Archive for February, 2007

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NK Leader Finds Life’s Luxuries in Gibraltar

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Korea Times
2/2/2007

Kim Jong-il, the idiosyncratic leader of North Korea, may be dispensing Hennessy cognac and Cartier watches to his cronies for a little while longer, thanks to a 300-year-old territorial dispute between the United Kingdom and Spain, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

The times said the precise status of Gibraltar, a hunk of British-owned rock at the mouth of the Mediterranean, has caused a new row between London and Madrid that is delaying a European Union (EU) ban on luxury goods sales to Pyongyang.

The ban was agreed by the United Nations last October as one of a series of sanctions against North Korea, following its Oct. 8 underground nucear weapons test.

The aim was to deprive Kim and his supporters of some of the finer things in life, including thoroughbred horses, luxury vehicles, watches, pearls and musical instruments, the daily said.

The sanctions were adopted by EU foreign ministers in November, but they are still not in force across the bloc, according to the world-renowned finacial newsppwer.

“If Kim is wondering why, he need look no further than the War of the Spanish Succession and the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that ended it _ handing Gibraltar to Britain,’’ the times said.

Problems arose when Madrid spotted that the EU regulation needed to implement the sanctions contained a reference to the “competent authorities’’ responsible for enforcing them: listed in the small print was Gibraltar.

Spain’s foreign ministry wants the reference to Gibraltar deleted before the EU regulation can come into force.

“We do not recognize Gibraltar’s authority in international policy,’’ the daily quoted the ministry as saying, “The UK is the only competent authority in this respect.”

The times quoted British diplomats as saying that there would be a legal hole in the sanctions if Gibraltar was not included.

It said both sides are trying to resolve the dispute and insist it is a hiccup in improving relations over the colony.

The newspaper said that in September the two countries, along with Gibraltar, signed an agreement on airport access, telecoms and border controls, hailed as the beginning of a new era of cooperation.

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Posted in EU, International Governments, International trade | Comments Closed

North Korea Jacks Up Sand Prices, Switches Currency

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Choson Ilbo (hat tip One Free Korea)
2/2/2007
A sand supplier under virtual control of the North Korean army has notified its South Korean customers that the price of sand exported to South Korea would be going up by 60 percent.

On Thursday, the Korea International Trade Association, the Korean Aggregates Association and importers of North Korean sand said that the North recently sent an unexpected notice that it would raise the price of sand next month by W900 (US$1=W937) from US$1.6 (W1,500) to 2 euros (W2,400) per cubic meter.

Exports of North Korea’s sand, which is extracted mainly from seaside areas around Haeju, Hwanghae Province, are virtually controlled by the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces, the command authority of the North Korean People’s Army.

Chun Seong-whun, a senior research fellow with the Korean Institute for National Unification, said, “It would seem cash-strapped North Korea is trying to obtain foreign currency by raising the price of sand, which is quite flexible.”

Last year around 9.09 million cubic meters of sand were imported from the North. If the same amount of sand is imported this year, the North will see an additional W8.2 billion. In addition, experts believe that the North wants to change to euros because it is under suspicion of counterfeiting dollars. An increase in sand prices could seriously undermine profits for around 20 aggregates firms in South Korea.

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Posted in Finance, International trade, Military, Mining/Minerals, Sand | Comments Closed

N. Korean Food Program Needs Funds to Continue to 2009, UN Says

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Bloomberg.com
Emma O’Brien
2/2/2007

The United Nations program to feed about a quarter of North Korea’s 24 million people needs funds to operate until 2009, after countries such as the U.S. ended or reduced their support, the head of the World Food Program said.

“We only have 16 percent of the funds needed to do our work in North Korea over the next two years,” James T. Morris said late yesterday in Wellington, New Zealand. “The U.S. used to be our largest donor in North Korea, but we haven’t received any money from them for the past 8 to 9 months.”

More than 1 million people died in North Korea during the 1990s as a result of famine caused by drought, floods and economic mismanagement. North Korea’s international isolation deepened last October when the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions after the communist country tested its first nuclear bomb.

