North Korean Economy Watch

Pictured above (Google Earth): locations of the reported protests in North Pyongan along the Beijing-Pyongyang railway line (blue)

This week several stories came out alleging multiple protests in North Pyongan Province (평안북도)  over economic conditions.  The cities affected were Sinuiju (신의주),  Ryongchon (Yongchon 룡천), Sonchon (선천), and Jongju (정주).

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Small pockets of unrest are appearing in North Korea as the repressive regime staggers under international sanctions and the fallout from a botched currency reform, sources say. On Feb. 14, two days before leader Kim Jong-il’s birthday, scores of people in Jongju, Yongchon and Sonchon in North Pyongan Province caused a commotion, shouting, “Give us fire [electricity] and rice! ”

A North Korean source said people fashioned makeshift megaphones out of newspapers and shouted, “We can’t live! Give us fire! Give us rice!” “At first, there were only one or two people, but as time went by more and more came out of their houses and joined in the shouting,” the source added.

The State Security Department investigated this incident but failed to identify the people who started the commotion when they met with a wall of silence.

“When such an incident took place in the past, people used to report their neighbors to the security forces, but now they’re covering for each other,” the source said.

The commotion started because the North Korean regime had diverted sparse electricity from the Jongju and Yongchon area to Pyongyang to light up the night there to mark Kim’s birthday on Feb. 16.

“Discontent erupted because the regime cut off electricity that had been supplied to them only a few hours a day, and they had hard time putting food on the table due to soaring rice prices.”

A North Korean defector said the Jongju and Yongchon area “has long been a headache to the regime due to the spirit of defiance of the people there.”

In a separate story reported by the Choson Ilbo, it appears that a protest in Sinuiju was launched several days later by market traders who were being harassed by officials.

(UPDATE) The Daily NK reports that the skirmishes were fairly minor:

A news report about a protest supposedly involving a few hundred citizens in Sinuiju on the 18th, released by a South Korean newspaper on the 23rd, appears to have been highly exaggerated. It was just an argument over stall fees between traders and market managers, sources say.

The commotion revealed by a domestic South Korean newspaper occurred at Chinseon Market near Sinuiju Stadium, where a number of fabric and shoe factories are located. The disagreement was triggered by a notice stating that fees would double from 4,000 to 8,000 won a month, or 400 won a day. At current prices, the new stall fee is enough to buy corn to feed a North Korean adult for more than two weeks.

When a member of market management insisted that traders had to follow the regulations unconditionally as an order handed down by the municipal commercial management office, some got so angry that they threw trash at the manager, shouting that it was too much to take and asserting that illegal grasshopper trading, meaning without a permanent stall in the legal market, trading in nearby alleyways illegally while avoiding the eyes of community watch guards or People’s Safety Ministry agents, would be better for them.

Eventually, ten or so agents from a PSM strike force were able to calm them down. Nevertheless, during the incident other traders came along to watch the commotion, so in the end over a hundred of people were gathered in the one area.

After around 30 minutes of complaint, the traders were finally dispersed. Some got hurt during fights with market managers, but there were no serious casualties. Additionally, there was no military presence.

The source explained, “Since market managers are not members of law enforcement, traders were able to grab them irately by the collar and shout at them for raising the fees.”

“Commotions like this are common,” he went on, “so there is no serious uneasiness about it,” and went on, “in addition; community watch guards kicking grasshoppers out of alley markets, then them going back there and trading again is a daily routine. Therefore, physical fights are really common between traders, community watch guards and market managers.”

Finally, he noted, “In Shinuiju, it is generally calm,” and, regarding another report on cell phone usage which suggested that phones had been cut to avoid giving the people access to information on Middle East protests, said, “There is no evidence of that. People are still using cell phones.”

So don’t get your hopes up that this has anything to do with the situation in the Middle East (as some journalists seem to have done). According to Yonhap:

South Korea has not detected any signs of organized resistance in North Korea, although it believes that small-scale protests have sometimes occurred in the impoverished communist nation over economic woes, an official here said Thursday.

