North Korean Economy Watch

Today Kim Jong il’s trains and train stations were big news.  According to the Choson Ilbo:

When Kim travels, three separate trains operate in conjunction. The advance train handles security checks to see whether the rail tracks are safe. Behind Kim’s train is another carrying his bodyguards and other support personnel. Kim’s train travels at an average speed of 60 km/h. Around 100 security agents are sent ahead of time to stations and sweep the area for bombs. Before Kim’s train nears the station, the power on other tracks is shut off so that no other trains can move.

Kim’s train is armored and also contains conference rooms, an audience chamber and bedrooms. Satellite phone connections and flat screen TVs have been installed so that the North Korean leader can be briefed and issue orders.

Sources say when Kim gets out of his train and moves to his private retreat, he is driven in a Mercedes or other car that has been brought along. When Kim travels within North Korea aboard his private train, IL-76 air force transport planes, MI-17 helicopters and other aircraft provide security support and haul necessary personnel and equipment to nearby airports. So far, Kim has taken 129 on-the-spot guidance trips around North Korea, matching the record he set in 2005 and probably exceeding it by the end of the year.

Since I have already mapped out the North Korean railway system, I can offer links to satellite images of many of KJI’s personal train stations and other elite stations: Pyongyang (Ryongsong), Pyongyang (Ryongsong underground), Pyongyang (Ryongsong-original), Pyongyang (Hyongjesan), Wonsan, Sinuiju, Hyesan 1, Hyesan 2, Kanggye, Yongphung-ri, Myohyangsan 1, Myohangsan 2, Sakju 1(old imagery), Taegwon, Kyongsong 1, Kyongsong 2, Hungnam 1, Hungnam 2, and Sinchon. These are not necessarily the 20 stations cited in the above article, but the remainder are probably underground or not visible with Google Earth imagery.

Apparently Kim Jong il is growing intolerant of North Korean television advertising anything other than how great he and his father are.  According to Yonhap:

“Recently, Kim saw the commercials while watching TV. He was enraged, asking where the commercials came from and describing them as the prototype of China’s early reforms,” one source said.

Starting July 2, North Korea’s television played commercials that showed young women in traditional clothes serving frothy mugs of Taedonggang beer billed as “Pride of Pyongyang.”

Other products, including ginseng and quail, soon followed in television advertisements, which had rarely been seen in the country, generating outside speculation that North Korea may be starting to embrace the capitalist mode of life.

But according to Yonhap News Agency’s own analysis, the commercials disappeared as of the end of August. The sources said Cha Sung-su, the North’s top broadcaster, has also been discharged.

One source said Cha may have been unduly victimized in the case because the commercials were a product of Kim’s earlier instruction to create “more interesting and diverse” television programs.

Cha, 69, is one of Kim’s closest aides, having accompanied him on public inspections at least six times since the leader reportedly had a stroke last year and then recovered.

He is the North’s top television man, having served on the communist country’s broadcasting committee for about four decades. He is also known in North Korea for his numerous poems.

I previously blogged about the beer commercials (as did most other K-bloggers) and included a link to a longer 10-minute “infomercial”.

Here is the actual commercial courtesy of the BBC. Here is the commercial on YouTube (without commercial interruption).

Here is the ginseng commercial (Koryo Insam).

Here is the quail restaurant commercial.

(Click image to enlarge)

While cataloging North Korea’s economic, military, and political infrastructures on Google Earth, my colleagues and I have labeled over a dozen historical fortresses (castles) in the DPRK.  Normally the remnants of these fortresses consist of stone walls which skirt the surrounding mountain tops.

Today, however, I came upon Kyongsong Castle in Sungnam-ri on the DPRK’s east coast.  As far as I can tell it is the only walled city of this type remaining in the DPRK.  If not, it is certainly the most impressively preserved.  It is a shame nobody can visit this place–it looks absolutely beautiful.

The castle is not visible in Google Earth, so you can either look at the image above or download the Google Earth overlay I built.  The overlay allows you to to see the castle in its actual location on Google Earth. Download the overlay here.

If any readers can find information on this castle in Korean please let me know.  Nothing is available in English.

