha Smith, who in 1983 travelled to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, after writing to then leader Yuri Andropov to ask if he planned a nuclear war against the US.

“It’s all about giving hope to the people and children around the world,” said Lee, the founder of a global youth environmental group called I.C.E.Y. H.O.P.E.

“On this trip, I discovered that both sides want reunification, and that Korea is one, so I see hope on the Korean peninsula.”

He told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency that North Korean officials had given a “good” response to his proposal, and that the country’s people were “quite lively”.

The teen also said officials had told his family that progress could be made on his idea only if the United States were to help transform the armistice that ended the 1950-53 Korean War into a full-fledged peace treaty.

North Korea, which has no diplomatic relations with the United States, approved Lee’s trip despite a tense stand-off between the countries over the detention of four American citizens for illegal entry.

Three have been released but but Aijalon Gomes, a 30-year-old former English teacher in Seoul, is still being held in prison there.

Gomes was arrested in January and sentenced to eight years’ hard labour for an illegal border crossing. The North said in July that Gomes had tried to commit suicide and was being treated in hospital.

Lee has previously said his idea was inspired by former South Korean leader Kim Dae-Jung, who died in August last year.

As president from 1998-2003, Kim Dae-Jung held a landmark summit with North Korea’s Kim in 2000 that paved the way for inter-Korean reconciliation and earned him a Nobel peace prize.

ORIGINAL POST (8/11/2010): According to Yonhap:

A teenage American boy says he is traveling to North Korea this week with a letter urging leader Kim Jong-il to allow the creation of a peace forest that would grow over the heavily armed border between the Koreas.

“You may be wondering why a 13-year-old boy wants to go into North Korea, especially right now when there are a lot of problems,” Jonathan Lee, a Korean-American from Mississippi, wrote in his letter.

“Well, I’ve been talking about planting chestnut trees in North Korea for the past three years. The reason I have is because I want to help the environment and help the people at the same time. Now is the right time because many wish for peace right now on the Korean peninsula.”

…

A youth environmental activist who founded in Mississippi the International Cooperation of Environmental Youth – Helping Our Polluted Earth, Jonathan was first moved to pursue the idea of planting chestnut trees on the Korean Peninsula when he met with former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung three years ago.

“His wish for peace between the two Koreas made an impression on me,” he wrote in his letter, recounting the meeting at a celebration of the anniversary of the two Koreas’ 2000 summit.

“Korea has been divided for 60 years and has been officially at war during this time. The children of these countries have never met or interacted with each other. Personally, I think this is sad,” he said.

Jonathan was scheduled to leave Seoul for China on Tuesday, where he will deliver the same letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. He has already sent the proposal to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Jonathan’s eight-day trip to the communist nation will start Thursday and will include a meeting with a North Korean government official, his father, Kyoung Lee, says. He declined to elaborate.

…

Kyoung Lee believes that safety for his son and his family was guaranteed because their visit was made possible through the North’s U.N. representative in New York.

The family says that they also requested a meeting between Jonathan and the 68-year-old North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. But the North has only mentioned the possibility of a meeting with a “senior” official.

If Jonathan’s wish to plant a forest of chestnut trees in Panmunjom, along the border between the two Koreas, did come true, it would be a stark contrast to the surrounding area heavily fortified with barbed wire and military personnel, he believes.

Panmunjom, the village where the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean War was signed, lies within the Demilitarized Zone, a four-kilometer-wide swath of land bisecting the peninsula.

Jonathan says his chestnut trees would “not only help the environment, but would also provide food for the North Koreans.” The North has been suffering from decades of food shortages and deforestation — a consequence of people cutting down trees to plant crops for their survival.

“Above politics; Above conflicts; Above borders; Above ideology; It’s all about giving hope to people and children around the world,” Jonanthan says, referring to his motto for the forest.

“This is the most important part of the letter that Jonathan would like to emphasize,” his father said.