Some recent media reports, citing unidentified sources inside the North or defectors, have said North Koreans staged rare public demonstrations over food shortages, amid popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

“Although small-scale protests over livelihood have been reported since a botched currency reform, we have not observed any circumstances to be viewed as a collective demonstration there,” said the official at the Unification Ministry in charge of relations with North Korea.

Responding to questions about whether the wave of pro-democracy upheavals in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere would affect North Korea, the official said, “I think there would be no big impact in the short term.”

The New York Times also noted the difficulties of mounting social change in the DPRK:

“The gap between the elite and the rest of the country has probably never been wider,” said Mr. Everard, currently a fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. But at the same time, he added, “There’s no reason to expect things to change any time soon.”

The Communist regime in Pyongyang, analysts said, has no intention of relaxing its political grip or opening up its economy.

“Reforms mean death,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert and professor at Kookmin University in Seoul. “It’s a matter of survival and control.

“The leadership wouldn’t mind economic development,” he said. “Look, they’re rational. They want modernity. They’re not fundamentalists looking to Paradise and expecting 72 virgins to be waiting for them.

“But reforms? No.”

Indeed, the word “reform” — kaehyuk in Korean — has never been used in the official North Korean economic literature, according to Changyong Choi, a research fellow in social science at Syracuse University in New York State who has studied the topic. Instead, policy changes are known as “adjustments,” and the result is called “pragmatic socialism.”

Recent refugees, scholars of North Korea and South Korean government officials see no signs that the economic hardships are pointing toward political instability. They see no existential threat to Kim Jong-il and his regime, whether through civil unrest, political factionalism or a military revolt.

Regime change, as tantalizing as it might be to Seoul and Washington, seems remote. Mr. Kim looks to be in passably good health. And the apprenticeship of his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, appears to be under way, albeit slowly and quietly.

Ordinary North Koreans certainly struggle to eke out a living, but they are not starving. And the situation is nothing at all like the so-called Arduous March famine of the mid-1990s. More than a million North Koreans reportedly died from starvation then when aid from Russia stopped, crops failed and the socialist system of food allotments fell apart.

Even at that level of hunger and horror, there was no profound, collective unrest. “The people who kept waiting for their government rations to come, they just died quietly,” said John S. Park, director of the Korea Working Group at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington.

The New York Times has more here.

Andray Abrahamian has more in 38 North.

UPDATE 3 (2/23/2011): According to Yonhap:

A recent survey of North Korean defectors in South Korea showed Wednesday that a large number of them use part of their resettlement money from the government here to help their families in the North.

In the survey conducted in November by the Organization for One Korea, a group run by unification activists, 71 percent of 350 respondents said they have sent money back to the communist country before. About 66 percent of the cash remitters said that they used part of their money received from the South Korean government.

In an effort to buffer the initial costs of resettlement, the government here provides each defector with a subsidy of 6 million won (US$5,330) and partly finances their housing.

More than 20,000 North Korean defectors have arrived in South Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce. The number does not account for the estimated tens of thousands hiding in China.

According to the survey that had a margin of error of 3.59 percentage points, about half of the cash remitters said brokers took away 30 percent of their money sent to the North as a fee, while only 65 percent believed the remainder was entirely delivered.

North Korean defectors are 17 times likelier to depend on government allowances, according to the Unification Ministry. Over 50 percent of defectors depend on a universal welfare program that pays them about 400,000 won (US$355) a month.

Defections began to accelerate after a massive famine swept through North Korea in the mid-1990s, killing an estimated 2 million people. North Korea considers defectors criminals punishable even by death.

Read previous recent stories about remittances below.
Read the rest of this entry »

This week there were numerous stories about the DPRK’s drilling operations at Punggye-ri (풍계리) in Kilju County (길주군) which was taken as a signal that the DPRK is preparing for a third nuclear test.  According to the Donga Ilbo:

North Korea has reportedly drilled several underground tunnels at it nuclear test site in the village of Punggye-ri, North Hamgyong Province, apparently for its third nuclear test.

A South Korean government source said Sunday that the North has dug at least three tunnels in Punggye-ri since last winter and that the sites are under close surveillance by South Korean and U.S. intelligence. Pyongyang conducted nuclear tests in Punggye-ri in October 2006 and May 2009.