Blane Harden wrote an excellent article for the Washington Post on the KPA takeover of state-owned trading companies and how these companies are increasing natural resource exports to China.  (As an aside, China has just recently ceased publishing North Korean trade data).  This is interesting because just a year-and-a-half ago we were discussing Jang Song-thaek’s anti-corruption campaign which was supposed to be closing down KPA companies and making them reapply for export licenses with the Ministry of Foreign Trade (meaning the WPK could start dipping into the revenue pools).

Quoting from Mr. Harden’s article:

The potential profits are eye-popping: China is one of the world’s most voracious consumers of raw materials, and North Korea’s mineral reserves are worth $5.94 trillion, according to an estimate by South Korea’s Ministry of Unification. China has been critical of North Korea’s nuclear program and missile tests, but it also has vastly increased its economic ties with Kim’s government.

Kim is increasingly creaming off a significant slice of Chinese mineral revenue to fund his nuclear program and to buy the loyalty of elites, according to “North Korea, Inc.,” a recent report by the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington-based group funded by the U.S. Congress.

The report echoes the views of North Korean analysts in South Korea, Japan and the United States, who say the military has elbowed out other ministries and the Korean Workers’ Party to take control of exports that earn hard currency. The military is also sending trucks to state farms to haul away as much as a quarter of the annual harvest for its soldiers, analysts say.

“The military is by far the largest, most capable and most efficient organization in North Korea, and Kim Jong Il is making maximum use of it,” said Lim Eul-chul of the Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

North Korea is perhaps the world’s most secretive and repressive state, but it makes no attempt to hide the ubiquitous role the military plays in the daily lives of the country’s 23.5 million people. Soldiers dig clams and launch missiles, pick apples and build irrigation canals, market mushrooms and supervise the export of knockoff Nintendo games. They also guard the country’s 3,000 cooperative farms, and help themselves to scarce food in a hungry country.

…

Missile sales were for many years major earners of foreign currency, according to a report for the Strategic Studies Institute by Daniel A. Pinkston, who is now a Seoul-based analyst with the International Crisis Group. But the cost of the arms trade has gone up and sales have declined as a result of U.N. sanctions imposed after the North’s nuclear tests in 2006 and this year, South Korean analysts say.

The military has thus turned to its new Chinese cash cow. As the army has taken over management of mines in North Korea, mineral exports to China have soared, rising from $15 million in 2003 to $213 million last year. Led by those sales, the North’s total trade volume rose last year to its highest level since 1990, when a far more prosperous and less isolated North Korea was subsidized by the Soviet Union.

A unique advantage the Korean People’s Army brings to foreign trade is a well-disciplined workforce that has to be paid — nothing. Soldiers receive food, clothes and lodging, but virtually no cash. This competitive edge makes military-run trading companies especially attractive to the North’s leadership, according to the Institute of Peace report.

Based on confidential interviews with recent North Korean defectors, four of whom said they worked for trading companies run by the military, the paper concludes that a “designated percentage of all revenues generated from commercial activities . . . goes directly into Kim Jong Il’s personal accounts.” The rest of the revenue flows into the operating budget of the military.

The full article is worth reading here.

Additionally, the report by the Institute of Peace cited above, “North Korea, Inc.”, can be downloaded here. The paper is on my reading list this weekend, but here is the introduction and conclusion:

Introduction: Assessing regime stability in North Korea continues to be a major challenge for analysts. By examining how North Korea, Inc. — the web of state trading companies affiliated to the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP), the Korean People’s Army (KPA), and the Cabinet — operates, we can develop a new framework for gauging regime stability in North Korea. Insights into the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)1 regime can be gained by examining six core questions related to the DPRK state trading company system. First, what are DPRK state trading companies and how did they emerge? Second, how do DPRK state trading companies operate? Third, what roles do they play? Fourth, why are DPRK state trading companies important? Fifth, what major transformations are taking place in the DPRK state trading company system? Sixth, what are the implications of the manner in which this system is currently functioning?

