Archive for the ‘Foreign aid statistics’ Category

North Korea summer 2016 food shortage reports

Sunday, June 19th, 2016

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

‘Tis the season of news reports of food shortages in North Korea. Late spring and summer is the “lean season” for food in the country, when shortages tend to become more dire as the main harvest season approaches. In an interview with Radio Free Asia, the FAO-official Christina Coslet repeated the organization’s prediction of the harvest this year being the smallest since 2011. Moreover, PDS-distribution is reportedly down to 360 grams, the lowest since 2010 (click here for a recap in English by Korea Times):

기자) 코슬렛 담당관님, 우선 북한 식량 사정에 대해 살펴보죠. 요즘 북한의 식량 사정 어떻게 평가하고 있습니까?

코슬렛 담당관) “ The food security situation due to the decreased production is expected to worsen compared to the previous years….”

지난 몇 년 간 보다 훨씬 안 좋을 것으로 보고 있습니다. 아시다시피 지난해 가을 추수한 주요 곡물의 수확량이 크게 감소했습니다. 쌀의 경우 전년도에 비해 26% 감소했고, 옥수수도 3%가량 감소했죠. 북한이 올해 외부 지원이나 수입으로 충당해야 할 식량 부족량이 69만4천t에 이르는데요, 이 같은 식량 부족분 규모는 2011년 이래 최대 규모입니다. 하지만 현재 확보한 식량은 부족 분의 3% 가량인 2만3천t에 그치고 있습니다. [Summary: rice harvests are down by 26%, corn by 3%, the import need is the greatest since 2011 /BKS.]

[…]

기자) 북한 당국의 식량 배급량을 통해서도 북한의 식량 사정을 가늠할 수 있지 않나요?

코슬렛 담당관) “Yes, it is also another way to see the food shortage situation in the country…”

그렇습니다. 식량이 적게 배분됐다는 것은 그만큼 식량 사정이 좋지 않다는 걸 의미하죠. 올해 1월부터 3월까지 북한 당국이 주민 한 명 당 하루 배급한 양은 370g입니다. 하지만 4월부터 6월 배급량은 360g으로 줄었는데요 이는 지난 2010년 이래 가장 적은 양입니다. 그만큼 식량 사정이 좋지 않다고 볼 수 있죠. [Summary: PDS distribution was 370 grams per day between January and March this year, but went down to 360 grams between April and June /BKS.]

Full article:
FAO: Food shortages in North Korea largest in four years
Kim Hyun-jin
Radio Free Asia
2016-06-19

Of course, given the way that the North Korean economy functions today, one might question how much PDS-distributions really matter. There is quite a bit of regional variation in dependency on the PDS, and whatever the actual state of food supply, different localities will be hit differently whenever food supply is lacking.

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UN releases emergency funds to North Korea

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein 

From a press statement today by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA):

UN EMERGENCY FUND RELEASES US$ 8 MILLION TO ASSIST MOST VULNERABLE WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN DPRK

(Bangkok, 2 February 2016)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 29 January 2016 released US$ 8 million from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) for severely underfunded aid operations in the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK). These funds will enable life-saving assistance for more than 2.2 million people most vulnerable and at risk of malnutrition.

The DPRK was one of nine countries to receive such grants within the overall $100 million allocation to underfunded emergencies. Undernutrition is a fundamental cause of maternal and child death and disease: in DPRK, chronic malnutrition (stunting) among under-five children is at 27.9 per cent, while 4 per cent of under-five children are acutely malnourished (wasting).

Around 70 per cent of the population, or 18 million people, are considered food insecure. Food production in the country is hampered by a lack of agricultural inputs and is highly vulnerable to shocks, particularly natural disasters. Due to drought in 2015, 11 per cent of the main harvest was lost.

Health service delivery, including reproductive health, remains inadequate, with many areas of the country not equipped with the facilities, equipment or medicines to meet people’s basic health needs. Under-five children and low-birth-weight newborns are vulnerable to life-threatening diseases, such as pneumonia and diarrhoea if they do not receive proper treatment or basic food, vitamins and micronutrients.

Full press statement available here.

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How North Korea Became the World’s Worst Economy

Tuesday, December 29th, 2015

Nicholas Eberstadt writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Economic history is a story of progress and success, but also of retrogression and failure. Among the latter cases, the most gruesome is surely the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK). Its signature catastrophe, the Great North Korean Famine of the 1990s, was, so far as can be told, the only famine in all of human history to beset an urbanized and literate society during peacetime.