According to intelligence, the depth of the L-shaped underground tunnels is estimated at 500 meters to 1 kilometer, and North Korea excavated tunnels simultaneously to select the best location and depth.

Another source said the North has been preparing for another nuclear test in Punggye-ri since last winter and irritated the U.S. by intentionally showing busy activity on clear days so that U.S. reconnaissance satellites would capture the scene.

The latter statement rings true to me. I posted satellite images of this site in November 2010 when the DPRK last made a scene by drilling at the sensitive location.  You can see those pictures here.

Here is additional coverage in Yonhap.

Read the full sotry in the Donga Ilbo here:
North Korea preparing for 3rd nuclear test: source
Donga Ilbo
2/21/2011

According to the Korea Times:

Dr. Stephen Linton, founder of the Eugene Bell Foundation, says his group’s program to combat multidrug resistant TB (MDRTB) has cured its first patients after four years of working to establish adequate care in the North.

“We’re making progress,” Linton, 60, said in a phone interview. “It has been a tremendous learning curve for the North Koreans on a very short time frame. It takes most nations decades to put together a good MDRTB program because the treatment is so intensive.”

A growing health concern worldwide, MDRTB emerges when regular TB is inadequately treated, creating bacteria resistant to first- and sometimes second-line drugs. Half of those who do not get treatment, which can take up to two years to complete, die.

The problem is compounded in poor countries not properly equipped to diagnose the disease and where malnutrition makes the body more susceptible to TB.

The organization’s hopeful outlook follows its most recent trip to the North in November last year, when it found a steadily-increasing rate of patients testing negative for the strain ― meaning they are no longer infective.

It also comes as the international community wrestles with how to help the impoverished country ― which has called in recent weeks for humanitarian assistance ― without supporting its provocative behavior.

In the case of treating MDRTB, the doctor says the breakthrough would be impossible without meaningful contributions on both sides of the tense border that divides the Koreas.

Powerful medicine

By 2007, Linton had been travelling to the North to treat TB for more than a decade, so he was braced for the news when caregivers complained that first-line drugs were not helping some patients.

“I knew it was going to be a real headache,” he said of the undertaking. “But the commitment of our donors and the desire to treat the people in most need ― that was a powerful incentive.”

Later that year, Linton and his team took sputum from 19 patients, brought the samples to a South Korean hospital for analysis, and returned six months later with medicine. On subsequent trips, the number of patients wanting the test grew.

By 2009, as an indication of the worsening health situation but also the growing trust in the program, Eugene Bell was overwhelmed by crowds of people at its testing centers.

The program now accommodates upwards of six hundred patients at six specialized centers across the country’s northwest.

Linton, who spent his childhood in South Korea, says the process requires significant “buy-in” from North Koreans, beginning with the health authorities.

In their biggest show of cooperation, the government agreed to Eugene Bell’s recommendation that treatment take place in centrally-located MDRTB centers, despite reluctance over the logistics.

It also needs the dedication of health care providers, who must vigilantly keep patients on their programs. If not, they can become resistant to MDRTB medications, opening the door for the emergence of XDRTB, which Linton calls “virtually incurable.”

But the biggest commitment comes from patients, who are prescribed with a harsh cocktail of drugs. Some need to learn to trust outside help, not always an easy task in the isolated country.

“This is a very rigorous and rough treatment program. It takes a lot of very strong, toxic medicines to treat MDRTB. Patients suffer a good bit,” said Linton, who counted nausea, vomiting, temporary deafness and psychosis as side effects.

If after eighteen months, a patient’s sputum tests negative for MDRTB, they are effectively cured. But if after a year they still test positive, the treatment is considered a failure.

“Most of those people know, because they are still coughing up phlegm,” the doctor said. “But failing people is terrible. This work can be very dramatic at times.”

You can read previous posts about the Eugene Bell Foundation here.

UPDATE: On February 24th the Korea Economic Institute held a conference with Dr. Sharon Perry, DPRK Tuberculosis Project, Stanford School of Medicine.  You can see the video of the conference here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. The paper is here (PDF).

