North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Koryo Tours newsletter:

Koryo Tours has been officially informed by the Korea International Travel Company that Arirang Mass Gymnastics (Mass Games) will be performed from August 2nd throughout to October 10th, 2010. Mass Games can basically be described as a synchronized socialist-realist spectacular, featuring over 100,000 participants in a 90 minute display of gymnastics, dance, acrobatics, and dramatic performance, accompanied by music and other effects, all wrapped in a highly politicized package. Literally no other place on Earth has anything comparable and it has to be seen with your own two eyes to truly appreciate the scale on display.

Book your tour here.

See the group tours we offer during Mass Games.

You can choose your dates of travel, methods of entry and exit and also the itinerary can be tailored to suit your requests if you prefer to travel with an independent tour. Find more information here.

Preparations are visible on the streets of Pyongyang well in advance of the Mass Games with tens of thousands of gymnasts preparing their routines in the city’s open spaces and parks. The 2009 performance was entitled ‘Arirang’ based on a historic tragic love story but was adapted to represent the struggle of North Korea during the Japanese occupation and Korean War. Students practiced every day from January onwards. The 90 minute performance is held every evening at 7pm and features the ‘largest picture in the world’ a giant mosaic of individual students each holding a book whose pages links with their neighbours’ to make up one gigantic scene. When the students turn the pages the scene or individual elements of the scene change, up to 170 pages make up one book.

In 2003 we made our film on the Mass Games A State of Mind (Koryo Tours, VeryMuchSo productions and BBC4), The film has been broadcast unedited in both North and South Korea and in 2004 won the Pyongyang Film Festival Special Prize and best film music award as well as various international awards and is currently on worldwide release.

According to the Guardian Jobs web page:

Exciting opportunities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)

Employer: BRITISH COUNCIL
Posted: 06 May 2010
Reference: OA10002
Location: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)
Industry:  Charities – International, Education – TEFL, General – General
Hours: Full Time
Salary: £26,880 – £30,624

Exciting opportunities in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)

In-country Project Leader – £30,624

English Curriculum/Materials Developer/Trainer – £26,880

English Trainer – £26,880

Contract from August 2010 to August 2011 (with the possibility of extension to March 2012)

Benefits including free accommodation, pension provision, medical insurance and mid-contract flights to Beijing and the UK

The British Council is the United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. Our purpose is to build mutually beneficial relationships between people in the UK and other countries and increase appreciation for the UK’s creative ideas and achievements. We operate in 110 countries and territories worldwide.

The British Council/Foreign and Commonwealth Office English language project in the DPRK aims to deliver quality programmes in teacher/trainer training and to develop the curriculum and related materials as well as assessment systems at three leading institutions in Pyongyang. This high-profile project has been running since 2000, and we are now seeking three experienced English language teaching professionals to fill the above posts, which will be based at these institutions.

For all posts you will have: a diploma level qualification in TEFL (eg UCLES DTEFLA/Cambridge ESOL DELTA, Trinity College London Dip TESOL); a minimum of 3 years’ ELT and teacher training experience overseas; and experience of curriculum planning; and of materials development. It is desirable that you have experience of working in a ‘hardship’ environment.

Additionally:

English Trainer: will have experience of developing English assessments.

English Curriculum/Materials Developer/Trainer: it is desirable that you have experience of constructing English tests and of running CELTA/Trinity Certificate type courses.

In-country Project Leader post: will have experience of testing. It is desirable that you have an MA in Applied Linguistics (or equivalent); people and project management; teaching British Studies; English for specific purposes (ESP); and content and language integrated learning (CLIL).

Note: local restrictions mean that UK passport holders only can be considered for this post. This is an unaccompanied post, although in exceptional cases the DPRK authorities might agree to an accompanying spouse. Employment is subject to permission from the DPRK Ministries of Education and Foreign Affairs.

Closing date for applications: 12 noon, Monday 24 May 2010. Applications should be returned by e-mail.

For more information and an application pack, please visit: www.britishcouncil.org/new/about-us/working-with-us/current-vacancies or e-mail (quoting OA10002): OAS.vacancies@britishcouncil.org.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Korea on Sunday warned it will restrict or stop overland travel to the Kaesong Industrial Complex if South Korean activists send propaganda leaflets to the North. The North said it could limit travel “along the east and west coast” — the land routes used for tours to Mt. Kumgang and the Kaesong complex.