Pyongyang’s descent into penury is all the more tragic considering that from the 1950s on into the 1970s, intelligence from Washington and Seoul suggested that North Korea’s per capita output was higher than South Korea’s. An array of public data—on urbanization and energy consumption, for instance—appears to corroborate that judgment. How the once-developing DPRK went from a rapid ascent into a stall, and then into a dreadful downward spiral, is a cautionary tale with implications far beyond the Korean peninsula.

The ruling Kim regime suppresses data about the country’s performance, but sufficient hard evidence has seeped out to describe both the dimensions and the causes of its continuing economic calamity. The most meaningful quantitative measure available comes from “mirror statistics” on the country’s international trade—reports by its trading partners on their purchases from and sales to the DPRK of various commodities. These data provide indirect but powerful evidence about productivity, living standards and technological attainment.

Despite a recent China-supported upswing in trade, North Korean per capita merchandise exports last year were no higher, after adjusting for inflation, than in the mid-1970s. By my calculations, real per capita imports in 2014 were barely three-fifths of what they were in 1974. That year marked North Korea’s all-time peak trade.

North Korea’s decline was a continuing drama, not precipitated by any particular geopolitical shock. Neither the end of the Soviet bloc, nor the reportedly disastrous flooding of the mid-1990s, nor a succession of international non-proliferation sanctions imposed since 2006, nor any other external event explains the country’s long-term deterioration. Instead, North Korea’s economic troubles are the natural consequence of the Kims’ dogged insistence on destructive policies.

North Korea appears to have the very worst business climate of any fully functioning nation state. On the 2010 Index of Economic Freedom compiled by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, the DPRK earned one point out of 100, the lowest score of all 179 countries ranked. Zimbabwe, the state with the second-worst ranking that year, came in 20 points higher.

The DPRK has no rule of law; no established property rights; no possibility for private foreign trade; no reliable currency; virtually no official social and economic information; and no internal constraints whatever upon its monumentally ambitious government.

It is difficult to overstate how much this matters. At any point in the postwar era, 80% or more of the differences between countries in per capita GDP can be predicted by human resources plus business climate (i.e., institutions and policies). Statistical analysis of North Korean trade underscores the point. In 2010 the DPRK’s global trade was only 1/20th of what we would expect for a country with its estimated human resources profile. However, when business climate is considered, North Korea no longer looks like an outlier at all.

In 1970 North Korea apparently did a better job than China or Vietnam of converting human resources into economic output. But those two countries would pursue “reform socialist” policies, including freeing up agriculture, encouraging private enterprise and promoting international trade. North Korea went in the opposite direction, shifting to a permanent war-footing economy, systematically eradicating the consumer sector, and repeatedly confiscating any outstanding cash in private hands through “currency reforms.” Simply put: Any economy that embraced the same disastrous rules as the DPRK should be expected to trace out a similar trajectory of economic failure.

There is one final, and particularly bitter, piece in the puzzle: the role of foreign aid in financing and ultimately facilitating North Korea’s ruin. Mirror statistics reveal that the DPRK has never been self-supporting. To the contrary, it has relied on a perennial inflow of foreign resources to sustain itself. Since 1960, North Korea has reportedly received more than $60 billion (in today’s dollars) more merchandise from abroad than it has shipped overseas. Nearly $45 billion of that came from Beijing and Moscow—a figure we can treat as a rough approximation of total Chinese and Soviet/Russian financial support.

Why didn’t these massive transfers result in any appreciable measure of long-term economic advancement? The work of economists Craig Burnside, David Dollar and Lant Pritchett, published in the late 1990s under the aegis of the World Bank, suggests an answer: Aid can have a negative effect on growth when a recipient state has a bad business climate, because foreign subsidies allow the regime, in the short term, to escape the consequences of its misrule. In such cases, the greater the volume of aid, the bigger the harm.

Unfortunately, North Korea’s horrific economic performance was enabled in part by leaders abroad who sent billions of dollars to Pyongyang. Those resources allowed the Kim dynasty to continue policies so patently destructive that they would have been forced to cease, or at least to moderate, them absent subsidy from overseas.

