North Korean Economy Watch

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
6/20/2007

It’s been reported South Korean English dictionaries have been sold almost double the market price in major North Korean cities like Shinuiju as North Korea – China trade invigorates and greater learning of Chinese and English

”Mt. Baikdu Store” has been in business in Dandung, China targeting North Korean merchants and North Korea officials their main customers, have been selling “Essence Korean-English Dictionary” published in South Korea by Minjungseorim at 420 Yuan (US$55). The same dictionary sells around at 37 dollars in South Korea.

North Korean merchants are purchasing these dictionaries by order directly from upper class North Koreans. The dictionary mentioned above has traded at 210,000 North Korean won (approx. US$69).

The proprietor of Mt. Baikdu Store said “Among South Korean dictionaries, Essence Korean-English Dictionary, 2005 special edition, published by Minjungseorim, has been a bestseller.” “They are 2 or 3 times more expensive than Chinese counterparts but North Koreans are very keen on them for their well-written layout.”

”Dictionaries published in South Korea have gained popularity among the North Koreans for they are well –written so that anyone could study easily. In particular, upper-class parents have been throwing money around to educate their children.”

Park Myong Cheol (pseudonym), a North Korean, engaged in North Korea–China trade stated “Recently Pyongyang and Shinuiju have seen a sizzle for learning English and Chinese.”

Park reasoned that the overwhelming trend has been derived from recent stimulation on North Korea–China trade. Accordingly, he specified that many have noticed the highly-required needs of language skill for overseas trade and employment.

Besides, increasing popularization of computer is one of the factors. Learning English has been considered a must to gain computing skills for technical terms which contain English.

Park admitted “In the past, it caused a big trouble reading South Korean publications. However, this has not been a problem any more just for studying material like a dictionary. It was out of discussion before.”

According to him, currently an increasing number of the Chinese, who have been preparing North Korea-China joint ventures in Pyongyang and Shinuiju, have hired the North Korean as a translator.

Chinese employers prefer local employment for bringing Chinese translator over cost fortune because of the expense covering entrance and staying. In addition, it requires complicated document procedure. For example, it cost 300 Yuan (US$43) per day excluding accommodation and meals.

Park reported that it is natural for North Korean young adults, fluent at foreign language, to eager to be a translator of Chinese businessmen in the rise of unemployment in North Korea.

Evidently, it is observed that upper-class North Koreans have devoted to educate their children hiring private English tutors with dictionaries from South Korea. Moreover, this craze has been interpreted as a display of the people’s desire on opening of North Korea.

Yonhap
Sohn Suk-joo
6/20/2007

Four South Korean companies have canceled their contracts for the use of land at an inter-Korean industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong for unknown reasons, officials said.

The cancellations come amid growing concerns about stalled negotiations on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, which critics fear might endanger, in the worst-case scenario, the status of the inter-Korean joint economic project, the brainchild of the unprecedented inter-Korean summit in 2000.

Refusing to identify the companies, they said the contracts were revoked in January, February and April, respectively, but the government has yet to take back the corporate licenses for doing business in the Kaesong industrial complex.

In the capitalist enclave, South Korean businesses use cheap North Korean labor to produce goods. The monthly production in the complex exceeds US$10 million.

Currently, 23 South Korean companies employ about 15,000 North Korean workers at a site developed on a trial basis, including construction workers and others at a management office. The number of North Korean workers is expected to increase to more than 350,000 when the complex becomes fully operational by 2012.

In September 2005, the South Korean government offered plots of land to 24 South Korean companies so that they could start to move into the area created in the first phase of the industrial complex’s development.

Some raised the possibility that the companies canceled the contracts becase there is little chance that the complex will become an “outward processing zone” in a free trade deal between South Korea and the United States.

South Korea pushed for the U.S. to include products from the complex in the trade deal, but they only agreed to create a committee to discuss what they called an outward processing zone.

South Korea sees it as the basis for further discussion of the Kaesong issue, while the U.S. cautions against reading too much into it, saying it is a kind of agreement they can reach with any bilateral trade partner regardless of the existence of a free trade deal. They are expected to formally sign the deal later this month.