The head of a North Korean delegation to inter-Korean defense talks sent a letter to the South which read, “Despite our repeated requests, the South Korean government goaded and tacitly permitted activists to send propaganda leaflets that castigate our ideology and regime, small radios, US$1 bills and DVDs [via helium balloons] from May 1.”

A South Korean government official said this is the first time that North Korea clearly mentioned the possibility of shutting down the land route to the Kaesong complex. “It seems to be a preemptive action as we are reviewing sanctions against the North” following the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan and the seizure of South Korean property in Mt. Kumgang.

Additional Information
Pyongyang has previously used Kaesong as leverage over the RoK government to prevent activists from sending balloons across the DMZ.

The Kaesong Zone was previously “closed” to South Koreans during contentious wage negotiations.

According to Bloomberg:

China rejected North Korea’s request for aid at a meeting between Premier Wen Jiabao and Kim Jong Il, which may explain why Kim cut short his stay in Beijing, the Seoul-based JoongAng  Ilbo newspaper reported.

China can’t support North Korea beyond the framework of sanctions set by the United Nations Security Council, Wen told Kim at their meeting on May 6, the Korean-language daily said, citing an unnamed source in Beijing.

Kim made his first trip to China in four years amid speculation, denied by North Korea, that his regime may have been responsible for the March 26 sinking of a South Korean naval ship, which killed 46 sailors.

North Korea quit nuclear disarmament talks in April 2009 after UN condemnation of its test-firing of a ballistic missile. China is host of the six-party forum, also including Japan, Russia, South Korea and the U.S., which hasn’t convened since December 2008.

For a story like this the usual caveats apply.

According to the Christian Science Monitor:

South Korea said Monday it was freezing government funds for North Korea, just days before the findings of an international investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan warship are scheduled for release.

Tensions have been high since the Cheonan was torn in half by an unexplained explosion and sank on March 26, killing 46 South Korean sailors. It is widely suspected that the explosion came from a North Korean torpedo, but the South has avoided directly accusing the North, saying it will wait until the results of the investigation are announced.

But South Korea’s decision to scale back contact with North Korea may be a sign that it is preparing for the probe’s findings, which will be released by Thursday. The South suspended funding for government-level exchanges with North Korea at 10 ministries. Seoul has already asked South Korean companies not to ink new deals with Pyongyang or send resources across the border, reports Agence France-Presse.

…

After the Cheonan report is released the South is expected to ask the United Nations Security Council to place new sanctions on the culprit. AFP reports that the South is also considering halting trade with the North and resuming loudspeaker broadcasts on the border that criticize the North’s regime in Pyongyang.

Because Russia and China have vetoes on the Security Council the South is hoping to present “a smoking gun” indicating the North’s involvement. That would leave Russia and China little room to oppose more sanctions on Pyongyang. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young has said the report will leave little doubt as to who was responsible and after its release South Korea would “work out the next step in a clear and stern manner.”

Read the full story below:
South Korea freezes North Korea money ahead of Cheonan warship sinking report
Christian Science Monitor
Kristen Chick
5/17/2010

Martyn Williams provides an update on the growing use of mobile phones in the DPRK.  According to his article in PC World:

Koryolink, North Korea’s only 3G cellular operator, saw sales more than double in the first three months of this year as it expanded its network coverage and enjoyed continued demand for its service.

At the end of March the company had 125,661 subscribers, a gain just under 34,000 subscribers over the quarter, according to majority-shareholder Orascom Telecom. The Egyptian company, which invests in cellular operators in developing nations, owns 75 percent of Koryolink.

“Contrary to initial speculations that the mobile service will be only available to the government officials and elite, the fact is that currently mobiles are used by different segments and levels of society,” Orascom said of the customer base.

The network achieved a profit of US$5.8 million in the quarter, before accounting for interest payments, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Orascom did not disclose whether it made a net profit or a loss for the period. The figure is a vast improvement on the US$312,000 EBITDA profit recorded in the first three months of last year.

Quarterly revenues were US$9 million, a jump of 102.5 percent.

Sales were hit by North Korea’s revaluation of its currency.

The move, which saw 100 North Korean won devalued to 1 won, caused social unrest, according to reports from the country. Koryolink said sales activity was “practically at a standstill due to uncertainty factors resulting from the currency revaluation,” and that it closed its sales outlets for about three weeks.