Read the full sotry here:
Aid group engages N. Korea in fight against TB
Korea Times
Kim Joung-jin
2/21/2011

UPDATE 1 (2/21/2011): The Korea Times has published a more recent (though lower resolution) image of Pyongyang and Nampho buried in snow–along with some information on the implications of the weather on the DPRK’s infrastructure.

According to the Korea Times:

Images obtained by the Korea Center for Atmospheric Environment Research (KCAER) show that a significant portion of the coast of (North) Korea Bay, located in the north part of the West Sea, has frozen over. The bay is also choked by abnormal amounts of drift ice.

The lower portion of the Daedong River, which flows into the bay, has turned into ice almost up to Nampo, the site of the country’s major harbor.

“Transportation of goods to Nampo Harbor has likely been extremely impeded for more than 45 days,” Chung Yong-seung, a KCAER expert, said in an email. “They could go to the Wonsan Port (in the southeast) instead, but it’s highly likely that sea transportation has been difficult.”

Further north, a significant portion of the Cheongcheon River appears to have been covered by thick ice.

According to KCAER, there has been less arctic ice worldwide this winter than in the past. But cold arctic air moved south, bringing a cold snap to many parts of the region and the rare freeze in Korea Bay.

The research center predicted that warmer air and water will flow into the bay in about 10 days, causing the ice to float away or melt.

The North’s state media reported last month that temperatures in December and January had been markedly colder than usual, causing hardship for “the people’s lives.”

South Korean humanitarian aid groups that maintain contact with the North said the harsh conditions had severely compounded existing malnutrition and shelter problems.

Pyongyang has reportedly stepped up its calls for aid from the international community in recent weeks amid what the aid groups consider a worsening humanitarian situation.

ORIGINAL POST (2/1/2011): DPRK experiencing record low temperatures

Image source: NASA

According to Yonhap:

The longest cold spell in six decades has hit North Korea, a report said Tuesday, allowing people to walk across the frozen river in Pyongyang while causing farmers to worry about their crop production this year.

Frozen along with the landmark Taedong River were ports on the west coast close to the capital, said the Chosun Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper that has correspondents in the communist country but is published in Japan.

The temperature in North Korea stayed below the freezing point for 40 consecutive days this winter, a phenomenon only surpassed by a 62-day streak in 1945, the paper said, citing a North Korean meteorologist.

“Even last year’s winter, which had already been colder than before, did not freeze the Taedong River this completely,” the Chosun Sinbo said. “People are now walking across the Taedong river in the heart of the city.”

The chill has frozen soil up to 42 centimeters below, 10 cm deeper than last year, the paper said. The freeze may cause a delay in the plowing season, making farming more difficult although it does have the benefit of freezing harmful insects to death, it said.

“At present, a wave of phone calls are being made by workers in the fields of agriculture and city construction” to the local weather agency with concerns, the paper said.

South Korea also suffered a prolonged cold spell this year with temperatures even in the usually warmer southern regions dropping to their lowest levels in decades. Heavy snowfall and high waves also disrupted ground and sea traffic in those regions.

Ryu Ki-yeol, the North Korean scientist cited by the Chosun Sinbo, cited a difference in pressure at the highest latitudes known as the Artic Oscillation as the cause of the prolonged cold spell.

Read the full stories here:
N. Korea gripped by longest cold snap in decades: report
Yonhap
Sam Kim
2/1/2011

Deep freeze hits N. Korea’s west coast
Korea Times
Kim Young-jin
2/21/2011

UPDATE 4 (2/20/2011): Kim Tong-un (김동은) named Kim Jong-il’s fund manager.  According to Yonhap:

A senior official of North Korea’s ruling party has been named to lead a special party bureau, code-named Office 38, that oversees coffers and raises slush funds for its leader Kim Jong-il and the ruling elites, a source on North Korea said Sunday.

Kim Tong-un, formerly head of Office 39 in the Workers’ Party of Korea, assumed the post in May last year, when North Korea revived Office 38, which was merged with Office 39 in 2009, the source said on condition of anonymity. Office 39 is believed to be another organ that governs a wide network of business operations both legal and illegal.