Asia Times
John Feffer
6/15/2007

The North Korean film projectionist is thinking back on her earlier life. When she was younger, she tells the camera, she dreamed of acting. She wanted to play a heroic role on the screen. Her eyes take on a wistful look. And there is a hint of pain in her voice. In any other country, this would be an ordinary show of emotion. In North Korea, however, the ordinary is extraordinary, for outsiders catch a glimpse of it so very rarely.

The North Korean woman, Han Yong-sil, is one of four film projectionists featured in a new documentary, Comrades in Dreams. Directed by Ulli Gaulke, a young German filmmaker, the documentary ties together the lives of cinema lovers from four countries: the United States, Burkino Faso, India and North Korea.

While all the footage is fascinating, the material from North Korea is unique. Films from and about North Korea rarely pierce the carefully constructed surface that the country and its citizens present to the outside world. Yet here, captured by Gaulke, Comrade Han reveals an individual personality behind the ritualized propaganda that she initially offers the camera.

Film has played an unusually prominent role in North Korean culture and history. Although it opens an important window on to a closed society, North Korean film has been a singularly overlooked subject. North Korean films are almost never shown in the United States. They rarely appear in international film festivals. Few articles have been written on the subject.

That all may change soon, however. A French company has just bought the rights to show the North Korean film A Schoolgirl’s Diary, reportedly seen by 8 million North Koreans, more than one-third of the population. Scholars are beginning to comb through North Korean films for clues about how the system ticks. And documentaries like Comrades in Dreams and the latest effort from Dan Gordon and Nicholas Bonner, Crossing the Line, are attracting attention at film festivals around the world.

The US and North Korea are inching closer together as a result of ongoing nuclear negotiations. With normalized relations on the agenda, information about North Korean society becomes ever more valuable. But do North Korean films ultimately reveal or conceal the reality of the country?

Bring up the subject of North Korean film and most people would be hard pressed to name a single title. But nearly every article about North Korean leader Kim Jong-il mentions that he’s a film buff with one of the largest film collections in the world. In fact, Kim started out in the cinema world. The rise of the “Dear Leader” to political leadership is linked inextricably to his film career.

“Kim Jong-il used film to prove that he was the legitimate guardian of his father Kim Il-sung’s legacy,” explained Kim Suk-young (Speaking at the Library of Congress Next Week), a specialist on North Korean theater and film at the University of California-Santa Barbara. “Kim Il-sung was very keen on protecting his legacy as a national father. So Kim Jong-il in the 1970s used film to prove that he was the legitimate heir.”

These films helped solidify his father’s personality cult and demonstrated that Kim Il-sung’s successor, unlike Deng Xiaoping in China or Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, would avoid any iconoclastic reforms.

Kim Jong-il was not the first person in North Korea to recognize the political uses of film. The regime early on realized the revolutionary potential of the medium. When it took control over the northern half of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II, the North Korean Workers’ Party under Kim Il-sung relied heavily on Soviet assistance. The Soviets, having pioneered film technique in the early days of the Russian Revolution, offered cinematic help as well.

From the very start, however, North Korea showed its independent streak by not following the Soviet model. “Even at its very beginning,” writes historian Charles Armstrong, North Korean cinema “was diverging from its Soviet sponsors’ aims by creating a distinctive cinema rooted in melodramatic emotionalism, a sentimental attachment to the Korean countryside, and the alleged values of peasant life, and a nationalist politics centered around the person of Kim Il-sung”.

To merge Soviet communism with North Korean nationalism – all rolled into the package of Kim Il-sung’s personality cult – film was the ideal medium. As Kim Suk-young explains, it is much easier to send films throughout the country as a propaganda tool than, for instance, relying on traveling theater groups. More important, Pyongyang could control the form and content from beginning to end. Political speakers sent to deliver propaganda to the masses might succumb to improvisation. Theater actors might give an unintended interpretative spin to their lines of dialogue. But movies allow for total control – or as close as the regime could get to total control in the cultural sphere.

Re-imaging history
Unlike Josef Stalin, Kim Il-sung often clothed his political instruction in narrative form. His multi-volume autobiography, for instance, is full of stories and parables. But nothing could compare to the power of film to create resonant images and stirring nationalist messages.

For instance, in the 1960s film On the Railway, set during the Korean War, the train-engineer hero infiltrates the territory held by US and South Korean forces and pretends to be a defector driving his train over to the other side. He is, like Kim Il-sung, a trickster who achieves victory despite overwhelming odds. He doesn’t do so on behalf of the workers of the world, however. He is fighting for the Korean fatherland and against the foreign aggressor.

