North Korean Economy Watch

According to Yonhap:

Eight out of every 10 North Korean families are suffering malnutrition with little access to protein foods, a U.S. media report said Tuesday.

In its survey of 87 North Korean families from January to March, the World Food Program (WFP) found that 80 percent of them were undernourished mainly due to a lack of protein intake, the Washington-based Voice of America (VOA) said.

About 38 percent of those surveyed were not able to eat high-protein foods during the one week before the survey, such as meat, fish, eggs or beans, said the report, monitored in Seoul.

Quoting the WFP report, the VOA said the North Korean families, on average, eat meat 1.3 days a week or beans 1.2 days per week.

The report also said about 14 percent of the 86 hospitalized North Korean children under age 5 whom its aid workers visited during the January-March period were in serious malnutrition conditions.

Meanwhile, AmeriCares, a U.S. non-profit aid group, is about to send 10.5 tons of drugs in humanitarian assistance to the North this week, another U.S. media report said.

The aid package, which includes antibiotics, stomach medicines and dermatology drugs, will be shipped later this week to six hospitals in Pyongyang and other areas, the Washington-based Radio Free Asia reported. The shipment will also include personal hygiene items like toothbrushes and soaps, it said.

The RFA said the latest aid has no political consideration and is solely for humanitarian purposes.

AmeriCares began its aid to the North in 1997 as the first American private group to do so. Last year, it sent US$7 million worth of medicine for flood victims in the impoverished country.

Read the full story here:
Eight out of 10 N. Korean families undernourished: report
Yonhap
2013-5-7

According to Martyn Williams in PC World:

North Korea’s sole 3G network operator has managed to double its subscriber base in a little over a year and is about to hit 2 million users.

Koryolink launched service in the final days of 2008 and has become one of the most visible foreign partnership success stories in the country.

The network operator is jointly owned by Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding (OTMT) and North Korea’s Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. Orascom holds a 75 percent majority stake with the remainder in the hands of the government.

Before Koryolink’s service began, mobile phones were an unusual sight in Pyongyang, but that has changed in recent years. Visitors speak of seeing scores of citizens talking and texting from mobile handsets.

2 million subscribers is approximately 8.3% of the North Korean population.  The majority of subscribers are likely to be in Pyongyang but we do not have any data on the internal distribution of subscriptions. All subscribers are paying in hard currency, though none of it has been repatriated from the DPRK.

More information available at North Korea Tech.

According to the Hankyoreh:

While North Korea prohibited members of the Corporate Association of Kaesong Industrial Complex (CAKIC) from entering the North, it granted access to representatives of the Eugene Bell Foundation. The foundation has been providing humanitarian and medical aid to North Korea for some time.

On Apr. 18, the Eugene Bell Foundation announced that a group of nine people who had been staying in Beijing waiting for their North Korean visas, including Chairman Stephen Linton and a group of donors to the foundation, finally received their visas that afternoon and boarded a plane bound for Pyongyang.

“Even this morning, it was unclear whether they would be allowed to enter the country, but fortunately the visas were issued in the afternoon,” a representative of the foundation said.

This is being seen as showing that North Korea is linking the Kaesong Industrial Complex issue with the current political situation on the Korean peninsula, but that it is willing to receive humanitarian support. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the group visiting North Korea includes eight Americans and one French person, but no South Korean nationals.

The Eugene Bell Foundation, which operates tuberculosis clinics in eight areas in North Korea, including Pyongyang and Nampo, has sent representatives to North Korea twice each year in order to assess whether the tuberculosis medicine that it provides is being used properly. These visits continued to take place during the Lee Myung-bak administration (2008-Feb. 2013).

On Mar. 22, the foundation sent North Korea 678 million won (USD$604,267) worth of tuberculosis medicine in keeping with the principles of Park Geun-hye’s trust-building process for the Korean peninsula, which does not link humanitarian aid with the North Korean nuclear weapons issue. This medication left Pyeongtaek harbor and arrived at Nampo harbor on Apr. 4 by way of Dalian, China.

Meanwhile, the owners of the businesses at the Kaesong complex that were prohibited from entering the North on Apr. 17 have decided to try once again to visit the North on Apr. 20 via the CIQ (customs, immigration, and quarantine) office in Paju, Gyeonggi Province.

The Ministry of Unification announced on Apr. 18 that eight more employees who had been staying in Kaesong had returned to South Korea through the CIQ office. This brought the number of South Korean employees still remaining in the complex two weeks after North Korea blocked traffic from entering to 197, less than one fourth of the original total.

Read the full story here:

N. Korea allows entrance to foreign aid group
Hankyoreh
Gil Yun-hyung
2013-4-19

According to the Irish Times:

Irish NGO Concern has temporarily suspended its aid work in North Korea due to the increasing threat of war. The suspension takes place with immediate effect due to fears over staff safety.

