North Korean Economy Watch

Reuters offers a cautionary tale of investing in the DPRK:

Setting up a brewery in North Korea seemed like a good idea to Harry Kim and his Chinese friends two years ago. Everyone likes beer, even in one of the world’s most closed and least understood countries, they reckoned.

Kim and his partners even got the beer flowing after workers strapped equipment onto a truck in the Chinese border town of Tumen and drove it to the North Korean coastal city of Chongjin. Chinese engineers taught the locals how to brew. City officials loved the taste, he said.

But the small Chinese-North Korean venture ran aground within months after failing to get final approval from authorities in Pyongyang.

Kim’s experience is an illustration of both the challenge and the potential of doing business in North Korea, which has grabbed global attention in recent weeks with its threats to wage nuclear war on South Korea and the United States.

“It wasn’t rejected. We just waited. The central government didn’t come and say ‘no’, but the documents were just never issued and so we eventually gave up,” said Kim, a Chinese national of Korean descent living in Tumen in China’s northeastern Jilin province.

…

There is little public information on North Korea’s beer market but one thing seems clear – demand outstrips supply.

Troy Collings, a director at Young Pioneer Tours, a travel operator based in China which takes groups into North Korea and has organised brewery visits, said there were probably less than a dozen locally made beers available in the country.

In Pyongyang, two hotels concoct their own microbrews. The Rakwon department store creates its own eponymous beer, too, he said.

“They can’t produce enough for the domestic market,” said Collings.

The opportunity was clear – and reinforced for Kim when he saw the elite in Chongjin drinking a lot of Heineken and Corona.

So, in mid-2011, Kim and two friends joined up with a North Korean businessman to put the brewery plan in motion.

Approval from Chongjin city came easily, he said. The province, North Hamgyong, gave the green light too. And the first of three investments in equipment and supplies – the initial one worth about 200,000 yuan – was made.

Since North Korea has no system of credit and the risks of investing were high, Kim and his partners tied the beer project to seafood exports.

Before each investment was made, they were allowed to buy a cargo of North Korean seafood to sell in China. The first was about 50 tonnes of squid, he said.

…

It took about nine hours to drive from Tumen to Chongjin with the brewery equipment, including stops at customs.

The equipment was installed quickly and Chinese engineers showed the North Koreans how to brew. Soon, suds were flowing. The product was dubbed Wongang, or ‘river source’, beer.

On the first day of business the investors invited senior city and provincial leaders to the brewery for a sample. All approved, Kim said.

But the new brewery could not ramp up production without authorisation from Pyongyang, which never came despite months of waiting. There was never a response and the investors never got an explanation.

“If you push too hard it could raise suspicions,” Kim said.

It was a pity, because the North Koreans were good workers, he said, citing how the investors overcame the frequent power cuts which made it hard to use a computer to monitor the brewing process.

Instead, the investors stationed North Korean workers at each of the pressure gauges on the brewing equipment in 12-hour shifts. The workers were told if the dial reached a certain level they should turn a knob to let off pressure.

“They got chairs and sat there looking at the gauges, not sleeping all night, one person at each position,” said Kim.

Thanks to the squid hedge, the Chinese investors basically broke even. Kim now runs his restaurant in the space where the brewing equipment was stored before it was hauled to Chongjin.

Some day Pyongyang may give the green light, Kim says, but he is not holding his breath.

“As I was leaving they said ‘It’s not that we don’t want to do it, and it’s not that our senior leaders or the central government don’t want to do it, but we just don’t have practical experience with this kind of thing’.”

UPDATE: Simon notes in the comments:

There are not about a dozen locally brewed beers in the DPRK, there are literally dozens, if not many more. A great many restaurants and bars brew their own beer. The number quoted in the article isn’t close to the reality that small brewing set-ups are quite widespread in Pyongyang and other cities too.

Read the full story here:
Nuclear threats to squid hedges: it’s hard to get a beer in N.Korea
Reuters
John Ruwitch
2013-4-14

The Wilson Center’s North Korea International Documentation Project has posted a number of diplomatic cables from formerly fraternal socialist nations on the DPRK’s efforts to compete with South Korea for influence in the developing world. Below is a specific cable referring to DPRK – Cuban relations. It speaks volumes with masterful brevity (an art sorely lacking in public discourse today):

JANUARY 22, 1974
HUNGARIAN EMBASSY IN THE DPRK, TELEGRAM, 22 JANUARY 1974. SUBJECT: CUBAN-DPRK RELATIONS.