Both Offices 38 and 39 belong to the Secretariat of the Workers’ Party, which Kim Jong-il chairs, according to a diagram of the North’s power structure released by the Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs. Last year, the ministry had only included Office 39 in a similar diagram.

In a meeting with reporters last week, a ministry official said Office 38 has been spun off from Office 39 and is now running on its own again. The official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity citing the sensitive nature of his comments, described “a stream of information” that has come through since mid-2010.

Office 38 mainly oversees transactions involving foreign currency, hotels and trade, the official said, while Office 39, headed by Jon Il-chun, drives revenue by dealing in narcotics, arms, natural resources and others.

The North’s revival of Office 38 is interpreted as an effort to cover the increasing cost of leader Kim Jong-il’s ceding of power to his youngest son, Jong-un.

The story was also reported in Yonhap.

UPDATE 3: Here are links to the Ministry of Unification‘s English language organization charts of the North Korean leadership in which some of the changes mentioned below are listed (though not all): Workers’ Party, State Organs, Parties and Organizations

UPDATE (2/15/2011): According to the Daily NK:

The number of Special Departments under the Secretariat of the Chosun Workers’ Party has been increased from 18 to 20, a move that includes the revival of the No. 38 Department, which previously served as Kim Jong Il’s private bank vault, and the foundation of a film department.

The Ministry of Unification revealed the news yesterday in its 2011 North Korean Power Structure and Index of Figures, Agencies and Organizations. It incorporates North Korean changes from December, 2009 up to the present day, completed after consultation with relevant agencies and experts.

The revival of the No. 38 Department and founding of a film department

The report states, “The No. 38 Department, which was merged with the No. 39 Department in 2009, was spun off again last year. Kang Neung Su, who was appointed Deputy Prime Minister in June of 2010, was introduced as head of the film department at the same time. The exact foundation date of the film department is unknown; however, it appears to be newly established.”

No. 38 and No. 39 Departments are directly controlled by Kim Jong Il and serve as a private vault for his ruling funds. The No. 38 Department manages hotels, foreign currency stores and restaurants etc, while illegal weapons trading through foreign trade companies, the smuggling of gold, illegal trade in drugs and the distribution of counterfeit dollars, so-called supernotes, are handled by the No. 39 Department.

“They combined two offices which had different functions, and it appears that this did not result in the intended efficiency,” a knowledgeable source commented.

Meanwhile, on the establishment of a film department, the source added, “North Korea’s cultural art is a political means by which to carry out Party policy and a policy tool to implant policy in the North Korean citizens.”

Among the reshuffled special departments, the existing ‘Munitions Industry Department’ has been renamed the ‘Machine Industry Department’, and the ‘Administration and Capital Construction Department’ has been scaled back to simply ‘Administration Department’.

Elsewhere, the existing National Resources Development and Guidance Department under the Ministry of Extractive Industries has been promoted to National Resources Development Council and, as reported, the Joint Investment Guidance Department rose to become the Joint Investment Committee, while the National Price Establishment Department became the National Price Establishment Committee. Again, as reported, the ‘People’s Safety Agency’ under the Cabinet became the People’s Safety Ministry under the National Defense Commission, while the Capital Construction Department was downsized to become the General Bureau of Capital Construction.

The Central Court and Central Prosecutors Office were also renamed the Supreme Court and Supreme Prosecutors Office respectively.

The Ministry of Unification report also notes that North Korea added Nampo City to its list of eleven cities and provinces, increasing the total number to twelve.

The newly designated Nampo City includes five former parts of South Pyongan Province; Gangseo, Daean, Oncheon, Yonggang, and Chollima districts. Previously, Nampo was under the direct control of the central government as part of South Pyongan Province proper.

At the same time, North Korea also transferred the existing Kangnam-gun, Joonghwa-gun, Sangwon-gun, and Seungho-district, all formerly southern sections of Pyongyang City, to North Hwanghae Province.

Military Commission placed under the Central Committee of the Party

The relationship of the Central Committee and Central Military Commission, which was formerly said to be in parallel, has been changed, reflecting the idea that the Military Commission is now under the Central Committee of the Party.