The North Korean network was launched in late 2008 using WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access) technology and is only the second cellular network in the country. The other, Sunnet, uses older GSM technology and suffers from poor call quality and disconnections, according to users in the capital city of Pyongyang.

At launch the Koryolink network covered Pyongyang but has since been expanded to five additional cities and eight highways and railways.

North Korea is one of the world’s most tightly controlled societies. Subscribers to the network are divided by class or type of customer with some unable to place calls to others. Most calls are subject to monitoring by the state’s security services as part of an extensive domestic intelligence gathering program.

According to News.Scotsman.com:

Experts claim North Korea’s submarine fleet is technologically backward, prone to sinking or running aground and all but useless outside its own coastal waters.

And yet many are asking: Could it have been responsible for the explosion that sank a South Korean warship in March? And, if so, how could a submarine have slipped through the defences of South Korea, which maintains a fleet far more sophisticated than its northern neighbours?

Evidence collected thus far indicates a torpedo hit the Cheonan, killing 46 sailors, and suspicion is growing that it was launched from a small North Korean submarine. That would make it the most serious attack on the South Korean military since the peninsula’s war ended in a truce in 1953.

“While the North Korean submarine force reflects dated technology by Western standards, North Korean submarines during wartime would present significant challenges, particularly in coastal areas,” according to the Arlington, Virginia-based Global Security think-tank.

“North Korea has placed high priority on submarine construction programmes, which are ongoing despite its economic hardships.”

Without witnesses or communications traffic to use as evidence, proving North Korea was behind the attack is difficult. Still, teams conducting an intensive salvage and analysis mission are beginning to put the pieces together.

Officials say they know the 1,200-ton warship – a small, lightly armed frigate that split in half while on patrol in waters near the Koreas’ tense western maritime border – sank after a powerful external blast created a shock wave of the sort normally associated with a torpedo or mine.

South Korean media has reported that traces of the high explosive RDX have been found in the wreckage, which would also be consistent with a torpedo attack.

“It is plausible that the ship was hit by a torpedo,” Joseph Bermudez, a North Korea military expert and senior analyst for the London-based Jane’s Information Group, said.

North Korean submarines are not state-of-the-art. Instead, they underscore impoverished North Korea’s focus on “asymmetric” warfare – the use of stealthy, relatively low-cost weapons that many a ragtag fighting force has proved can open up big holes in conventional defences.

The “vast majority” operated by the North Korean navy and intelligence agencies are capable of carrying torpedoes and sea mines, as are some of the intelligence agencies’ semi-submersible infiltration landing craft, Mr Bermudez said.

“If the sinking was caused by a torpedo, then I would say this was a deliberate act of aggression,” he added.

Investigation results are expected within weeks, reports say, and Seoul has been extremely cautious in its comments on the sinking. It initially said there was no indication the North was to blame, and publicly fingering the North appears to hold little upside for Seoul, at any rate. Pyongyang has denied any role in the disaster.

But the idea that a North Korean submersible may have slid so close to the Cheonan undetected has been a wake-up call for the South, which has vowed to strengthen its defences against low-tech, asymmetric warfare. This weekend, Seoul set up a task force to review and revamp its defences.

Many South Korean experts had previously thought that such subs were unable to launch effective attacks, and were of more use for simply crossing the border.

“It shows that both the South Korean and US surveillance and reconnaissance missions either failed or were not in operation in the area where the incident took place,” Tong Kim, a visiting professor at Korea University in Seoul, said. “Apparently there was no signal or geospatial intelligence on the movement of a North Korea submarine, if it was involved in the incident. The Cheonan’s submarine detector must have failed.”

It would not be the first time North Korean submarines have been used to harass or spy on the South.

In 1996, a North Korean submarine ran aground on underwater rocks north-east of Seoul. The 26 commandos aboard tried to flee overland back to the North, but after several skirmishes all but one were killed, along with 17 South Koreans.

Two years later, another submarine was entangled in South Korean fishing nets.

According to Yonhap:

Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters that the government has urged about 200 companies to refrain from signing new deals or supplying resources to North Korea.

“We thought there were possibilities the companies may suffer unexpected losses under the uncertain and murky circumstances” on the Korean Peninsula, Chun said.

Last month, North Korea confiscated or froze South Korean assets at a joint mountain resort on its east coast in anger over Seoul’s refusal to resume cross-border tours.

The move prompted South Korea to pledge retaliatory measures. Inter-Korean relations further eroded amid suspicions that an elusive North Korean submarine attacked a South Korean warship on March 26, killing 46 crew members.