Jonathan’s group, also known as I.C.E.Y.-H.O.P.E., raised funds in South Korea last year and delivered them to the North for use in planting chestnut trees.

Read the full story here:
Teenage U.S. environmentalist to visit N. Korea on bold peace mission
Yonhap
Lee Haye-ah
8/10/2010

According to the Joong Ang Daily:

The northern Gyeonggi area, sharing the border with North Korea, is vulnerable to malaria because the mosquitoes with malaria parasites come from the North. Without vector controls in North Korea, our quarantine efforts are limited.

The spread of malaria had been expected because South Korea has stopped all North-bound shipments of aid, including pesticides and malaria drugs, as part of the sanctions against North Korea following its attack against the naval vessel Cheonan in March.

Health authorities warned in April about a possible breakout of malaria along the border regions. Although they saw the disease coming, nothing could be done about it.

On June 24, the Unification Ministry belatedly permitted a local civilian group to send quarantine aid to North Korea, but shipments have not taken place because of procedural difficulties. Even if the aid is delivered, it will be too late to contain the disease. Any action should have taken place before May.

If the Unification Ministry had seriously considered preventing the spread of malaria from the North, it should not have stopped at approving a delivery of local aid, but instead should have sought support from international groups. From 2001 to last year, the government had been shipping anti-malaria supplies to North Korea via the World Health Organization. This aid protects our people as much as it does North Koreans.

Malaria is not the only adverse result from severed ties with North Korea. The government announced on May 24 that it would cease all inter-Korean trade.

The measure, though understandable, dealt a heavy blow to 800 small- and mid-sized companies whose business primarily involves trade with North Korea. It was motivated by revenge and generated the same adverse fallout as that suffered by the people who have been infected by malaria from the North.

The tardy response to the problems created also proved of little help. The government on July 26 announced it will offer special aid loans to the Kaesong firms to save them from possible bankruptcy. The loans, though cheaper than regular corporate loans, will nonetheless have to be repaid and it may have come too late.

The May announcement of sanctions against North Korea should have included help to our companies to compensate for the damage from the trade sanctions.

Read the full story here:
Hard-line policies affect us, too
Joong Ang Daily
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2924376
Cho Dong-ho
8/10/2010

According to Yonhap:

Asian football chief Mohamed Bin Hammam met with a North Korean official in Pyongyang on Monday, the second and last day of his two-day trip to the country, the North’s media said.

“Yang Hyong-sop, vice-president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, met and had a talk with Mohamed Hammam Saad Al-Abdulla, chairman of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), and his party at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Monday,” said the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in a brief dispatch.

…

The AFC chief, also an executive member in FIFA, arrived in North Korea on Sunday to launch FIFA’s “Goal Project,” which helps underdeveloped countries build football fields and other sport facilities, according to the Web site of the AFC.

According to the AFC, Hammam planned wide-ranging talks with the president of North Korea’s football governing body and sports minister, before flying to China on Monday.

North Korea, which lost all three group matches in South Africa at its first World Cup in 44 years, was offered free World Cup footage in line with FIFA’s policy to promote football in poor countries.

In a separate report later on Monday, the KCNA also said that a new training camp with 60 beds has been built for the North’s national football team under the FIFA Goal Project.

The report said the camp, with a floor space of more than 2,100 square meters, has bedrooms, dining halls, bath rooms, a swimming pool and a video room, adding the opening ceremony took place on Monday with the attendance of Hammam and North Korean officials.

If anyone knows where this facility is, please let me know.

There are a couple of nicely rebuilt football fields here and here, but I do not know if they are part of this particular camp.

Read the full story below:
AFC chief meets with N. Korean official
Yonhap
7/19/2010

According to the Associated Press:

The U.N. humanitarian chief has released $42 million to help people suffering from hunger, disease and conflict in nine countries from Congo and Yemen to North Korea and Nepal.