The Ministry of Unification commented, “By revising the Party regulations, the Central Military Commission and Central Committee were marked as parallel in 2009 and 2010. However, after confirming the revised Party regulations at the Chosun Workers’ Party Delegates’ Conference on September 28th last year, this relationship was adjusted, and an election is now held for the Central Military Commission via a plenary session of the Central Committee.”

Also, the ‘Bureau of General Staff’ under the National Defense Commission was judged to be below the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces, but is now shown to be in a parallel relationship with the Ministry of the People’s Armed Force and ‘General Political Department’.

ORIGINAL POST (2/14/2011): According to Yonhap:

North Korea has revived a special party bureau, codenamed Office 38, that oversees coffers and raises slush funds for its leader Kim Jong-il and the ruling elites, South Korea said Monday in its annual assessment of the power structure in the communist country.

In 2009, the bureau had been merged with Office 39, another organ that governs a wide network of business operations both legal and illegal, according to the Unification Ministry in Seoul.

In a meeting with reporters, however, a ministry official said Office 38 has been spun off from Office 39 and is now running on its own again. The official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity citing the intelligence nature of his comments, cited “a stream of information” that has come through since mid-2010.

The official would not elaborate on how the information has been obtained, only saying the ministry works closely with “related government bodies” to outline the North’s power structure.

Office 38, whose chief remains unknown, mainly oversees transactions involving foreign currency, hotels and trade, the official said, while Office 39, headed by Jon Il-chun, drives revenue by dealing in narcotics, arms, natural resources and others.

A source privy to North Korea matters said the spin-off suggests that North Korea has been experiencing difficulties in earning foreign currency since merging the two offices.

“Efficiency was probably compromised after the two, which have different functions, were combined,” the source said, declining to be identified citing the speculative nature of the topic. “More importantly, it seems related to the current state of foreign currency stocks. The North is apparently trying to address those difficulties.”

In August last year, the United States blacklisted Office 39 as one of several North Korean entities to newly come under sanctions for involvement in illegal deeds such as currency counterfeiting.

North Korea is also believed to have been hit hard financially after South Korea imposed a series of economic penalties last year on Pyongyang when the sinking of a warship was blamed on it.

Both Offices 38 and 39 belong to the Secretariat of the Workers’ Party, which Kim Jong-il chairs, according to a diagram of the North’s power structure released by the Unification Ministry. Last year, the ministry had only included Office 39 in a similar diagram.

Both offices have often been referred to as Kim Jong-il’s “personal safes” for their role in raising and managing secret funds and procuring luxury goods for the aging leader.

Read the full story here:
North Korea Splits No. 38 and 39 Departments Up Again
Daily NK
Kim So Yeol
2/15/2011

N. Korea revives ‘Office 38’ managing Kim Jong-il’s funds: ministry
Yonhap
Sam Kim
2/14/2011

According to Yonhap:

A Seoul court has for the first time granted refugee status to a Korean-Chinese in recognition of his efforts to help North Koreans defect to South Korea, citing the high possibility of persecution in his home country, the court said Sunday.

The Seoul Administrative Court judged as unlawful the justice ministry’s 2010 decision to dismiss the request of the Korean-Chinese man, identified only by his surname Kim, to receive refugee status.

The court said, “It is highly likely that Kim may be suspected of being politically opposed to the Chinese government’s North Korea defector policy, which would constitute persecution for political opinion.”

China’s laws impose punishment as severe as life imprisonment on those who help North Koreans defect from their country, and Kim could face arrest or incarceration if he returns to China, the court noted.

Under the United Nations’ convention, an expatriate can obtain refugee status from another country when the person cannot or is not willing to receive protection from his own country due to a fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion or particular political opinion.

According to the court, Kim, an ethnic Korean with Chinese nationality who has been living in South Korea since 2000, had provided food, residence and guidance to North Koreans who were staying in China and encouraged them to flee their communist home country from 1995-2000.

Kim applied for refugee status with Seoul’s Ministry of Justice last year after the legal duration of his sojourn in South Korea expired. He said he could not return to China for fear of persecution after learning that a person who had coordinated his assistance to North Koreans had been indicted, sentenced to death and killed.