Chun said the ministry warning did not apply to the more than 110 South Korean companies operating in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, where they employ about 42,000 North Korean workers to produce labor-intensive goods.

Inter-Korean consignment trade, in which vendors here supply raw materials to North Korea to be assembled into final products, amounted to US$254 million last year, Chun said. The vendors have favored factories in Pyongyang and the western port city of Nampo.

A multinational investigation is under way in South Korea to examine the suspected North Korean attack on the South Korean corvette Cheonan near the western inter-Korean border. North Korea denies any role.

Observers say the South Korean retaliatory measures are likely to come after investigators announce their results, which are expected as early as next week.

Also according to Yonhap:

North Korea’s moribund economy is projected to lose about US$370 million a year and about 80,000 jobs if inter-Korean trade is entirely suspended, a Seoul-based civic group said Sunday.

…

“If inter-Korean trade is fully halted, North Korea will lose $230 million a year in trade of agricultural goods,” the civic group said in a statement.

There would be also a loss of $49 million for the North if the Kaesong complex is shut down, the group said. Other losses came from already-suspended tourism between the two Koreas.

And according to the Choson Ilbo:

The government has worked out a package of sanctions to take if North Korea is found to have been behind the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan on March 26. It will also be kind of counterblow to the North’s seizure and freezing of South Korean property in the Mt. Kumgang resort area late last month.

A senior government official on Wednesday said the sanctions formulated at the initiative of the Unification Ministry include banning sand imports from the North which were worth some US$70 million to the North in 2008. The imports were banned after the North launched a long-range rocket in April last year but were resumed in October.

South Korean firms that have already paid can proceed but no fresh deals can be struck.

Another target may be fisheries products. Of the total W1.06 trillion (US$1=W1,142) worth of worth of imports from the North last year, fisheries products were second with W173 billion or 16.3 percent after textiles (W477 billion or 44.8 percent).

A ministry official said, “Fisheries products are sold by companies under the North Korean military or government that specialize in earning dollars, so a ban would deal a blow to the regime.” But the regime does not cream off much from textile exports because South Korean firms depend chiefly on the joint Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex. Most of the money funneled to the North is meant as wages for North Korean workers.

The downside is that hundreds of importers of North Korean fisheries products would suffer. The government is also worried about skyrocketing prices. North Korean merchant ships could lose their right to pass through the Jeju Strait, granted them under an inter-Korean maritime agreement concluded in 2004.

A ban would mean higher fuel costs as the ships would have to make a detour through the high seas, a government official said.

The ministry submitted a report on the sanctions package to Cheong Wa Dae right after the North announced last month it was seizing South Korean property in Mt. Kumgang, but the government at the last moment decided to put it off.

“It seems that the government will make an announcement about a response to the sinking of the Cheonan and the North’s seizure of property in Mt. Kumgang next week, when the findings of the Cheonan investigation are out,” the official said.

Read the full stories below:
S. Korea moves to curb trade with N. Korea
Yonhap
Sam Kim
5/13/2010

Seoul Prepares Sanctions Over Cheonan Sinking
Choson Ilbo
5/13/2010

N. Korea to suffer dearly from halt in inter-Korean trade: civic group
Yonhap
5/16/2010

UPDATE 2: Gordon Chang offers another theory in Forbes:

And the North’s ability to surprise gets us back to the mysterious release of the xenon. We know its technicians can make nuclear weapons with plutonium cores. After all, they detonated two of them–in 2006 and 2009–and Kim has a half dozen more in his arsenal.

Did he set off one of his stock in May? Because there was no artificial seismic activity at the time, Seoul ruled out a third North Korean underground nuclear test. Xenon is also released during a nuclear accident, a possibility.

Another possibility–the most disturbing one, actually–is that the North Koreans had been telling the truth when on May 12, just two days before South Korea detected the high levels of xenon, they announced they had created a nuclear fusion reaction, a step necessary to the building of a thermonuclear device. At the time everyone thought the claim was “sheer mystical flapdoodle,” as one American expert termed it. Maybe the boast was a fantastic fabrication, but any possibility that Kim’s regime was closer to the world’s most destructive weapon is obviously of concern.

To find out what really happened, we have to think like North Koreans. So here’s a theory: Pyongyang made the hard-to-accept claim about fusion so that we would be distracted from what it is really doing. Xenon is released whenever uranium is enriched, such as when it is enriched for the core of a nuclear weapon.