Other movies, such as An Jung Gun Shoots Ito Hirobumi and Star of Chosun, dramatize moments of Korean history such as the 1909 assassination of a Japanese colonial official and the life of Kim Il-sung. Like the 1915 US film The Birth of a Nation, these films present a rewritten history that can replace authentic memory and balanced scholarship. A government can censor books. But film has the appearance of reality and can more seductively change how a citizenry understands its past.

Kim Jong-il put his stamp on North Korean filmmaking with his involvement in productions such as Sea of Blood and Flower Girl. These films, adapted from revolutionary operas credited to his father Kim Il-sung, established a cultural vocabulary similar to the opera productions that Madame Mao (Jiang Qing) unleashed on the Chinese population during the Cultural Revolution (so memorably described in Anchee Min’s memoir Red Azalea).

The language of these operas-turned-films, which both describe the atrocities of the Japanese colonial period, defined the parameters of acceptable cultural discourse. The images became iconic, like the Biblical tableaux that appeared in classical painting and formed the visual vocabulary of pre-modern European culture.

By the late 1970s, having established his bona fides with his father, Kim Jong-il perceived that North Korean film had hit a dead end. At that time, he already possessed an extraordinary collection of world cinema. He understood the widening gap between the international and the national. To bridge the gap, Kim Jong-il sought help from outside.

Revolution lite
One of the most popular films in Bulgaria in the late 1980s was North Korea’s Hong Kil Dong (1986). A classic tale of a Korean Robin Hood, the film introduced Hong Kong-style action to the Soviet bloc. The ninja moves and soaring kicks dazzled East European audiences. “Hong Kil Dong attracted hundreds of thousands of people to the cinemas across Bulgaria,” writes Todor Nenov. “It was almost impossible to get tickets for it, unless you booked them two or three days earlier!”

Borrowing from Hong Kong action movies was only one of the ways that the North Korean film industry revived itself in the 1980s. Kim Jong-il borrowed more directly from outside when he arranged for the abduction of South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee in 1978. Six months later, Kim abducted her estranged husband, famous South Korean director Shin Sang-ok.

Before the pair managed to escape in 1986 during a stopover in Vienna, Shin Sang-ok introduced many new innovations into North Korean film. His most famous films during this period – a North Korean version of Godzilla called Pulgasari and a retelling of the famous Korean folk tale of Chunhyang called Love, Love, My Love – added science fiction and musical romance to the North Korean repertoire.

It is difficult to know whether the entertaining aspects of Hong Kil-Dong and Shin Sang-ok’s movies distracted North Korean moviegoers from the political messages or made those messages easier to absorb. The historical and fantastical settings allowed for greater leeway in presenting stories. Although the screenplays nod in the direction of the People, the writers needn’t lard the narrative with adoring references to the country’s leader or address the tasks facing contemporary North Korean society.

The contemporary love story in Traces of Life (1989) is by contrast entirely subordinate to the political message of building a utopian society. The movie tells the story of a grieving widow. Her husband has died in a suicide mission that blows up an invading South Korean ship. Guilty about arguing with him on the night he left to make the sacrifice, she exiles herself to the countryside, where she becomes a farmer and eventually raises rice production to unprecedented levels.

She thus transforms her love of husband into love of country. When Kim Il-sung himself comes to her farm and praises the collective’s success, her love achieves its apotheosis. The love of the hero leader has absolved her of the guilt she felt about not living up to the ideal of her hero husband.

Romance in North Korean films tends to be of the revolutionary not the bourgeois variety. As Ri Hyang, the character in Urban Girl Comes to Get Married (1993), explains to her friend, she wants “a man with perfume”. Her friend, surprised, replies that “a man is not a flower”. Ri Hyang continues: she is looking for “a man who creates his life with great ambition, a man who is respected by people”.

Although Urban Girl has a much lighter touch than Traces of Life, the message is the same: love should be reserved for those who want and can build “paradise on earth”. If that means partnering with the fellow on the farm who spends night and day working on a better breed of duck, as urban girl Ri Hyang ultimately does in the film, so be it.