The North Korea government said in 2005 it no longer needed the UN program that aimed to feed about 6.5 million people because it succeeded in harvesting enough grain. Floods last year reduced grain production by an estimated 90,000 metric tons, almost one-fifth of the minimum harvest needed to feed the population, the WFP said at the time.

“I am very concerned about the situation in North Korea,” Morris said, as the country’s crop deficit is forecast to be 1 million tons this year. “We are not able to do our job unless there is additional support to provide food.”

Morris, who will leave the directorship of the WFP early this year after 5 years at the helm, was in Wellington for talks with New Zealand’s aid agency, NZAID, on food aid to East Timor. His speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs was his last on an international visit.

The WFP and its sister agencies, the UN Development Program and the UN children’s fund Unicef, are the only major non- governmental organizations still active in North Korea.

Government Restrictions

North Korea is the only country in the world where the UN program has to work through the government. The administration chooses all their local workers and all food has to be distributed via government-selected contractors.

“It’s the only place in the world where we don’t have universal access,” Morris said. “The government makes life very difficult for our work.”

The program used to distribute to 183 counties in North Korea. The government now restricts them to 29. Constraints placed on the program by the government are “abhorrent and unacceptable,” he said.

The average 7-year-old North Korean boy is 8 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than his South Korean counterpart, Morris said, and 40 percent of North Korean women are anemic.

Russia, China

Russia is now the largest contributor to North Korean aid, Morris said. The U.S. provided about 47 percent of all contributions, in both commodities and funds, over the past 10 years. The WFP, the UN’s largest division, had an operating budget of more than $2.8 billion last year, he said.

China and South Korea, which send food directly to North Korea, are also scaling down their aid.

“They intend to reduce their bilateral food and fertilizer assistance,” Morris said, adding China’s toughened stance toward North Korea since the missile test may be behind the move.

China, North Korea’s closest ally, supported the UN sanctions imposed after the nuclear test that ban sales of military equipment and luxury goods to the country. The U.S. imposed financial restrictions on North Korean bank accounts in October 2005 over allegations of money laundering and counterfeiting.

The issue stalled talks between North Korea, the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program. The forum resumed in December after a 13-month break with North Korea refused to enter discussions within the six-nation forum until the U.S. lifts the sanctions.

The six nations will hold another round of talks in Beijing beginning Feb. 8.

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Posted in 1990s Famine, Agriculture, Agriculture statistics, Arduous March, DPRK Policies, International Aid, Russia, Statistics, UN, UN World Food Program, UNICEF | Comments Closed

Competition is American imperialists’ way!

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Chan Ku
2/2/2007

The doll producing factory, ‘Pyongyang Sunpyong Stuffed Toy Factory’ was named by myself. Since such toy factory was first case in North Korea, the party officials had great interest in it and supported my business.

I had a chance to look at products in my North Korean factory for the first in six years in Pyongyang.

Female workers in the factory had contributed the most. The material they had to handle was rare in North Korea. For most of them, it must have been their first time looking at such material. Still, factory employees labored and started to produce dolls.

Dolls of white bear, brown bear, puppies and kitten were manufactured. Even I felt like being a child when I was looking at those dolls. Some of them were planned for export to South Korea while the rest would remain for North Korean kids. I was dreaming of North Korean children holding the dolls produced in my factory.

If production phase kept up, there would be more order from international buyers and I could be able to teach more skills and know-how to North Korean technicians.

My next objective was to gradually increase the production rate to a hundred thousand dolls per month. What I had achieved by then took about six months. One hundred thousands dolls per month seemed an easy task.

But a ‘North Korean’ trouble occurred again. Since salary was set immobile, production cost was higher if output was low. When output was increased, the number of inferior goods also rose.

So I pushed the employees to work hard and cautiously at the same time with low rate of inferior goods. The reply was “we don’t work in a capitalists’ way!” Workers did not get paid more for extra production.

“The Great Leader comrade Kim Il-Sung and the Dear Leader comrade Kim Jong-Il already told us how to work. We only follow that.”

I could not find a word to respond.

Also, at the same time, I divided the 240 workforce into four divisions to stimulate competition. I planned to give them motivation by awarding the best division with flour. But such way was, for my employees, an ‘American imperialists’ way, not a Korean one.’