John Holmes said Friday the United Nations has received insufficient funds from donors to meet humanitarian needs in the nine countries.

The money, from an emergency fund to help the United Nations respond quickly to humanitarian emergencies, will be given to U.N. humanitarian agencies and the International Organization for Migration. Through them, funds will go to humanitarian and other nongovernmental organizations to cover funding gaps.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, humanitarian actors in Chad and Congo will receive $8 million apiece, agencies in Yemen will receive $7 million, the humanitarian team in North Korea will get $5 million, humanitarian agencies in the Central African Republic, Djibouti, Eritrea and the Republic of Congo will each receive $3 million, and the U.N. team in Nepal will get $2 million.

The General Assembly revamped the Central Emergency Response Fund in December 2005 after world leaders decided to make up to $500 million available so the U.N. could act speedily to help people caught in conflicts, natural disasters and other emergencies instead of waiting for donors to respond to appeals for aid.

Since then, more than 116 countries and dozens of private sector donors have contributed nearly $2 billion to the fund, OCHA said, and it has disbursed more than $1.7 billion to help millions of victims of natural disaster and conflict in more than 76 countries and territories.

OCHA said nearly $415 million has been pledged for the fund for 2010.

Read the full story here:
UN gives $42 million to underfunded humanitarian crises in nine countries
Associated Press
7/17/2010

This week the Cato Institute hosted a panel on North Korea.  Participants include:

Stephen Linton, Chairman and Founder, Eugene Bell Foundation
Karin J. Lee, Executive Director, The National Committee on North Korea
Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Ted Galen Carpenter (Moderator), Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies, Cato Institute

You can see a video of the panel discussion here.  It includes an interesting fundraising video by the Eugene Bell Foundation.

UPDATE: Tad at NKnews.org has a write up of the panel here.

Several reports on various foreign assistance programs in the DPRK have been piling up on my desktop so I thought I would go ahead and post them for you.  They are not particularly timely, but they are full of interesting information.

U.S. Bilateral Food Assistance to North Korea Had Mixed Results (PDF)
US GAO
June 2000

DPRK: Water and sanitation in three counties of Kangwonin three counties of Kangwon Province (Thongchon, Chonnae, Popdong)
Reliefweb Mission Report
March 2002

Rehabilitation of Thongchon, Popdong and Chonnae Water Supply systems (Kangwon Province, DPR of Korea)
Reliefweb Mission Report
June 2002

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea: Operations Report
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Appeal no. MDRKP001
November 15, 2007

The IFRC contains the below photo of a flooded clinic:

This clinic is in Nyongwon at 39°50’3.51″N, 126°32’18.64″E.  Here is a satellite image:

The sad part is that the damage caused by flooding is in large part an unintended consequence of agriculture, deforestation, and hydro-power policies.  This clinic lies behind the Taedonggang Dam in Tokchon (satellite image here).

According to KBS:

Red Cross to Help NK Prepare for Monsoon Season

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reportedly plans to allocate around nine million dollars this year for projects to support North Korea ahead of the monsoon season.

Radio Free Asia said Wednesday that the Red Cross plans to select 31 towns that are considered to be the most vulnerable to natural disasters and will provide them with up to nine-and-a-half million dollars for preparedness training and to build dams and reservoirs.

The report said the international organization’s plans aim to help some eight-point-two million North Koreans this year.

The Red Cross also plans to form a committee on preventing natural disasters in the North from this month until mid-September, when the region is affected by monsoon rains.

And according to another KBS story:

WFP to Spend $2.8 Mln on NK Food Aid

The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) has decided to spend nearly two-point-eight million U.S. dollars on food aid for North Korea.

The funding for the aid was provided by the Swedish government.

Radio Free Asia quoted WFP global media coordinator Greg Barrow as saying that his agency will use the Swedish donation to help North Korea, which is in desperate need of emergency food aid.