According to the Cuban ambassador accredited to this country, the DPRK asked Cuba to supply 300.000 metric tons of sugar in 1974. The Cubans replied that they could supply only 80.000 metric tons, and even this amount could be supplied only in quarterly items. If there was any delay in the [Korean] disembarkation of the delivered goods at the end of the quarter, the Cubans would halt the shipments next in line. The Korean trade officials declared that this Cuban measure was incompatible with the policy of mutual assistance that socialist countries pursued toward each other. The Cubans responded that they also needed assistance, and it would greatly help them if they could receive payment for the sugar shipments in a timely manner.

You can read all of the cables in the series here.

The Wall Street Journal offers an interesting story on American investor Jim Rogers. Here is an excerpt from the article:

By Sunday, Pyongyang-based Korea Pugang Coins Corp. had sold its entire stock of coins, which included 20 one-ounce gold coins featuring mostly century-old generals as well as several hundred silver coins featuring North Korean sports achievements, cultural landmarks and national animals.

Most of the coins were purchased by Mr. Rogers, an American commodities investor now based in Singapore, said a Korea Pugang Coins representative, who didn’t give her name. The company knows Mr. Rogers from last year’s fair, when he bought the entire lot of North Korean coins offered.

Mr. Rogers, who started the Quantum Fund with George Soros in the 1970s, couldn’t be reached for comment, but had said in a previous interview: “Coins and stamps are the only way I can invest in North Korea.”

By invest in, Mr. Rogers means he wants to wager against the long-term prospects for the isolated, economically struggling country. He views his purchase as a bet on the collapse of North Korea.

“At some point down the line, North Korea will cease existing as a country. Then the value of the coins will go up,” Mr. Rogers said.

According to North Korea’s state-controlled news agency, a special series of gold coins were minted last year to commemorate Kim Jong Il, the country’s leader who died in late-2011. The inscription: “The Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong Il Will Always Be Alive.” However, none of those coins were put up for sale at the Singapore fair.

Mr. Kim was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong Eun.

Situated next to the American Numismatic Association, the North Korean stand drew immediate attention from many visitors, when the Singapore International Coin Fair opened its doors Friday morning. By lunchtime, the sales team, wearing Kim Jong Il pins on their jackets, hardly found time to finish their sandwiches and cans of Coca-Cola KO -0.59% .

Thirteen of the gold coins were purchased by an assistant of Mr. Rogers, said a representative of state-owned Korea Pugang Coins. “He wanted to buy more, but we only had 13 left,” she said. The company offered the gold coins for 2,500 Singapore dollars, or $2,014—well above Friday’s closing gold price of $1,598.25 an ounce.

Mr. Rogers is a fervent believer that the commodities bull-run will continue and that China and other Asian nations will set the global economic agenda for this century. He advocates investing in frontier markets such as Myanmar and Cambodia, and in 2007, sold his New York mansion and moved to Singapore, in part because he thinks it is crucial for his children to learn Mandarin.

…

Korea Pugang Coins has minted coins in Pyongyang since 1987, but the mintage is only around 2,000 each year, as North Korea’s own gold resources are limited.

The coins draw only a limited amount of buyers within North Korea and are mainly sold to international investors and collectors at fairs in Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore, the company said.

Estonia-based Tavex Group, a company that specializes in gold and currencies, made a deal with Pyongyang in 2008 to sell North Korean gold coins.

But the North Koreans ended it after the first shipment of coins from a 2007 series featuring elephants, rhinos, owls, lions and buffalos.

“We sold them at a relatively high price to collectors, but demand was not big,” says Tomas Pavelson, who works in sales at Tavex Group.

“Actually, we still have one left.”

See some examples of DPRK coins here and here.

Here is some additional information from the Choson Ilbo:

In March last year, American investor Jim Rogers went to an international coin fair in Singapore and snapped up 13 rare North Korean gold coins each valued at 2,500 Singaporean dollars, as well as hundreds of silver coins worth 70 Singaporean dollars each.

The commemorative coins were produced by Pyongyang-based Korea Pugang Coins Corp., a subsidiary of Pugang Trading Corp.

Pugang Trading operates under the “guidance” of the Workers Party’s Munitions Industry Department but is believed to be run by Chon Song-hun, the son of the former North Korean ambassador to China, Chon Myung-su. The younger Chon is a former professor at Kim Il-sung University.

The firm imports and manufactures motorcycles and owns six subsidiaries involved in metals, machinery, chemicals, electronics and pharmaceuticals production. It also owns a gold mine that supplied the commodity for the coins.

Pugang Pharmaceutical has even exported health products to South Korea and runs a mineral water business. The group’s annual transaction volume amounts to US$150 million with 15 overseas branch offices, including in Beijing and Moscow.