The non-governmental organisation has 14 workers in the area. Eleven of them are from North Korea, while there are also three international workers from Nepal, India and Sweden. The only Irish Concern employee in the area left a number of months ago.

Concern’s overseas director of aid Paul O’Brien said the organisation had a meeting with the Department of Foreign Affairs last week, where the decision was made.“Two of our international staff are outside the area now and we can’t really function without them. We will return to work once it settles down there,” he said.

Mr O’Brien said he hopes things will settle in the country by the time former leader Kim Il-Sung’s birthday takes place on April 15th. The birthday is celebrated as a public holiday where North Koreans celebrate the life of their “Eternal President”, who died in 1994.

Read the full story here:
Concern suspends North Korea operations
Irish
Jason Kennedy
2013-4-8

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.

UPDATE 1 (2013-3-28): NK News reports that Kempinski has officially pulled out of the deal:

“Kempinski Hotels confirms that KEY International, its joint venture partner in China with Beijing Tourism Group (BTG), had initial discussions to operate a hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, however no agreement has been signed since market entry is not currently possible”, Regional PR Director Hilary Philpott told NK NEWS by email.

ORIGINAL POST (2012-11-1): According to Bloomberg:

The 105-story, pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel, whose foundations were poured almost three decades ago, will open partially in July or August, Kempinski AG Chief Executive Officer Reto Wittwer said today at a forum in Seoul. The German luxury-hotel manager will be the first western hospitality company to operate in North Korea, he said.

…

“This pyramid monster hotel will monopolize all the business in the city,” Wittwer said. “I said to myself, we have to get this hotel if there is ever a chance, because this will become a money-printing machine if North Korea opens up.”

Kempinski, based in Munich, is handling management while Egypt’s Orascom Telecom Media & Technology Holding SAE (OTMT) funds the hotel as part of a $400 million mobile-phone license it won from the North Korean government in 2008, he said. Cairo-based Orascom has spent $180 million on completing the hotel’s facade.

…

The top floors of the hotel will house guests in 150 of the originally planned 1,500 rooms, which “will be developed over time” to remodel the insufficiently designed spaces, Wittwer said. Shops, restaurants, a ballroom and Orascom’s offices on the ground and mezzanine floors will also open next year.

Additional Information:

1. Koryo Tours published the first photos taken inside the building.

2. The Choson Ilbo reports that the South Koreans tried investing in the hotel during the Noh Administration.

Read the full story here:
Kempinski to Operate World’s Tallest Hotel in North Korea
Bloomberg
Sangwon Yoon
2012-11-1

According to Yonhap:

Under the approval, Eugene Bell, a South Korean charity group, will ship tuberculosis medicine worth 678 million won (US$606,500 to eight tuberculosis clinics run by the South Korean group in North Korea. The shipment is expected to be delivered in April, the official said.

This marks the first aid package approved by the ministry since Park took office on Feb. 25. The last aid request was granted in November last year under President Lee Myung-bak.

…

“The approval is strictly for humanitarian purposes and should not be read as a message to condone North Korea’s recent provocations,” Kim said.

“The planned medicine aid can help cure about 500 multidrug-resistant tuberculosis patients in the North whose lives would be at serious risk without the medicine,” the spokesman said. It is difficult for North Korea to produce quality medicine to cure the difficult type of tuberculosis, he added.

…

President Park has repeatedly said despite relations with the North, she will continue to allow humanitarian aid to less-privileged North Koreans as part of her signature North Korean policy to build trust with the country. She, however, pledged to sternly respond to any provocations by the North.

“The spread of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is so serious that North Korea is judged to have missed the crucial ‘golden time’ to root out the tuberculosis,” Stephen Linton, the chairman of Eugene Bell, said in a news conference in November following a two-week visit to the country.

The charity foundation has been running a medical service program for tuberculosis patients in the North since 2000 and sends drugs on a regular basis to the impoverished country.

Read the full story here:
Seoul approves first private-level aid provision to N. Korea under new administration
Yonhap
2013-3-22

UPDATE 1 (2013-3-11): Koryo Tours reports that the mass games will take place this year…and it will be “Arirang” themed.  The DPRK had earlier reported that Arirang had been consigned to history.  So it appears that management of the mass games is handled in much the same way as the management of economic policy. Here is what the Koryo Tours email had to say:

Today, Koryo Tours received confirmation of the mass games dates for this year. They are scheduled to run from JULY 22nd to SEPTEMBER 9th. These dates incorporate two of the biggest holidays in the DPRK this year – the 60th anniversary of the end of the Korean War on 27th July (Victory Day) and the 65th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK on September 9th (National Day) .

Despite claims last year that 2012 would be the last ever Arirang-themed performance, it seems that this is not the case and this year the theme will again be Arirang but we expect to see new scenes added in to make it bigger and better than ever before.