International aid workers and humanitarian policy makers have always feared that foreign assistance, through cascading mishaps, might leave recipients poorer and worse off in the end. North Korea, bankrolled mainly by Moscow and Beijing, has gone further than any other modern state in turning this nightmare scenario into reality.

Read the full story here:
How North Korea Became the World’s Worst Economy
Nicholas Eberstadt
2015-12-29

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Korean-American Sharing Movement donates to the DPRK

Monday, December 28th, 2015

According to the Baptist Standard:

A Korean Texas Baptist minister delivered two tons of noodles, 10 solar panels, two diesel generators and other supplies to a hospital in North Korea between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Yoo Yoon, director of the Korean-American Sharing Movement of Dallas, also took 350 pairs of winter socks, two freezers, six pairs of tractor tires and three sewing machines to three schools for orphans in Kwangwon province.

Yoon has traveled to North Korea more than two-dozen times in the last 20 years, including four trips in 2015. He typically delivers corn and wheat noodles to schools, orphanages and hospitals. Donors have included Texas Baptist Men and several Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated churches, and Baylor Scott & White Health has contributed medical equipment.

In September, the North Korean government denied Yoon permission to distribute food to orphans, due to a change in policy. However, he provided food for the hospital on his most recent trip, and he brought other supplies to the medical center and the schools for orphans.

“I have learned to adjust myself to whatever circumstances through 20 years of North Korea missions,” said Yoon, former Korean field consultant with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

In September 2014, his daughter, Sara Yoon, an ophthalmologist, examined patients and consulted with doctors at the hospital in Wonsan City. On the most recent trip to North Korea, her father delivered batteries and bulbs for scopes and other equipment she purchased for the hospital’s ophthalmology department. He also distributed Christmas presents at the hospital.

“The Lord led me to tell them what Christmas is,” Yoon recalled. “So, I handed out 62 Christmas gifts to 62 people, letting them know it is a season of accepting a gift, since God sent his Son to forgive our sins.”

Read the full story here:
Texas Baptist delivers food and equipment to North Korean hospital
Baptist Standard
Ken Camp
2015-12-28

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South Koreans donate to DPRK

Tuesday, October 27th, 2015

According to Yonhap:

A South Korean civilian group crossed the inter-Korean border Tuesday to provide fertilizer and other assistance needed for a greenhouse project in North Korea, relevant company officials said.

Representatives from Ace Gyeongam, the foundation run by bed maker Ace, visited North Korea for the first time in six months earlier in the day to deliver items necessary for running greenhouses in Sariwon, about 70 kilometers southeast of Pyongyang, according to the officials.

“Most of the materials are greenhouse-related ones. The portion of fertilizer is small,” said an official at the Unification Ministry, which approved their visit to the North.

In April, Ace Gyeongam provided materials worth 200 million won (US$177,120), including fertilizer, vinyl and pipes that are needed to build greenhouses.

At that time, the South’s government approved a private group’s bid to send fertilizer to North Korea for the first time since it imposed sanctions on the North over a deadly warship sinking in 2010.

Seoul has vowed to encourage more civilian groups to increase humanitarian aid to the North this year in inter-Korean exchanges in non-political sectors.

South and North Korea reached a deal on Aug. 25 to defuse military tension and spur more exchanges at the non-government level.

In 2009, Ace Gyeongam set up 50 greenhouses on farms in Sariwon with an aim to increase the number to 300 units in the near future.

Read the full story here:
S. Korean civilian group gives fertilizer, other aid to N. Korea
Yonhap
2015-10-27

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World Food Program cuts aid to DPRK

Thursday, October 1st, 2015

According to Voice of America:

The U.N. food aid agency said Thursday that its aid to North Korea’s vulnerable people dropped 44 percent last month because of a lack of funds.

A World Food Program spokesman said the organization in September provided 2,105 tons of food to 742,000 people who depend on external assistance, including pregnant women and children.

Last month’s amount was also significantly less than what the U.N. agency planned to provide. The agency’s goal was to provide 10,000 tons of food to 1.8 million people every month.

Recently, the agency scaled down distribution areas to 69 counties and cities across the country.

“The main reason for distributing less food in September was insufficient funding resources,” wrote Damian Kean, WFP’s regional communications officer, in an email to VOA.

To fund projects this year, the agency needs about $167.8 million, but it has secured only half of the amount so far, according to the agency’s website.