Now Pugang Trading is on the UN Security Council’s blacklist, but the company is still very active in the North.

“Pugang is the North Korean equivalent of South Korea’s Samsung Group,” said Cho Bong-hyun of the IBK Economic Research Institute. “It appears to have been thriving even after Kim Jong-un stepped into power.”

Chon’s brother Yong-hun, meanwhile, apparently controls the import of diesel fuel into North Korea as the head of a company affiliated with the party’s Finance and Accounting Department. “North Korean businesses usually split their profits 50:50 with the party,” said a government source here. “The Chon brothers are believed to be worth millions of dollars.”

Another tycoon is Cha Chol-ma, a former diplomat who amassed a fortune worth millions of dollars by taking charge of business projects the North engages in overseas to earn hard currency.

“As a market economy evolves in North Korea, we are seeing early signs of monopolization of wealth,” said a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification here. “Tycoons have grown wealthy through collusion with high-ranking party members.”

Experts say North Korean businessmen also act as proxy investors on behalf of high-ranking party members, who cannot get involved in business, and often share the profits.

Read the full story here:
Executing a North Korean Coin Flip
Wall Street Journal
Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen
2012-3-29

According to Yonhap:

North Korea imported an unusually massive amount of silver from China in January, possibly in relation to leader Kim Jong-un’s birthday that month, sources and China’s customs office said Thursday.

Data from China’s customs office showed that North Korea imported 661.71 kilograms of Chinese silver for US$653,128 in January.

The monthly import is unusually enormous given that the North took in only $77,593 worth of precious metal and other jewels for the whole of 2012. The corresponding amount for 2011 was $57,000.

Before January this year, the North had hardly spent more than $10,000 on monthly imports of such goods, according to the data.

Given the leader’s birthday on Jan. 8, North Korea watchers said the massive amount of imported silver may have been used to produce silverware souvenirs to celebrate the leader’s birthday.

“It’s difficult to assume the exact purpose of the silver imports,” a source said. Given that late leader Kim Jong-il used to bring in foreign brand luxury sedans and expensive watches to treat the country’s top echelon on major holidays, the bulk of silver imported in January may have been used for similar purposes, the source said.

Backing this assumption, the customs data also showed that the North imported an unusually large amount of costume jewelry worth $10,447 in the same month.

A reader points out this Daily NK story hypothesizing that the silver could have been used in batteries:

As such, there are suspicions that the recent North Korean decision to import more than 600kg of silver through China was done to facilitate the production of batteries for submersible production.

A North Korean military source told Daily NK on the 4th, “The [North Korean] Navy has been producing submersibles at every shipyard on their east and west coasts ever since the attack on the Cheonan in 2010.”

According to the inside source, prior to the Cheonan sinking such vessels were produced at one shipyard, the disguised ‘Bongdae Boiler Factory’ in Sinpo, South Hamkyung Province, at a rate of five per year. However, following the sinking of the Cheonan that rate went up four times to 16 per year, as the vessels started being produced across multiple shipyards including Yongampo, Chongjin and Rajin.

The source explained, “The reason why the North Korean authorities are increasing production of this kind of submersible that can fire torpedoes is to maximize their underwater attack capacity. The subs can take 12 to 15 soldiers yet still sink destroyers weighing thousands of tons with their twin torpedoes.”

“The engines noise on the submersibles is very quiet, making them able to approach their targets underwater in secret, while it is impossible to trace crimes such as the Cheonan incident,” the source went on, adding that during North Korean military training exercises they also emphasize the essential nature of the subs.

The rising production is pushing up demand for batteries, the source then went on to add, saying that this required the bulk production of both silver and zinc. “All the silver produced in North Korea is supplied to the shipyards,” he claimed.

The source admitted to being confused, therefore, at North Korea’s recent decision to import 660kg of silver from China, declaring, “There is lots of silver being produced in North Korea, so it’s hard to say why they are importing it from China…I suppose it may have been just that more batteries were being produced so they needed more silver.”

Read the full stories here:
N. Korea imports massive amount of Chinese silver in Jan.: data
Yonhap
2013-3-28

NK Producing More Silvery Subs
Daily NK
2013-4-5

A much-appreciated colleague has sent me a PDF document published by the DPRK’s Committee for the Promotion of External Economic Cooperation in 2003. It that contains hundreds of pages of DPRK laws and regulations.