ORIGINAL POST (2012-7-11): I have relocated to the DC area and have begun clearing out the backlog of posts and emails. I should be caught up by the end of the week.

This morning, however, I wanted to point out a marketing email sent out by Koryo Tours:

Word from our sources in Pyongyang is that the Arirang Mass Games of 2012 will be the last – so we suggest you sign up now to ensure that you can see this remarkable event while it is still running。

While mass games have been performed since the 1940s in the DPRK the Arirang show is the largest and most impressive they have ever produced. Born in 2002, since 2007 it has been an annual event, but 2012 will be Arirang’s 10th anniversary, and it seems the powers that be have decided to close the curtain. As for the reason, our Korean partners suggest that the narrative needs to change with the times. Combining dance, gymnastics, propaganda, politics, music, and even unicycling, this spectacular performance chronicles the struggles of the Korean people suffering under Japanese occupation, moving into the independent era and building a modern country – basically the period linked to the first 100 years since the birth of North Korea’s Eternal President Kim Il Sung.

However, since 2013 marks the 65th anniversary of the foundation of the republic (Sept 9th) as well as the 60th anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended the Korean War (July 27th), organisers are reportedly planning a whole new performance for next year – for more news on this, please stay on our mailing list!

So if you haven’t seen Arirang yet, or if you want to see it one last time, this is your chance.

Koryo Tours is also repeating its Ultimate Frisbee Tour and Pyongyang’s first ever DJ set! Email them at info@koryogroup.com if you are interested.

You can read the full Koryo Tours newsletter here.

Comrade Kim Goes Flying
“Comrade Kim” can now be seen in the USA. According to a Koryo Tours email:

Miami International Film Festival (screening dates: 8th and 9th March 2013)
San Francisco CAAM Festival (screening dates: 16th, 23rd and 24th March 2013)

Nicholas Bonner (co-director/co-producer of the film) will be at the Miami screenings and the San Francisco screening on 16th March – and would love to see you there.

The film will also be shown at various other festivals throughout the US later in the year – we will add the screenings to our website: www.comradekimgoesflying.com

For press please contact the film’s publicist:
David Magdael
dmagdael@tcdm-associates.com
Phone (+1) 213 624 7827

Pyongyang Charity Fun Run!

According to a Koryo Tours email:

Koryo Tours are proud to announce the very first charity Fun Run to be held in DPRK (North Korea) on May 1st 2013.

The Fun Run is open to any tourists in Pyongyang at the time so if you’re on the May Day Long Tour or the May Day Short Tour then you can join in! There will be a 5km route as well as a 10km one for those who are up for more of a challenge – we will be running (or jogging/ walking/ limping – delete as applicable) in the Manyongdae District in Sports Street. Tourists taking part in the fun run won’t miss out on any of the other activities – after the run we’ll return to the hotel to freshen up before starting the day’s sightseeing itinerary kicking things off with a visit to the Mansundae Grand Monument before heading to Taesongsan Park where the locals hold May Day celebrations.

The aim of the run is to raise money to buy milk powder for the children in the Nampo Orphanage on the west coast, a place we’ve worked with regularly. There will be a minimum donation of EUR 20 per runner but if you’d like to try and raise more we of course encourage you to do so – and please note that donations from non-participating tourists are also greatly received by us and the children!

The weather on the morning of May 1st should be pleasantly cool, we’ll provide water and a FUN RUN T-shirt so all you need is some suitable footwear/ clothing.

If you’d like to be part of the first ever Fun Run in North Korea or need any more information about our May Day Tours then please send an email to info@koryogroup.com

PRESS RELEASE: 

Phoenix Commercial Ventures Ltd is pleased to announce that it has reacquired the Sinji brand, trademark and associated intellectual property rights.

Sinji JVC was a 50/50 joint venture between Phoenix Commercial Ventures Ltd and the Taegyong Economic Group.

Phoenix’s share in the company was sold to a third party in November 2010.

Sinji (pronounced “shinjee”) was a lieutenant of Tangun, the first king of Korea in around 3,000 BC, and his mission was to relay communications between the king and his people. In the absence of a written script, he invented one. Sinji dates from ancient history, all Koreans will recognise the name. Sinji symbolises the human intellectual, and he can be considered to be the original Korean IT developer.

Sinji’s main areas of operations at the time of disposal were:

• Retail (consumer electronics, household necessities)
• Software (eg the innovative web based e-learning platform, learnwithelsi)
• Artificial flower manufacturing for export
• SKD assembly/retail: Renewable energy products (eg small capacity wind turbine generators)

Phoenix Commercial Ventures Ltd will issue further updates as to the intended future operations and direction of the newly acquired Sinji brand.

Here is a PDF with more.