The food aid cut came as the communist country has been reducing food rations. Last month, North Korea distributed an average of 250 grams of daily rations per person, a 21 percent decline from a three-year average, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. The figure was less than half of the minimum amount recommended by the U.N. FAO officials blamed poor crop production caused by drought for the cut.

Experts warn that North Korea could face further food shortages next year.

“North Korea has not imported enough food this year, nor did it get significant aid,” said Kwon Tae-jin, an economic analyst in Seoul who specializes in North Korea’s agriculture.

The FAO said North Korea needs 421,000 tons of food from the outside world by the end of the month to feed its citizens this year.

Read the full story here:
Cash-strapped World Food Program Cuts Aid to N. Korea
VOA
Kim Hyunjin
2015-10-1

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The Political Prestige of North Korea’s Economic Reforms, and why it may be a Problem

Monday, September 28th, 2015

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

This certainly has been the season of contradictory information on North Korea’s food supply. The North Korean government is celebrating and claiming success of their agricultural reforms, while the FAO reports that things have gotten worse. Let us recap what has happened:

First there was the drought. North Korean state media described it as the worst one in 100 years. UN agencies predicted large-scale crop failures and appealed for food aid, warning that large shares of the population would be at great risk if aid did not come. The UN’s emergency response fund (CERF) allocated $6.3 million to counter the impacts of the drought. The rains came, however, and the drought alarms seemed to have been exaggerated.

Next, the North Korean media – assuming you can even talk about it as a single, coordinated entity – went the other direction. In July, the weekly Tongil Sinbo claimed that thanks to agricultural reforms, this year’s harvest had actually increased “despite adverse weather conditions”.

And recently, reports turned the other way again. In early September, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN declared that the cereal production forecast for the main season of 2015 had declined drastically from last year due to a “prolonged dry spell”.

The rain that eventually came in July and August, causing flooding in the northern parts of the country and leading to an estimated loss of one percent of all planted areas. The FAO rice production forecast for 2015 is 12 percent below that of last year. State food rations, the importance of which can be debated, declined drastically, according to the agency.

In the midst of all of this, North Korean propaganda is still claiming success for the reforms. Earlier this month, the state news agency KCNA reported that a “dance party” had been held in South Hwanghae, part of the country’s rice bowl, celebrating improving conditions on the countryside:

The performers presented cheerful dances depicting the happy agricultural workers who work and live in the rural areas now turning into a good place to work and live thanks to the successful embodiment of the socialist rural theses under the leadership of the Workers’ Party of Korea.

The picture gets even more complicated if one assigns meaning to the fact that cereal imports from China were reportedly lower in July this year compared to 2014. Figures from just one month might not indicate a trend, but given that July was a particularly dire month, these figures are still significant. If imports are being decreased because the official line is that agricultural conditions have improved, no matter the reality, that might be bad news for those in the North Korean public that rely on the public distribution system for any significant part of their consumption.

Either the FAO is right and the North Korean government wrong, or the other way around. Harvests this season cannot have been improving and getting worse at the same time. The FAO is probably far more likely than the North Korean government to have made a correct assessment here. Even if North Korean authorities aren’t claiming success of the reforms for propaganda reasons – which they may well be doing – it is hard to see why their statistical and monitoring capabilities would be better than those of the FAO.

So, the North Korean government is claiming that agricultural reforms are leading to better harvests and food conditions, even when they probably aren’t. Why would they do that? There are lots of possible reasons and one can only speculate.

One possible reason is that the agricultural reforms have become a prestige project. North Korean propaganda channels and news outlets have publically claimed that reforms are being implemented and leading to good results, even though some adjustment problems have been admitted. The same pattern, by the way, can be seen with regards to forestry policies – state media has publicized them with a bang and claimed that they just aren’t being implemented well enough by people on the ground when they don’t seem to be working as intended.

This could be an indication that agricultural reforms are indeed, like many have assumed, a major policy project of Kim Jong-un and the top strata.

That could be good news. After all, North Korea is in dire need of changes in agricultural structures, production methods, ownership and responsibility.

But it could also be bad news. When policies are strongly sanctioned and pushed by the top, their flexibility is likely to be inhibited. In other words, if the top leadership says that something should get done, it has to get done regardless of whether it works well or not.

Again, look at the forestry policies. According to reports from inside the country, those tasked with putting the new policies into practice on the ground say that doing what the central government asks isn’t smart or possible. Nevertheless, such orders are hard and risky to question.