Conclusion:  Despite lingering problems with the fragmented Public Distribution System, the challenges of chronic food shortages, and a deteriorating economic infrastructure system, the DPRK regime has proven to be remarkably resilient. By operating North Korea, Inc. — a network of state trading companies affiliated to the KWP, the KPA, and the Cabinet — the regime is able to derive funds to maintain the loyalty of the North Korean elites and to provide a mechanism through which different branches of the North Korean state can generate funds for operating budgets. During periods when the DPRK’s international isolation deepens as a result of its brinkmanship activities, North Korea, Inc. constitutes an effective coping mechanism for the Kim Jong Il regime.

While North Korea remains an opaque country, we now have greater access to unique defectors with the following characteristics — prior experience working in DPRK state trading companies and current business dealings with former colleagues in North Korea through channels in China. By closely examining DPRK commercial activities and capabilities, a new field of North Korea analysis can be structured to produce insights into the internal dynamics of the DPRK regime. This new line of inquiry would help to broaden our understanding of an evolving North Korea.

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-11-02-1
11/2/2009

The North Korean agricultural ministry has announced that the countries food shortages are expected to be even greater next year. Edition 302 of the newsletter “North Korea Today,” distributed by the group Good Friends, reports that the Ministry of Agriculture announced harvest predictions for farms in North and South Hwanghae and Pyongan provinces, North Korea’s ‘ricebowl region’. It stated that if the country was to avoid a food crisis next year, everyone would need to strictly manage this year’s crops. It was also reported that the central party authorities in North Korea, after receiving the report, called for the opening of all customs houses in the border region and for trading companies to seek new avenues for trade. An order was passed down to “relentlessly trade with the outside in order to bring in much food.”

With food shortages this year and last, and now news that there will be food problems next year as well, it is rumored that there is a growing number of angry people in the normally mild-mannered Hwanghae Province. In addition, this is driving a growing number of people to turn to crime in order to put food on the table. On October 26, Free North Korea Radio quoted a source as stating, “As rumors spread across North Korea that large-scale famine, the likes of which were seen in the mid-1990s, will again sweep through country next year, anxiety is shooting up among the people and crimes of necessity are on the rise.”

According to the source, “Crimes of necessity, like pillaging granaries on farms, are spreading like never before as people act quickly to ensure food supplies,” and, “Fighting has grown fierce between people trying to maintain their standard of living.” Furthermore, “The number of people in the Dancheon region of South Hamgyeong Province just ‘sitting down and starving to death’ is exploding,” and, “Not long ago, there was even one incident of and armed soldier guarding a threshing floor of one farm being attacked by a gang of thieves.”

The source explained, “People are well aware that this year yielded poor harvests, but that they cannot rely on aid from the international community because of the Kim Jong Il regime’s indiscriminant pursuit of nuclear development.” The source also added, “These days, people are rationalizing illegal activities in the belief that ‘you can rely on no one but yourself.’”

It was also reported that in Hyesan, Hyeryeong, Onseong and Musan, most food prices are at higher levels than what are usually seen in the spring, despite the fact that it is now fall harvest season. According to Free North Korea Radio, October 23rd prices of rice, flour and corn in Hyesan, Hyeryeong, Onseong, and Musan were as follows: Hyesan, rice = 2,550-2,750 won/1 kg, flour = 2,400-2,600 won/1 kg, corn = 850-900 won/1 kg; Hyeryeong, rice = 2,500-2,800 won/ 1 kg, flour = 2,400-2,700 won/ 1 kg, corn = 800-1,000 won/1 kg; Onseong, rice = 2,450-2,600 won/ 1 kg, flour = 2,500-2,700 won/1 kg, corn = 700-900 won/1 kg; Musan, rice = 2,500-2,700 won/1 kg, flour = 2,400-2,600 won/1 kg, corn = 850-1,000 won/1 kg

China has ceased publishing its balance of trade with North Korea. Since China is the DPRK’s largest trading partner, this story has significant implications for all those who study the DPRK.

According to Reuters:

China has stopped publicly issuing trade data about North Korea, veiling the potentially sensitive numbers about its wary neighbour under another category while the two countries seek improved ties.

Destination and origin statistics on China’s imports and exports for September issued on Monday gave no separate numbers for second straight month for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the formal name of the North, as they have long appeared in the tables.

The trade tables for coal, crude oil, oil products and cereals issued by China’s General Administration of Customs instead used another category, “other Asia not elsewhere specified”, which for those commodities at least appeared to cover exclusively trade flows between China and the North.