Utopian dreams
Films in North Korea do not simply carry messages. They model behavior. Han Yong-sil, the projectionist in Comrades in Dreams, explains that the audiences for her films learn about new agricultural advances. And indeed, Urban Girl features information about livestock breeding and rice transplanting, and Traces of Life provides information on microbial fertilizer.

But the films don’t just supply technical content. They model revolutionary virtues. Kim Suk-young points to the popularity of amateur contests in which average North Koreans learn the lines of famous movie parts and then compete for the honor to present their monologues at the finals in Pyongyang. “It sounds very oppressive to us,” she says, “but there’s comfort in identifying with those heroes.” In this way we see that North Korean films don’t simply reveal or conceal reality. They actively construct North Korean society.

As a projectionist on a model farm, Han Yong-sil also struggles to live up to the examples set in the films she shows. Her husband is far away on an assignment to beautify Mount Paektu, the reputed birthplace of the Dear Leader. This is an important mission and, like the heroine of Traces of Life, she knows that she should subordinate her personal loneliness to the good of the nation. Still, it is clear that she finds this task very difficult.

Her display of emotions reveals the normalcy of North Koreans. Ironically, it is this very normalcy, because it falls short of the revolutionary ideal, that the North Korean government is loath to reveal to the world. And so the outside world tends to perceive North Koreans as slightly unreal, as mere mouthpieces for government propaganda.

In the 1960s and even into the 1970s, the utopian themes in North Korean cinema went hand in hand with the rising expectations of the population. After the devastation of World War II and then the Korean War, North Korea rapidly rebuilt itself. The government prided itself on the various industrial and agricultural advances that put it on par with and even ahead of South Korea. By the 1980s, however, North Korea was stagnant. It had fallen behind not only South Korea but even its own previous standards.

It is interesting that Kim Jong-il perceived that North Korean film, too, was stagnant at this time. A kind of cognitive dissonance must have begun to emerge among the North Korean population. The government and the films were portraying an ever-improving society and yet the population must have been noticing that reality was stubbornly not keeping pace. In the Soviet Union, during the years under Leonid Brezhnev, people could get their entertainment elsewhere – foreign films, books, samizdat publications. But North Koreans, until very recently, did not have any alternatives. And so the North Korean film industry turned to escapism, like romance stories.

But even escapism has its limits, for there is a utopian quality to Urban Girl and Pulgasari as well. Perhaps in response to the growing cognitive dissonance, the North Korean entertainment industry has begun to address new themes: divorce, love triangles, the double and triple shifts of women. “These dramas dealing with failure suggest that people are craving something different,” observes Kim Suk-young.

Reaching out?
The North Korean government boasts of its world-class film industry. But since a devastating loss in an international film festival in Czechoslovakia in the early 1970s, North Korea hasn’t tried very hard to promote its films abroad.

Pyongyang has, however, hosted its own international film festival since 1987 and allows visitors to its film studio. “North Korea has never been shy about propagandizing its grand achievements, and the film industry is not something secretive,” said journalist Ron Gluckman. “You can visit the studios as part of a tourist itinerary.

“I did so on my first visit to North Korea back in 1992. I visited again in 2004, and the equipment shown off was definitely ancient. I suspect they have been unable to keep up to date due to the economic situation, and film has suffered as a consequence.”

More recently, the government has allowed outside directors to make films inside the country. Pyongyang Crescendo (2005) follows the story of a German conductor who spent 10 days in the North Korean capital teaching music students. Dan Gordon and Nicholas Bonner have produced three documentary films: on the North Korean soccer team that made it to the World Cup quarterfinals in 1966, on two girls training for the mass games in Pyongyang, and most recently on the US soldier James Dresnok, who defected to North Korea in 1962.

The Game of Their Lives, the 2002 soccer documentary, showed that films could be made in North Korea, said Nick Bonner. However, the country isn’t exactly issuing a general invitation to the film world. “It is still very difficult to film in [North Korea] and is certainly a case-by-case situation,” Bonner added.

With A Schoolgirl’s Diary, the North Korean film industry will try once again to break into the international market. In this 2006 release, a teenager complains that her scientist father is too busy to pay attention to her. It is, according to reviews, a “humorous drama about a rebellious teenage girl”. It offers a picture of the North Korean elite that, in the film, uses computers, carries Mickey Mouse schoolbags, and eats good food.