At this stage it is only speculation, which is always a risky endeavor when it comes to North Korea. It may well later turn out to be wrong.

But if the state is placing enough prestige in the agricultural reforms to claim that conditions are improving even if they aren’t, that may lead to limited flexibility in how they are implemented and changed in the future. In other words, if the leadership thinks they are important enough to claim success even when things are getting worse, they may not be prone to changing their orders to fix what isn’t working.

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The drought that didn’t matter, North Korea says – thanks to agricultural reform?

Monday, August 10th, 2015

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

During the past few months, the World Food Program (WFP) has made reoccurring pleas for increased food assistance to North Korea to alleviate the food shortages expected from a severe summer drought. The North Korean government made similar statements and claimed that the drought was the worst one to occur in 100 years. Aid to the country was subsequently increased from the originally planned level, due to the drought. But now, one North Korean official is saying that food production ended up increasing, after all, thanks to agricultural reforms.

A recent brief by the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University (IFES) cites a July issue of Tongil Sinbo, a North Korean state-run weekly newspaper. There, Chi Myong Su, director of the Agricultural Research Institute of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the country, says that

“the effectiveness of field management system (pojon) from cooperative farm production unit system (bunjo) is noticeable and succeeded in increasing grain production despite the adverse weather conditions.”

The article cited by IFES highlights the smaller work-team structure as key to the success of the reforms. Also, it almost outright states that greater economic incentives were the main factor (although they call it “enthusiasm” and “patriotism”):

“Despite the adverse weather conditions last year, the high grain yield was possible due to implementation of scientific farming methods and field management system to increase enthusiasm of farmers,” and “based on this experience, many cooperative farms across the country will expand subworkteam management system to field management system.”

This is interesting for several reasons.

First, the agricultural reforms seem increasingly pronounced. Though other reforms were reportedly backtracked earlier this year, the government seems eager to claim success for the road travelled in agriculture.

I have written elsewhere that the data doesn’t necessarily support a claim that reforms are working. There is still reason to be skeptical – after all, a North Korean government official claiming that his government’s policies are working is not surprising – but even the claim itself is interesting.

Second, the statement raises questions about monitoring and data gathering capacities, both of the regime and relief organizations in Pyongyang. Again, just a few months ago, alarm bells were ringing about a potential food shortage, and now, a regime official claims that food production has increased. What was the basis of the WFP and regime claims that a food shortage was imminent a few months ago, and what has changed since those claims were made?

Another recent IFES brief also deals with North Korean press reports about the agricultural reforms. It quotes a Rodong Sinmun article from earlier in the summer that brings up some adjustment problems that farmers have had, such as learning how to properly use fertilizers. The most interesting part in my opinion is the following:

The newspaper stressed that “when all farmers claim ownership of their field and subworkteam, one can create innovation in the farming operations.”

Thus, it seems like Pyongyang wants to encourage experimentation and diversity in production methods. This would be a potentially important step towards more efficient agriculture. Perhaps it is part of a pattern. Provinces have reportedly gotten significant leeway in setting up their respective special economic development zones, which could also be a way to encourage experimentation in policies and management methods.

According to the Tongil Sinbo article, reforms are set to expand further in the country given the alleged success. Perhaps it won’t be too long before we can learn more about them through assessments by multilateral organizations like WFP.

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Humanitarian aid to DPRK almost flat on-year in H1 2015

Wednesday, July 1st, 2015

According to Yonhap:

The growth of humanitarian aid sent to North Korea stayed almost flat in the first half from a year earlier, a U.N. agency said Wednesday, raising concerns about food shortages in the North.

The global community’s humanitarian assistance to the North amounted to a combined US$21.3 million in the January-June period, compared to $20.6 million in the same period last year, according to data compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

But the figure in the first half marked a 40 percent decline when compared to $35.6 million in the first half of 2013, it showed.

The U.N. and six countries — South Korea, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, France and Germany — supplied humanitarian aid to Pyongyang this year.

Switzerland was the top donor with $9.17 million, or 43 percent of the total aid, followed by South Korea with $4 million and Sweden with $3.23 million, the data showed.

By type, food and nutrition aid topped the list with $9.64 million worth contributed, followed by healthcare work at $6.2 million, and the supply of drinking water at $2.4 million, it said.

A separate U.N. report showed that about 70 percent of North Korea’s 24.6 million people are suffering due to food shortages and 1.8 million, including children and pregnant women, are in need of nutritional food supplies aimed at fighting malnutrition.