Analysts and officials have used Chinese statistics to gauge otherwise opaque ties between the two communist neighbours. But North Korea has stopped appearing in the Chinese data since last month, when statistics for August also avoided mention of it.

The change may help Beijing to obscure shifts in economic flows with the North, which relies on China for most of its trade and aid.

In the build-up to North Korea’s first nuclear test in Oct. 2006, the trade data showed China cut crude oil shipments to the North in September, although it was unclear whether the stoppage was a calculated gesture or due to more prosaic problems.

An official in charge of data services at the Customs Administration told Reuters that the change would last, but would not say why. Reuters and other companies buy the data.

“We’re no longer issuing trade data about North Korea,” said the official, who declined to give her name. “We’re not allowed to issue the data anymore.”

She declined to answer further questions, referring them to another data services official.

That official, Xu Xianghui, said the data could not be released because of a “technical fault”. But Xu said it was unclear if that fault would ever be fixed.

This is a rather blunt statement by the unnamed Chinese official.  There was not even an attempt to offer a justification. The decision to cease publishing the data obviously originated at the top of the Chinese leadership and the employees at the Chinese Customs Administration were probably told to relay (exactly) the simple message delivered above.

I wonder how long the Chinese officials at the top sat around trying to think of an acceptable public justification before just giving up.  I am trying to think of one now but not having much luck.

Lets hope that his policy is eventually reversed.

UPDATE (quasi-related) from the Choson Ilbo:

When Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visited Pyongyang in October, North Korea and China boasted they had opened a new era of cooperation. The two countries described their talks as “constructive” even though no palpable progress was made in the North’s nuclear issue. But according to a senior source in North Korea, one significant step was a secret agreement to restore intelligence cooperation.

No details have been disclosed, but it is presumed that this refers to cooperation between traditional intelligence agencies including North Korea’s External Liaison Department and Operational Department rather than in ferreting out and repatriating North Korean defectors. The source said the two sides put the agreement into writing to strengthen their defense against South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.

North Korea is said to have asked China to provide intelligence about North Korean defectors and anti-North Korean government activities in China, while China reportedly asked the North to cooperate on cracking down on drug trafficking and counterfeiting of dollars or yuan.

Read the full article here:
China hides North Korea trade in statistics
Reuters
Chris Buckley
10/26/2009

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Nachod is a small village in the Czech Republic around three hours by car from the capital Prague. It is an isolated place sparsely dotted with farm houses. On the outskirts of the village is a two-story factory called Snezka that manufactures sheets for cars and travel bags. Until 2007, the factory was filled with North Korean women who had gone there to work.

The European press described the women as “21st century slaves,” being watched 24 hours a day by North Korean minders and required to wire most of their earnings back to North Korea. The Czech government eventually sent back all North Korean workers by 2007, including the 90 women who had been working for Snezka.

As orders from European automakers skyrocketed, the number of staff at Snezka rose to around 700, but it was difficult to find cheap and dependable workers in such a remote place. That was when the North Korean Embassy in the Czech Republic called to offer the services of “loyal” workers. The first handful of North Koreans who were hired proved to be excellent workers and the factory kept on hiring more. “From an employer’s perspective, they were ideal workers,” one executive recalls. “Unlike Czech or Ukrainian workers, the North Koreans never wasted time drinking coffee and chatting. They were very good with their hands too. They were extremely accurate in their sewing, as if machines had done it.”

The executive objects to the term “21st century slaves.” The North Koreans worked eight hours a day, five days a week in two shifts — 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 2 p.m. until 10 p.m. Weekends earned them an extra 75 percent of their daily incomes, a standard uniformly applied to both North Korean and other workers. Factory staff say the North Koreans led a dull existence. Three or four lived in a house supplied by Snezka, and they traveled in groups of five or six even when they were going for a short walk around the factory.

They rarely talked to other workers. One worker from Poland says, “I never heard them say a single word about their family, friends or hometowns.” In time, around half of the 90 North Korean workers were able to communicate in Czech, but they were still said to be “quiet.”

Here is the town of Nachod.  I have not located the factory yet.

Previous posts on this story here (first) and here (second).

Also, North Korea gets trams from the Czech Republic.