The North Koreans started to obtain Chinese-Pakistani enrichment technology in the early 1990s from the black-market ring headed by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. They first boasted of a uranium enrichment program in October 2002. Most analysts think the North has not gotten very far even if it has been trying to build a nuclear weapon with a uranium core. The release of xenon gas in May throws the conventional view into doubt.

Bruce Bechtol of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College will deliver, next Monday at Brookings in Washington, a paper contending that North Korea is now or will soon be capable of building a uranium-core bomb. Not every analyst agrees with Bechtol’s conclusion, but doubters need to come up with a plausible explanation why xenon was wafting over the North Korean countryside last month. At least for now, he seems the one closest to the truth.

UPDATE 1: According to the Associated Press (6/21/2010):

Abnormal radiation was detected near the inter-Korean border days after North Korea claimed last month to have achieved a nuclear technology breakthrough, South Korea’s Science Ministry said Monday.

The ministry said it failed to find the cause of the radiation but ruled out a possible underground nuclear test by North Korea. It cited no evidence of a strong earthquake that must follow an atomic explosion.

On May 12, North Korea claimed its scientists succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction — a technology necessary to manufacture a hydrogen bomb. The technology also one day could provide limitless clean energy because it produces little radioactive waste, unlike fission, which powers conventional nuclear power reactors.

South Korean experts doubted the North actually made such a breakthrough. Scientists around the world have been experimenting with fusion for decades, but it has yet to be developed into a viable energy alternative.

On May 15, however, the atmospheric concentration of xenon — an inert gas released after a nuclear explosion or radioactive leakage from a nuclear power plant — on the South Korean side of the inter-Korean border was found to be eight times higher than normal, according to South Korea’s Science Ministry.

South Korea subsequently looked for signs of a powerful, artificially induced earthquake — something that should have been detected if North Korea had conducted a nuclear test. Experts, however, found no signs of a such a quake in North Korea, a ministry statement said.

“We determined that there was no possibility of an underground nuclear test,” it said. The ministry did not mention any possible health hazard from the release.

Earlier Monday, South Korea’s mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that North Korea may have conducted a small-sized nuclear test, citing the abnormal radioactivity. The paper cited an atomic expert it did not identify.

North Korea — which is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half-dozen nuclear weapons, conducted two underground nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, drawing international condemnation and U.N. sanctions.

The news of the detected radiation comes as tension is running high on the Korean peninsula over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack. North Korea flatly denies the allegation and has warned any punishment would trigger war, with the U.N. Security Council reviewing Seoul’s request to punish Pyongyang over the sinking.

A Science Ministry official said the wind was blowing from north to south when the xenon was detected.

But the official — speaking on condition of anonymity, citing department policy — said xenon could have come from Russia or China, not necessarily from North Korea, as South Korea was unable to find the reason for the high-level of the gas.

The official also said that there was no possibility that the xenon could have originated from any nuclear power plants in South Korea.

ORIGINAL POST: According to KCNA (May 12):

DPRK Succeeds in Nuclear Fusion
Pyongyang, May 12 (KCNA) — Scientists of the DPRK succeeded in nuclear fusion reaction on the significant occasion of the Day of the Sun this year, according to Rodong Sinmun Wednesday.

It goes on:

The successful nuclear fusion marks a great event that demonstrated the rapidly developing cutting-edge science and technology of the DPRK.

The nuclear fusion technology is called “artificial solar” technology as it represents a field of the latest science and technology for the development of new energy desired by humankind.

The nuclear fusion technology for obtaining safe and environment-friendly new energy the source of which is abundant draws great attention of world science at present.

Scientists of the DPRK have worked hard to develop nuclear fusion technology their own way.

They solved a great many scientific and technological problems entirely by their own efforts without the slightest hesitation and vacillation even under the conditions where everything was in short supply and there were a lot of difficulties, thus succeeding in nuclear fusion reaction at last.

In this course, Korean style thermo-nuclear reaction devices were designed and manufactured, basic researches into nuclear fusion reaction completed and strong scientific and technological forces built to perfect the thermo-nuclear technology by their own efforts.

The successful nuclear fusion in the DPRK made a definite breakthrough toward the development of new energy and opened up a new phase in the nation’s development of the latest science and technology.