Click here to open the PDF document

Here is a list of the contents:

1. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Foreign Investment

2. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Equtiy Joint Venture

3. Regulations for the Implementation of the Law on Equity Joint Venture

4. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Contractual Joint Venture

5. Regulations for the Implementation of the Law on Contractual Joint Venture

6. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Foreign Exchange Control

7. Regulations for the Implementation of the Law on Foreign Exchange control

8. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Foreign-Invested Bank

9. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the Leasing of Land

10. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Foreign-Invested Business and Foreign Individual Tax

11. Regulations for the Implementation of the Law on Foreign-Invested Business and Foreign Individual Tax

12. The Customs Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

13. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the Protection of Environment

14. The Insurance Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

15. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on External Economic Arbitration

16. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on External Civil Relations

17. The Notary Public Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

18. The Civil Proceedings Act of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

19. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Processing Trade

20. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Bankruptcy of Foreign-Invested Enterprises

21. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

22. The Law of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprises

23. Regulations for the Implementation of the Law on Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprises

24. Regulations on the Financial Management of Foreign Invested Enterprises

25. Regulations on the Introduction of Latest Technologies by Foreign-Invested Enterprises

26. Regulations on the Naming of Foreign-Invested Enterprises

27. Regulations on the Registration of Foreign-Invested Enterprises

28. Labor Regulations for Foreign-Invested Enterprises

29. Regulations on the Resident Representative Offices of Foreign Enterprises in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

30. Regulations on Entrepot Trade in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

31. Regulations on Contract Construction in th Rason Economic and Trade Zone

32. Regulations on Forwarding Agency in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

33. Regulations on Statistics in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

34. Regulations on Tourism in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

35. Regulations on Financial Management of Foreign-Invested Enterprises in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

36. Regulations on Foreigner’s Immigration Procedure and Stay in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

37. Customs Regulations For the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

38. Regulations on Finding in the Rason Economic and Trade Zone

The Bank of Korea has long reported that the DPRK has been running a current account deficit (see their summary report of the DPRK economy in 2011 here).

While working on their own statistics, however, Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard assert that the DPRK may be running a current account surplus:

According to Noland:

[In all likelihood],  North Korea has run current account deficits for most of its history. That meant that the country was consuming more than it was producing, and the difference had to financed from abroad. However, on our calculation, largely on the back of expanding trade with China, the current account went into surplus in 2011. Our preliminary calculations suggest that the country probably also ran a surplus in 2012.

This is bad news, both for North Korea and the rest of us. It is bad news for North Korea because as a relatively poor country, they should be running a current account deficit, importing capital, and expanding productive capacity for future growth. Instead, our calculation suggests that they are exporting capital. Consumption at home is being needlessly compressed (the recent UNICEF survey documents continuing chronic food insecurity for some significant part of the populace) and instead, money is flowing abroad, presumably to finance the future consumption of the elite. Steph Haggard, in a post last week, pointed to evidence that this capital may be flowing into accounts in China.

It is also bad news for us. If North Korea is running current account surpluses, then they are less vulnerable to foreign pressure.

The Wall Street Journal offered additional information:

Messrs. Noland and Haggard said that taking a pulse on North Korea’s economy is inevitably speculative. Pyongyang doesn’t release trade figures, so estimates are made based on data provided by third parties.

According to South Korean estimates, North Korea’s total trade with its only major ally, China, nearly tripled to around $5.6 billion between 2007 and 2011, and in 2011 it showed a deficit of $700 million in goods trade—a major component of its current account. For there to be an overall surplus, as the research of Messrs. Noland and Haggard suggests, other components in the current account would have to be more than enough to offset that goods-trade shortfall.

“If there were massive dollar remittances back home by overseas North Koreans or a sharp increase in foreign tourists to the North, it would be possible for North Korea to run a current-account surplus despite a trade deficit,” said a Bank of Korea official in Seoul. “But you never know the exact reasons unless you see the full data.”

According to Yonhap (via Global Post):

North Korea revised its trade and customs laws last year to give its cabinet more power over the economy, a copy of the revised laws showed Monday.

The booklet on North Korea laws concerning external economic activities, secured by Yonhap News Agency, showed that the country revised its trade laws in April last year, a first since the previous revision in March 2007.

The revision newly requires trade institutions and other sub-trade groups to have their monthly plans reviewed and approved by the central trade supervision agency, according to the copy of the booklet.

The country’s customs law, also revised in April 2012, indicate that the government has increased its supervision of the customs sector compared with 2007 when the corresponding law was last modified.

The government is also said to be seeking to foster customs specialists and establish an ad hoc committee to review customs affairs.

Analysts said the latest law change suggests that the cabinet’s role in the economic sector has been enhanced compared to the military, which is known to have exerted a strong hold over state affairs reflecting late leader Kim Jong-il’s military-first ideology.

The timing of the revision coincides with incumbent leader Kim Jong-un’s emphasis on the importance of the cabinet in leading national policies. Kim Jong-un took power after the sudden death of his father in late 2011.