Barrow said that the North will require even more donations from countries around the world, given that the current amount of food aid for the impoverished nation is expected to run out by September.

Read the full stories here:
WFP to Spend $2.8 Mln on NK Food Aid
KBS
7/7/2010

Red Cross to Help NK Prepare for Monsoon Season
KBS
7/7/2010

According to the Delmar Times:

San Diego neurosurgeon Dr. Kevin Yoo recently spent the first half-day of his medical mission to North Korea assembling a $20,000 surgical operative microscope that his travel partner donated to the Pyongyang University Hospital.

And both he and his fellow neurosurgeon Dr. Kee Park, who retired from private practice in Missouri several years ago to devote himself to humanitarian medical projects, demonstrated the effectiveness of the new scope in a series of operations they performed or assisted in during their three-day teaching visit to the North Korean capital in early June.

Yoo, 45, a Carmel Valley resident and father of three children, who was born in Seoul, South Korea, took time off from his busy practices in La Jolla, Poway and Temecula to join Park in a “special access” mission to the isolated communist state arranged with the help of the United Nations.

Park previously made similar trips to Ethiopia, Nepal and, on four occasions, to North Korea.

Yoo learned of Park’s humanitarian efforts at a meeting of Korean-American Spine Surgeons and volunteered to join Park, who lives in Indiana, on his fifth visit to North Korea last month.

“He didn’t think I would show up, but I did,” Yoo said.

They rendezvoused at the Inchon International Airport in South Korea and traveled together to North Korea via Beijing.

Yoo is a staff physician at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla specializing in head, neck and spine surgery.

Commenting on his visit to North Korea, Yoo said he was impressed with the knowledge, intelligence and skill of the North Korean surgeons. “But,” he said, “they just didn’t have the tools” that American surgeons often take for granted.

“The microscope was a tremendous addition to what they had,” Yoo said. “Dr. Park told me they had an old microscope that was broken down and he had a terrible headache using it because only one of the eyepieces worked and the visualization was pretty poor.”

Initially, Yoo was scheduled to assist in the operations, but, as it turned out, he did most of the work on two lumbar disc operations that the North Koreans were not used to performing “the way I did it.”

Given the tense political climate between Pyongyang and Washington these days, especially after the alleged North Korean torpedo attack and sinking of a South Korean warship in March, we asked if he and Park, as Americans, had experienced any animosity toward them.

“No,” Yoo said, “we were very well received. The gratitude they showed was always present, and I was told many times to come back.

“They were very grateful, and, obviously, very much in need of our help, very much in need of tools. It can be as simple as sterile gloves. They have them, but they have to recycle them. These guys would take the gloves, wash them, re-powder them, and use them again. And, for us, everything is disposable.

“I would just like to be able to share with them what we have,” he said.

He is hoping he may be able to convince Scripps to allow him to collect unused items from the operating room to donate to the hospital in Pyongyang on a return visit to North Korea being planned for next October.

“The need is great,” he said.

Yoo said he is not a political person. He is, however, interested in helping in “people-to-people” missions “that have a medical bent to them.”

Asked what gives him the greatest satisfaction in his work, he said: “Medicine is really tough these days. There are a lot of disappointments. Just to get paid for our services, we have to fight so much. So satisfaction is sometimes very difficult to obtain.

“But the thing that keeps us going on is good results and good patient outcome. But it’s so overshadowed by all the other things we have to deal with, regulations, not being paid … and fighting with the insurance companies.”

But, he said, he is beginning to enjoy the business aspects of his work.

“I don’t like fighting with insurance companies, but I do like the art of the business side of it, just practicing, surviving and making it work.

“The bottom line is, it really is a business. I put my practice on hold and spent several thousand dollars going to North Korea. I couldn’t do that if I wasn’t running a profitable practice.”

Read the full story here:
Neurosurgeon travels to N. Korea on medical mission
Del Mar Times
Arthur Lightbourn
7/8/2010