According to NTI Global Security Newswire:

Aspiring nuclear power North Korea claimed today that it was able to conduct a nuclear fusion reaction, a process that could be used to produce energy or a hydrogen bomb, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 11).

The state-run Rodong Sinmun did not say whether the fusion reaction, which no other nuclear program has yet successfully turned toward energy production, would be put to use in the country’s nuclear weapons program.

“The successful nuclear fusion marks a great event that demonstrated the rapidly developing cutting-edge science and technology of the D.P.R.K.,” the report asserted.

To achieve the reaction, “Korean-style thermonuclear reaction devices were designed and manufactured, basic researches into nuclear fusion reaction completed and strong scientific and technological forces built to perfect the thermonuclear technology,” said the report (Agence France-Presse I/Australian, May 12).

South Korea was skeptical today of the North’s nuclear fusion claim, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

An anonymous Foreign Ministry official told the Yonhap News Agency that Pyongyang’s assertion was “absurd” and said there was no evidence that the impoverished nation possessed the expensive nuclear infrastructure required to conduct fusion tests.

Should North Korea be telling the truth, though, it would have breached U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which prohibits Pyongyang from carrying out additional missile or nuclear tests, the official said (Xinhua News Agency, May 12).

The Stalinist regime, which is severely lacking in electricity generation capacity, compared the fusion reaction to an “artificial sun,” Reuters reported.

“Maybe if two suns show up in the sky tomorrow, then people could believe the claim,” Seoul National University nuclear expert Kune Suh said.

“This seems highly inaccurate and grossly exaggerated,” he said. “They probably conducted some small-scale experiment” (Herskovitz/Kim, Reuters, May 11).

The reaction was said to be conducted in honor of the April birthday of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung, which is now a holiday known as the “Day of the Sun.” Pyongyang regularly makes questionable claims on days recognizing Kim or his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, the Associated Press reported.

Hyeon Park, a physics professor who works on fusion research in the South, said North Korea could have successfully built a plasma device and generated a hot mass of supercharged particles, which is one of the first steps n to create a nuclear fusion reaction.

To judge the validity of the assertion, foreign scientists would require information on the scope of the North’s fusion test and the steps it took to create the plasma, Park said (Kwang-Tae Kim, Associated Press/Google News, May 12).

Meanwhile, Washington’s lead negotiator for the multilateral talks aimed at ending the North’s nuclear weapons work, Sung Kim, was in South Korea today for talks with his South Korean counterpart, AFP reported. The talks also involve China, Japan and Russia.

Seoul’s deputy foreign minister and deputy defense chief are set to travel to Washington tomorrow for talks about matters on the Korean Peninsula and nuclear concerns, the South Korean Foreign Ministry said (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, May 12).

According to Interconnected World:

Secrecy normally shrouds military relations between Burma and its strategic allies such as China and North Korea, but intelligence sources suggest ongoing military ties with these two countries are helping the Burmese generals’ to achieve their military ambitions, including that of becoming a nuclear power.

Intelligence sources said top junta generals have held late- night meetings in Naypyidaw in the last two months, discussing military modernization, foreign relations, tension with ethnic groups and suppressing dissidents in urban areas.

They said the junta bought weapons from China and North Korea including mid-range missiles and rocket launchers in April, and suggested the war office in Naypyidaw chose the month when the Burmese celebrate new year in order to avoid public scrutiny.

Equipment necessary to build a nuclear capability was reportedly among imported military supplies from North Korea that arrived at the beginning of the holidays.

A report from Rangoon in April also referred to an undisclosed vessel believed to be connected with North Korea that was seen at Thilawar Port, near Rangoon. Burmese officials at the time said the vessel was there to load Burmese rice destined for North Korea.

Military relations between Naypyidaw and Pyongyang have been attracting attention from analysts, diplomats and journalists in recent years. In August 2009, an article in Sydney Morning Herald alleged the Burmese junta aims to get an atomic bomb in five years using Burmese enriched uranium and North Korean nuclear technology.

Apart from nuclear know-how and equipment, Pyongyang has also provided the Burmese junta’s armed forces with truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles and technology for underground warfare since the early 2000s, according to experts on Burma’s military like Andrew Selth.

“Pyongyang needs Burmese primary products, which Naypyidaw can in turn use to barter for North Korea arms, expertise and technology,” wrote Andrew Selth in the Australian Journal of International Affairs in March.

Read the full article here:
Burma said buying arms from China, North Korea
Interconnected World
5/10/2010