“North Korea’s trimming of the trade and customs laws indicates its intention to fasten up the central (government’s) previously loose supervision of trade and customs affairs,” said Im Eul-chul, a research professor of Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University. “It is also related with strengthening the role of the cabinet in the economic sector.”

The monthly management of trade performance, envisioned in the revision, reflects the leader’s plan to boost the trade sector as a means of earning more foreign currency, local experts also said. The military’s and the governing Workers’ Party of Korea’s tight hold on economic affairs are widely believed to have posed obstacles in the country’s economic performance.

The booklet, meanwhile, showed that the country rewrote its immigration law last April, doing away with the clause requiring state permission for foreign travelers wanting to travel outside of the capital of Pyongyang. Such a move could allow more freedom of movement by foreign tourists inside the communist country.

Read the full story here:
NK trade-cabinet
Yonhap (Via Global Post)
2013-3-18

By Michael Rank

China has signed its first offshore processing agreement with North Korea, under which four companies in the border city of Hunchun will export textiles which will be made up into shirts in the DPRK, a Chinese website reports.

Under the two-year agreement from January 2013, the textiles will be made up into 8,000 shirts, the report said, adding that the companies will be relieved of some export and import taxes. It gave no further details.

The report said the deal reflected low labour costs in North Korea as well as severe labour shortages in Hunchun, where there is a deficit of 3,500 workers. It said it was the first such agreement not just for Jilin province but for China as a whole, and had the approval of customs headquarters in Beijing.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The tiny South Pacific island nation of Kiribati issued passports to North Korean businessmen until 2004 as a “means of generating revenue,” its president has admitted.

There had been speculation for some time that North Koreans engaged in illicit activities such as arms deals were illegally obtaining passports from small countries.

Appearing recently on Australian radio, Kiribati President Anote Tong said he was embarrassed that the passports were reportedly related to international crime. “I can assure you that we had corrected that situation in 2004 when we stopped issuing these passports,” he said.

Late last year, a Japanese activist group said two agents from North Korea, Han Chol [한철] and Ju Ok-hui [주억희), used passports issued by Kiribati and the Seychelles.

They are board members of North Korea’s Tongsin International Trading Corporation, an agency suspected of illegally exporting weapons to Burma and other countries, the group added.

Both Han and Ju were given passports by the Kiribati government in 1996 and by the Seychelles in 2007. The countries reportedly sold passports to foreign businessmen but abandoned the practice due to mounting worries about illicit activities.

A Foreign Ministry official in Seoul said, “Kiribati has been neutral since it won independence from the U.K. in 1979. “It would have been easier for the North Korean agents to travel with those passports rather than with North Korean ones.”

Read the full story here:
South Pacific Island Admits Selling Passports to N.Koreans
Choson Ilbo
2013-3-13

Marcus Noland offers a new estimate of the DPRK’s illicit trade activities:

According to Marcus Noland:

The chart above shows our estimates of illicit revenues (inclusive of arms sales) as a share of merchandise exports. These are admittedly highly speculative and as a consequence we include high and low estimates as well as a best guess. As one can see, this share has been drifting down for more than a decade as both legitimate trade has expanded, and intensified interdiction efforts have crimped criminal activities. We estimate that in 2011, the illicit share of exports was in the range of 5-20 percent, with our best guess at roughly 10 percent. During the hearings, one of the witnesses, Professor Sung-yoon Lee, claimed that illicit activities account for up to 40 percent of the country’s trade; that statement was probably true in the past, but on our calculation, probably no longer true—though again, all this is highly speculative and anyone who claims that they know the real answer is, in the words of former Vice President Mondale, “a liar or a fool.”

A related issue is the degree to which central authorities exercise control over these activities. Some activities are almost surely subject to central control; some are probably conducted by state entities but without direction from central authorities (or perhaps without even their specific knowledge); some of these activities may well be conducted by what amount to local criminal gangs (which may include state, military, or party officials as participants); some of these activities may be organized by Chinese or other foreign gangs with the acquiesence of North Korea officials. Several years ago, for instance, when their was a crackdown no intellectual property rights theft in China, some of the counterfeiting activity allegedly moved across the border into North Korea where control was more lax.

The message is not that we should slack off in our attempts to eradicate these activities. Even they account for a declining share of the North Korean economy, they are still objectionable. But by the same token, we should not make the analytical mistake of thinking that shutting down these activities will halt the North Korean nuclear program or bring down the regime. The real message here is that the expansion of legitimate trade in recent years has made North Korea less dependent on criminal activities and less vulnerable to their disruption.