It shows a few flaws in the system, such as deteriorating housing stock. But these are, according to Bonner, the “day-to-day flaws that fit the story line of struggle during this time when great sacrifice is needed to build a strong country”.

Regardless of whether A Schoolgirl’s Diary attracts an international audience on the merits of its story and its filmmaking, it will be an important document of North Korea’s evolving society. It will also show what kind of model behavior the government now wants to inculcate in its citizens.

“We might have to imagine the world with North Korea for another 25 or 50 years,” Kim Suk-young concludes. “We should look at film in order to understand and co-exist and to have a glimpse of North Korea instead of reducing it to a one-dimensional propaganda tool.”

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
6/19/2007

Having received permission from North Korean authorities, North Korean restaurants that are operating in China or in Southeast Asia are making fixed payments of $10,000 to 30,000 to North Korea.

The portion of payments made to North Korea by North Korean restaurants operating in China or Southeast Asia is a known reality, but this is the first time that the amount that these restaurants made to North Korea became known.

Kim Myung Ho (pseudonym, 59), who has experience running a North Korean restaurant in China under the auspices of a North Korean foreign currency-making activity organization, met our reporter in an unnamed quarter of Dandong in China on the 13th. He said, “Under the influence of each ministry in the administration or a money-making business, North Korea is trying to competitively establish restaurants abroad.”

According to Mr. Kim, the amount remitted by the restaurants is decided according to the number of waitresses and employees.

He said, “The amount sent back to the North is $10,000 if the number of employees is less than or equal to 15, but if it exceeds 20, then the amount of remittance is $20,000, and over that, the amount is capped at $30,000.”

Mr. Kim said, “Every year, the sum total is counted at the business headquarters in Pyongyang, but if there’s even a small default or lack of results, then the threat of evacuation is given.”

Currently, there are over a hundred odd restaurants which are known in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In the case that $10,000~30,000 is sent to North Korea every year, it can be calculated that North Korea is earning approximately several tens of thousands of dollars through overseas restaurant operations alone.

Mr. Kim revealed, “North Korean restaurants are receiving the limelight as main foreign currency-making activity businesses. Because they are pursuing business competitively, they have had to shut down operations one after the other due to the inability to manage internal affairs, such as employees breaking away.”

The shutdown of two North Korean restaurants, named “Pyongyang Moran Restaurant” and “Pyongyang Restaurant,” for several months due to the running away of waitresses was a confirmed fact of Daily NK’s investigations.

Presently, there are special trade companies who try to achieve the foreign-currency making activity plans issued by each ministry of the North Korean government. Most of North Korean restaurants that are operating overseas right now are associated with these trade companies.

Mr. Kim said, “Foreign currency collected in these ways is used as operating capital of superior offices Party and as a portion of the Party. Anything besides this, higher than that, is hard to say.”

The reason for the expensive price of food at North Korean restaurants is due to these remittance amounts. They exceed the price of food at surrounding restaurants by three times. In Dandung City, nangmyeon (Korean buckwheat noodle), which can be obtained for 6 Yuan at a high-class Chinese restaurant, is two times pricier at 10~15 Yuan at North Korean restaurants.

The price is expensive, but what makes these restaurants popular, which cannot be found at no other restaurant, is the performances accompanied by song and dance of North Korean waitresses. Performers are usually 20~25 young women who draw customers by singing North Korean songs and even Chinese songs.

Mr. Wang, a Chinese patron seeking a North Korean restaurant in the evening of the 14th, confessed, “I like the fact that I don’t have to seek out a karaoke, because I can sing and dance with the ladies of Pyongyang.”

Further, he expressed contentment that “I can receive high-class service which is difficult to receive at a Chinese restaurant, so it is good for entertaining business partners.” North Korean restaurants are drawing popularity by its unique business method of simultaneously providing food and amusement. Recently, they have tried to actively rouse regular customers by not only providing performances, but dancing with the customers.

A person of Korean-Chinese descent, who is pursuing North Korea-Chinese trade in Dandung, expressed, “It’s disappointing to see the sight of restaurants multiplying when trade is not sanctioned normally due to the lack of foreign currency. Businesses are operating with food and entertainment due to a lack of good income sources; in Dandung alone, there are over 10 restaurants.”