Aid from China and Russia would not appear in this study.

Read the full story here:
Humanitarian aid to N. Korea almost flat on-year in H1
Yonhap
2015-7-1

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DPRK-China trade in 2014

Monday, January 26th, 2015

According to Yonhap, DPRK-China trade drops slightly in 2014:

North Korea’s annual trade with its economic lifeline, China, fell 2.4 percent from a year ago in 2014, marking the first decline since 2009, data compiled by South Korea’s government trade agency showed Monday.

North Korea’s trade with China totaled US$6.39 billion last year, compared with $6.54 billion in 2013, according to the data provided by the Beijing unit of South’s Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA).

The annual trade figures between North Korea and China provided a fresh sign that strained political ties between the two nations have affected their economic relations.

At least on paper, there were also no shipments of crude oil from China to North Korea for all of last year.

A South Korean diplomatic source with knowledge of the matter, however, cautioned against reading too much into the official trade figures because China has provided crude oil to North Korea in the form of grant aid and such shipments were not recorded on paper.

Here is coverage in the Daily NK.

I have been unable to locate the KOTRA report, but the Choson Ilbo adds this:

China’s exports to the North were down 3.1 percent on-year and its imports from the North 1.5 percent, the diplomatic source in Beijing said quoting Chinese trade statistics.

Yonhap followed up with this from a Chinese foreign ministry press briefing:

Asked about the official absence of crude oil delivery to North Korea, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, referred the question to “competent authorities.”

“You mentioned a specific issue concerning trade between China and North Korea. I would like to refer you to competent authorities,” Hua told reporters during a regular press briefing.

“But, I want to highlight that the economic cooperation and trade between China and North Korea are normal,” Hua said.

Yonhap also provided the following information on oil shipments from China to the DPRK:

In previous years, China’s official shipments of crude oil to North Korea had been absent for several months, particularly after the North’s nuclear tests. However, it was extremely unusual that, at least on paper, China sold no crude oil to North Korea for all of last year.

In 2014, China’s exports of petroleum products to North Korea jumped 48.22 percent from a year earlier to US$1.54 million, according to the data based on Chinese trade statistics and compiled by the Beijing unit of South’s Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency.

“Although final statistics show that China’s exports of crude oil to North Korea were counted as ‘zero’ in 2014, experts suggest that the possibility of China’s suspension of crude oil exports to North Korea remains low,” the agency said in a statement.

South Korean diplomatic sources in Beijing have also cautioned against reading too much into the official Chinese trade figures because China has provided crude oil to North Korea in the form of grant aid and such shipments were not recorded on paper.

There has been no clear indication that the 2014 trade figures reflect China’s willingness to use crude oil as leverage to press North Korea to change course in its nuclear ambition.

Yonhap (via Korea Times) also reports that anthracite exports to China are down in 2014:

North Korea’s exports of anthracite to China tumbled nearly 18 percent in 2014 from the previous year, the first annual drop in eight years, data showed Friday.

North Korea exported US$1.13 billion worth of anthracite to China last year, down 17.6 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the Korea International Trade Association.

It was the first on-year decline in North Korea’s anthracite exports to China since 2006.

The volume of anthracite exports also decreased 6.4 percent on-year to 15.43 million tons last year, according to the KITA.

Despite the drop, anthracite accounted for 39.8 percent of North Korea’s total exports to China in 2014.

According to the data, North Korea’s exports of iron ore to China plunged 25.7 percent on-year to $218.6 million last year, the smallest amount since 2010.

For lots more data on the DPRK’s international trade, see also these eight great posts:
1. North Korea-China Trade Update: Coal Retreats, Textiles Surge
2. How Has the Commodity Bust Affected North Korea’s Trade Balance? (Part 1)
3. How Has the Commodity Bust Affected North Korea’s Trade Balance? (Part 2)
4. Nicholas Eberstadt’s “Dependencia, North Korea Style” (I would have gone with “Our Style Dependencia”)
5. NK News on coal shipments in 2014.
6. Radio Free Asia on coal shipments.
7. N. Korea’s smartphone imports from China hit record
8. China’s exports of jet fuel to N. Korea rebounds in 2014

Read the full story here:
N. Korea’s 2014 trade with China marks 1st drop in 5 years
Yonhap
2015-1-26

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