Read the full sory below:
Czech Factory Regrets Departure of N.Koreans
Choson Ilbo
10/28/2009

From a recent article in Time:

In recent years, bootlegged South Korean dramas have been flooding into the northern neighbor — part of a recent explosion across Asia in the popularity of South Korean TV shows and music known as the Korean Wave. On the black market in North Korea, American DVDs go for about 35¢; South Korean ones go for $3.75, because of the higher risk of execution for smuggling them in, according to two recent defectors from Pyongyang. The nation’s films and dramas have become so widespread across North Korea that the regime launched a crackdown this fall on North Korean university students, the movies’ biggest audience, and smugglers at the Chinese border, charging some with promoting the ideology of the enemy state.

It seems plausible that South Korean films are more expensive than American films due to political risk, but this cannot be the only factor.  DPRK politics aside, South Korean and American films are not perfect substitutes.  I am willing to bet that some of the price difference can be explained by the language barrier.  North Koreans can watch South Korean films and dramas without reading subtitles.  Some of the stories, characters, and motivations probably make more sense as well.

We can make apriory assumptions all day, however.  We need some data. There is a paper in here for an enterprising economics student living near Dandong.

Read the full story here:
Soap-Opera Diplomacy: North Koreans Crave Banned Videos
Geoffrey Cain
Time
10/29/2009

According to the article:

The U.N. expert panel set up to assist the implementation of sanctions on North Korea began formal operations Friday.

Six of seven panel members attended a meeting convened by the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions committee on North Korea.

The expert panel has been established under Resolution 1874, which the Security Council adopted on June 12 in response to North Korea’s second nuclear test on May 25.

The panel is to play an auxiliary role in implementing the penalties the sanctions committee worked out following the nuclear test.

Kyoto University graduate school professor Masahiko Asada, the panel member representing Japan, told reporters after the closed meeting that the participants had a ”good” discussion. He is an expert on arms trade control and the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Asada and six other members were selected from the five permanent Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Japan and South Korea.

Turkish Ambassador to the United Nations Ertugrul Apakan, who chairs the sanctions committee, described the meeting as ”useful.” But he declined to elaborate, citing the confidential nature of the proceedings.

A U.N. diplomatic source said the seven panel members have already begun work on an individual basis, aiming to compile their first report in mid-November.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon named the seven members in the summer and the panel was initially to have started work in September. But the Chinese representative quit and the selection of a new representative for the country took time, delaying the panel’s first meeting until Friday.

In mid-July, the sanctions committee worked out a new set of sanctions on North Korea, imposing a travel ban on five officials and asset freezes on five entities for their involvement in nuclear weapons and missile development programs. The entities were in addition to three the committee designated in April.

U.N. members are also reportedly considering expanding a list of individuals and entities subject to sanctions depending on new information from member states.

The expert panel is tasked with collecting information and analyzing the implementation of the sanctions. It can recommend that either the Security Council or the sanctions committee take action if it deems their efforts to punish North Korea insufficient.

The sanctions committee was set up after the Security Council adopted Resolution 1718 in October 2006 following Pyongyang’s first nuclear test.

Track this year’s US and UN sanctions activities starting here.

Read the full article here:
U.N. expert panel on N. Korean sanctions begins operation
Kyodo News
10/30/2009

According to Reuters:

North Korea’s communications ministry was behind a series of cyber attacks against South Korean and U.S. websites in July, the South’s spy chief was quoted on Friday as saying.

Dozens of major U.S. and South Korean government and business sites were slowed or disabled with traffic generated by malicious software planted on personal computers unknown to their users.

South Korean officials said at the time that North Korea was a prime suspect.

“The attacks on Korean and U.S. Internet sites were traced back to circuits originating in China,” the South’s spy chief Won Sei-hoon was quoted as telling a closed-door parliamentary committee meeting by Yonhap news agency.

“North Korea’s communications ministry has been confirmed as leasing the line,” Won reportedly said.

Some South Korean government websites, including the Defence Ministry and National Intelligence Service, were affected in the wave of attacks that lasted several days but did not lead to a breach of sensitive material or damage to online infrastructure, the agencies said.

Read the full story here:
North Korea behind cyber attacks-South’s spy chief
Reuters
10/29/2009