Daily NK
Yang Jung A
6/19/2007

“North Korean government has employed movies to propagate superiority of the regime and Su-Ryeong (supreme leader) absolutism. However, North Korean movies have seen a new wave recently.” John Feffer, co- director at Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), an Institute for politics & diplomacy in the U.S, declared through his article on the web on 12th.

Feffer remarked “North Korea was quickly recovered from World War∥ and Korean War. From the 60s to 70s, North Korean had had a great expectation on Utopia” “However, it has been stagnated since then.”

He was interested in the fact that even Kim Jong Il himself perceived that North Korean film was stagnant the same time of North Korean stagnation. Additionally, “The government and the films were portraying an ever-improving society and yet the population must have been noticing that reality was stubbornly not keeping pace” he explained.

◆ People noticed North Korean reality

He appraised “During the reign of Brezhnev (1965 ~1983), people in the former Soviet Union could get their entertainment from foreign movies, books and samizdat publications. On the other hand, the North Korean had no other alternatives” Thereafter, North Korean film industry has gone for a romance for escapism, he explained.

The most representative film is “the family” series. This series of short film, 9 episodes in all, pictured a struggle of the family caused by the couple’s divorce and their troubled children.

Feffer also said that North Korean movies, which haven’t opened to the public, have released to the world audience one after another.

Currently a film titled “A Schoolgirl’s Diary” portraying a story of a North Korean girl, has been expected to be released in Europe by a French distributor. Also, Daniel Gordon British director, have produced documentary films “A State of Mind (2005)” and “The Game of Their Lives (2002)” gaining permission from North Korean government.

Feffer pointed out “Since Film has played an prominent role in North Korean culture and history, scholars are beginning to comb through North Korean films for clues about how the system ticks.” However, he doubted whether North Korean films ultimately reveal the reality of the country or not.

He continued “We should look at film in order to understand and coexist and to have a glimpse of North Korea instead of reducing it to a one-dimensional propaganda tool.” “Besides, Kim Jong Il made most of movies to manage his political agenda.” He added.

He said that media have often said Kim Jong Il is a huge film buff.” “Therefore, the rise of the “Dear Leader” to political leadership is linked inextricably to his film career.” He explained.

• Bulgarian audience fascinated by “Hong Kil Dong”

He continued to observe “North Korean movies would play a role to idolize Kim Il Sung. And Kim Jong Il, unlike Deng Xiaoping in China and Gorbachev in the former Soviet Union, was able to escape from criticism against the hereditary succession of power.”

Feffer noted. “In the 70s, Kim Jong Il, having established idolatry cult on his father, Kim Il Sung with movies, realized North Korean film hit the dead end.“ At that time, Kim, who is a remarkable film collector, had clearly understood the widening gap between national and overseas films.”

” ‘Hong Kil Dong’ was the most popular movie in the late 80s in Bulgaria and this classic tale, Korean version of Robin Hood, introduced Hong Kong style action to the East European for the first time.” “The brilliant action footage of the film dazzled the East European audience. It was part of the plan to revive North Korean film adopting Hong Kong style action.” he specified.

Kim’s passion on film reached the peak as abducting Choi Eun Hee , South Korean actress, in 1978.

Feffer mentioned “He also abducted Shin Sang Ok, the estranged husband of Choi Eun Hee, and made him to produce movies. This couple had brought a new wave on North Korean film industry until their escape in 1986.”

”The most renowned movie among Shin’s production is “ Pulgasari,” North Korean version of “Godzilla” and “Love, Love, Oh my Love,” revived Chunhyang, classic romance in Korea. Shin Sang Ok adapted Romance and SF to Korean style story line,” he assessed.
However, he pointed out “It’s difficult to know whether entertaining aspect on “Hong Kil Dong” and the new wave on Shin Sang Ok distracted the North Korean audience from political messages or made those messages easily absorbed.”

Indeed, Feffer appraised Kim Jong Il is not the first individual who recognize the political uses of film.

He explained that North Korean regime have recognised the evolutional potential of the media. Korea Workers’ Party, under the Kim Il Sung’s lead, was able to occupy Northern Korean Peninsula after the World War ∥ relying on the support from the former Soviet Union. The Soviets had already pioneered film technique in the early days of the Russian revolution.

However, North Korea already showed its independent streak not following the Soviet model .