The ministry dismissed Kim’s request last year, saying his aid to North Koreans was not politically motivated, prompting him to file for administrative litigation to overturn the ministry’s decision.

“The court made a very progressive ruling from a humanitarian point of view,” a lawyer representing Kim said. “So far diplomatic relations with China have made it difficult (for the court) to recognize Korean-Chinese as refugees,” he said.

Read the full sotry here:
Court grants refugee status to Korean-Chinese who helped North defectors
Yonhap
2/20/2011

Pictured above (Google Earth): the Pyongyang University of Dramatic and Cinematic Arts (평양연극영화대학: 39.017329°, 125.792912°)

Al Jazeera filmed a short documentary with some students at the Pyongyang University for Dramatic and Cinematic Arts.  This organization is tasked with training the country’s film actors.  According to Al Jazeera:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s love of film is well-documented, but few outsiders know that he is revered as a genius of cinema by his own people. On this episode of 101 East we gain a rare insight into the beating heart of North Korea’s film industry.

Watch the high quality video below (Youtube):

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No.11-02-18
2/18/2011

Despite the severed inter-Korean relations, Kaesong Industrial Complex related trade reached USD 1,442,860,000, surpassing last year’s figure (USD 940 million) by 53.4 percent.

Trade at Kaesong continuously rose since 2004, almost reaching USD 1 billion by 2009. Then it sharply jumped over the one billion mark last year in 2010.

A closer look at the numbers is as follows: 2004 (USD 41.69 million); 2005 (USD 176.74 million); 2006 (USD 298.79 million); 2007 (USD 440.68 million); 2008 (USD 884.40 million); 2009 (USD 940.55 million); 2010 (USD 1.44 billion).

This rise in trade brought the total trade figure up to USD 1.912 billion by 2010, an increase of 13.9 percent against last year’s total of USD 1.679 billion.

The number of total workers in North Korea reached 42,397 in March 2010, steadily increased to 44,958 in October, and reached 45,332 by November.

However, after the Cheonan incident, South Korea issued a suspension on inter-Korean trade, causing a drop in general trade and processing on commission.

General trade declined by 54 percent from 2009 to USD 117, 860, 000 while processing on commission was down by 22.5 percent to USD 317, 560, 000.

Consequently, the composition of the inter-Korean trade changed, contributing to the proportion of the trade in Kaesong to increase to 75.5 percent from 56 percent in 2009. General trade on the other hand, fell from 15.3 percent to 6.2 percent and processing on commission dropped from 24.4 percent to 16.6 percent from 2009.

In addition, commercial transactions — such as general trade and processing on commission — in Kaesong comprised 98.8 percent of total inter-Korean exchange while noncommercial activities like humanitarian assistance only reached 1.2 percent.

Also in 2010, a total of 13,119 South Koreans visited North Korea, which is an increase of 7.9 percent from the previous year (12,616 people). This is due to the rise in the number of people visiting the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

According to the Ministry of Unification, 94.5 percent (123,023) of the total visitors to the DPRK had involvement with the Kaesong Industrial Complex. This is an increase of 7.9 percent from 2009 (111,811 people).

In comparison, most of the noneconomic related visits to the DPRK declined since the Cheonan incident including socio-cultural exchanges and humanitarian assistance. With the implementation of the May 24 sanctions against North Korea, noneconomic related visitation to North Korea decreased 23 percent from 2,313 people to 1,773 from the previous year.

As far as I am aware this is the first use of Google Earth imagery on North Korean television.  Satellite images of Mt. Paektu (백두산) were used in a show about the revolutionary sites of Sobaeksu Valley (소백수골): Kim Jong-il’s official birthplace and a few other places.  The show was broadcast on North Korean television on February 16th, 2011 (Kim Jong-il’s official birthday). The imagery used is now dated, so we know this segment of the show was recorded before December 11, 2010.

Wouldn’t it be great if they told the North Korean people these images came from Kwangmyongsong 1 or 2?

I uploaded a clip of the show to Youtube.  You can see it here.

So how many North Koreans are using Google Earth?