Feffer said “Film was ideal means to adapt Russian Communism to North Korean Nationalism, which is solely manipulated for idolatry on Kim Il Sung.” “Leaders in Pyongyang was able to control over all the context. Government can manipulate publications. Still, film can be more powerful maneuvers of the past for it reflects reality.”

Korea Herald
6/20/2007

The General Association of (pro-Pyongyang) Korean Residents in Japan or Chongryon (Jochongnyeon) is in the most serious trouble since its founding half a century ago. The Tokyo District Court on Monday ordered it to repay 62.7 billion yen (about $780 million) to a Japanese official debt-collection agency and allowed the agency to seize the premises housing Chongryon headquarters in Tokyo. If and when the Resolution and Collection Corp. starts procedures to impound the property, Chongryon will face eviction.

RCC took over non-performing loans from a Chongryon-affiliated credit union upon its bankruptcy, and filed a suit to have Chongryon repay them on the grounds that the loans had in effect been channeled to the Korean residents’ association. Chongryon asserted that the suit was politically motivated to deprive it of its headquarters building and force its dissolution. The judge rejected the claim and ruled in favor of RCC.

The Japanese media has extensively covered the suit as well as an unsuccessful attempt by Chongryon to turn over the ownership of the premises to a Japanese investment advisory firm headed by a former government intelligence chief in order to avoid seizure of the property. Ownership was transferred in the official registry, but no actual payment was made in the fake sale, and the transfer was canceled before the court ruling.

Chongryon, which has served as North Korea’s virtual embassy in Japan in the absence of diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang, has funneled funds to the North collected from Korean firms and individuals affiliated with it. Japanese government’s and civil society’s antagonism toward it grew over the past few years as a result of the disclosure of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals, its nuclear arms development and occasional test-firing of missiles toward and over Japan.

Japan’s “right turn” in recent days has curtailed Chongryon’s activities on political and social levels. Since Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara lifted tax exemption on Chongryon facilities, other autonomous bodies have followed suit, causing deeper financial woes to the organization. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to cut ties between Pyongyang and Chongryon as he believed the residents’ association was instrumental in North Korea’s illicit operations in Japan.

Under these circumstances, Mindan or the pro-Seoul Korean Residents’ Association in Japan sought amity with Chongryon and the two organizations issued a “joint statement” on May 17 last year agreeing on steps toward reconciliation and concord, including joint observation of the Aug. 15 liberation anniversary. That accord, however, has not produced practical results.

The impending seizure of the Chongryon headquarters in Tokyo in lieu of debt payment will hasten the decline of the organization. The Tokyo court ruling will be followed by similar court actions against provincial Chongryon chapters that are more or less in similar situations. Japanese media reported that nine of 29 major Chongryon facilities across the country have already been seized by the Resolution and Collection Corp.

Young affiliates of Chongryon are leaving the organization or naturalizing in Japan in increasing numbers. Older Chongryon Koreans who had lived with the fantasy of a “socialist paradise” in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula up until the 1980s have long lost their pride. They are now seeing their once beloved fatherland still demanding contributions from their expatriates in Japan when their organization is facing eviction and eventual dissolution. It is a bitter irony that some Japanese liberals are protesting to their government for what they call the political persecution of Chongryon.

Yonhap
Sohn Suk-joo
6/19/2007

An aging fuel pipeline exploded in northwestern North Korea about two weeks ago, killing more than 100 residents there, a South Korean civic group claimed Tuesday.

“On June 9, a fire broke out at a field in Sonchon County in North Pyongan Province and some 110 North Koreans were killed,” Good Friends, a Seoul-based Buddhist civic organization, said in an e-mail newsletter.

The alleged disaster came when a lot of people came out to collect gasoline from the fuel pipe, which burst and spilled fuel. “People collected gasoline in their vessels, pandemonium erupted, and a fire broke out,” the newsletter said.

The pipeline from a chemical company in North Pyongan Province to Taedong County in South Pyongan Province was being used to deliver 200 tons of gasoline across the fields and paddies, according to the letter.

“Gasoline costs about 2,500 won a kilogram in North Korea, so many people jockeyed for position for the purpose of making money and the fire started by accident,” it said, adding that the fire was not contained until the following day.

Seoul government and intelligence authorities said they were still trying to verify the claim.

“If such a big accident happened in Sonchon, the news might have spread outside already. I haven’t heard about it yet,” a Unification Ministry official said.

Joong Ang Daily
Hwang Young-jin
6/19/2007

Trade volume between North and South Koreas has increased more than threefold since the historical June 15 Declaration in 2000.

With an average increase of 24.3 percent, annually, the total amount will reach $1.7 billion by the end of the year, according to the report on inter-Korean Trade from the Korea International Trade Association, also known as KITA.

Annual trade volume in 2000 was $425 million, which increased to $1.3 billion last year. Trade volume so far this year until May has already reached $563 million, which is a 31.3 percent increase year-on-year.

Besides the overall growth, what is healthy about the trade quality is that commercial trade accounts for almost 70 percent of the total trade. That figure was below 60 in 2000, according to the report. Non-commercial trade refers to aid including items such as rice, clothing and fuel. In other words, they are products that were sent to North Korea free of charge.

“The success of the Kaesong Industrial Complex is the biggest reason [for the rise],” said Roh Sung-ho, head of the Inter-Korean trade support team at KITA. “We are accepting bids for additional space at the Kaesong complex, and three times more companies bid than there are lots available.”

With more and more companies establishing factories in Kaesong, more material is exported from the South, and more manufactured goods return, said Roh.

The value of goods leaving South Korea was higher than the value of goods returning. However, about 30 percent of those goods were aid and were given free of charge. When that is taken into account, the North made more money from its exports to the South than the South made in exports to the North.

This allows the North to record a profit in trade account books.

“The nuclear incident last year, didn’t affect inter-Korean trade. There might be minor falls, but I expect trade volume between the two Koreas to increase for the time being,” Roh said.

Choson Ilbo (Hat Tip DPRK Studies)
6/18/2007

North Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Kang Sok-ju, who is in responsible for Pyongyang’s diplomatic affairs including the nuclear issue, was in May made a member of the ruling National Defense Commission (NDC) led by dictator Kim Jong-il, Russian sources said Sunday.

The sources said Kim appointed Kang to the leadership body to strengthen his power base, with the move seen as ensuring the NDC holds sway over the military as well as domestic and foreign affairs.

Kang has served as the First Vice Foreign Minister since 1986 and is known as the only foreign ministry official who can directly advise Kim. He was a signer of the 1994 Geneva Accords between the U.S. and North Korea and the leader of Pyongyang’s representatives in the six-nation talks. Kang recently visited Moscow for treatment of a cataract.

The sources also said that General Lee Myung-soo, who was the North Korean military’s director of operations, has been made an organizer in the NDC.

The NDC currently consists of the country’s nine most powerful leaders, including Kim who serves as the body’s head, Vice Marshal Cho Myong Rok, who is Kim’s special envoy, Vice Marshal Kim Young-choon, General Rhee Yong-mu, General Kim Il-cheol and Secretary Chun Byung-ho.

Yonhap
6/18/2007

A Japanese court Monday allowed the seizure of the headquarters of a pro-North Korean organization based in Japan because of its failure to repay its debts, a news report said.

In its ruling, the Tokyo District Court ordered the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, better known here as “Chongryon,” to repay 62.7 billion yen to a government debt-collection body, the Kyodo News Agency reported.

Resolution and Collection Corp. (RCC) is expected to start procedures to confiscate the organization’s building, as it claims that the debt was part of loans extended by now-defunct credit unions associated with the group.

The RCC, which took over the non-performing loans from the credit unions, claimed that Chongryon is bound to pay the 62.7 billion yen (US$508 million) as the money was effectively purported to be handed over to Chongryon under the arrangements of the credit associations.

In connection with the suit, an investment advisory firm headed by the former chief of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, Shigetake Ogata, tried in vain to purchase the Chongryon head office for 3.5 billion yen (US$28.4 million) in an effort to prevent the premises from being seized.

Chongryon acknowledged the existence of the loans, but failed to reach an out-of-court settlement with the RCC.

Chongryon argued that the RCC, a public organization, had no right to demand that Chongryon pay the loans at face value, since the RCC had acquired the debts at very low prices.

“There is a purpose in depriving Chongryon of the headquarters’ premises and leading it to dissolution,” Chongryon said. “It offends public order and morality.”