Despite such hardship, I tried my best. I focused not only on production rate but also general working environment to be comfortable and friendly. In order to do so, I turned on bright music inside the factory. Also, I emphasized the workers to make toys lively. Kids communicate with dolls that are lifelike and vivid.

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Posted in Sunpyong Stuffed Toy Factory, Toys | Comments Closed

China eyes Mt. Pektu VI

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Seoul Cautious Over Rift With China
Korea Times
Lee Jin-woo
2/2/2007

South Korea tried Friday to downplay its short track skaters’ action over Korea’s historical claim to a mountain on the border between North Korea and China during the ongoing Winter Asian Games.

On Wednesday, five South Korean female short track skaters held up seven placards with the message “Mount Paektu is our territory” during the awards ceremony following their silver medal win in the 5,000-meter relay.

A high-ranking South Korean official said the young skaters’ behavior was impromptu and should not be interpreted to have political significance.

“We have stressed that both Seoul and Beijing should deal with this issue calmly,” a government official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “We delivered the message yesterday and today to our Chinese counterpart.”

The organizing committee of the Changchun Asian Games expressed regret Thursday and asked that similar incidents to be prevented in a letter to Kim Jung-kil, head of the Korea Olympic Committee. The games will end tomorrow.

The Chinese officials defined South Korean players’ act as a political activity, which is banned under the charter of the International Olympic Committee and the Olympic Council of Asia.

China’s foreign ministry also called on a senior South Korean diplomat in Beijing on Thursday afternoon and expressed regret over the issue.

South Korean skaters’ surprising move at the award ceremony came after the Chinese government made efforts to promote Mt. Paektu as “Changbai Mountain” during the games.

China has reportedly renamed schools after the mountain and has also ordered a dozen hotels run by ethnic Koreans near the mountain to halt business.

On Sept. 6, the organizing committee lit a torch at the top of the mountain, angering many South Koreans. The mayor of Changchun, the host city, said the mountain was chosen as the torch site on Sept. 6 because three rivers _ Tuman, Amrok and Songhua _ originate there. Tuman and Amrok rivers are known as Tumen and Yalu in China.

Many South Koreans believe the efforts are part of the Northeast Project, a Chinese academic project to reexamine the ancient history of the region.

They view the project as an attempt to distort ancient Korean history in the northeastern territory of what is now China, including the Koguryo Kingdom (37 B.C.-A.D. 668) and the Palhae Kingdom (698-926).

Beijing has disclosed plans to list the mountain as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage site, and plans to host the 2018 Winter Olympics there.

Unlike the angry South Korean public and news media, the South Korean government has remained calm over China’s actions to avoid stirring up a diplomatic dispute.

Under an agreement struck in 1962, China and North Korea, two sovereign states and U.N. members, agreed to share the mountain. The North has claim to 54.5 percent of the mountain, while China claims the remaining 45.5 percent.

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Posted in China, South Korea | Comments Closed

China makes little investment in N. Korea since October nuclear test

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Yonhap
2/2/2007

China has made little investment in North Korea since the North conducted its first nuclear device test in October last year, but their two-way trade volume rose 21.6 percent year-on-year over the past few months, informed sources said Friday.

“Over the three months since the October test, China made no investment in the North except in some low-budget mining development. But North Korea’s dependence on China in terms of trade increased sharply,” a senior government official said, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the information.

Another source said from October to November in 2006, the trade volume between North Korea and Japan declined 75 percent year-on-year to US$7.9 million, illustrating the full range of the impact from United Nations sanctions over the North’s surprise nuclear test, they said.

Japan has shown the strongest response to the North’s nuclear test and long-range missile launches last year, banning North Korean goods and citizens from entering the country as well as barring its ships from Japanese ports.

In all of 2006, the trade volume between North Korea and China rose 7.5 percent year-on-year to $1.69 billion, while two-way trade between North Korea and Japan decreased 34 percent to $119 million in the first 11 months of last year, the source said.

“North Korea can make financial dealings only via Russia and a few other countries because it has a lot of trouble in doing financial transactions and wooing investments since the United States imposed financial sanctions on the North in September 2005,” he said.

The U.S. cut off Macau-based Banco Delta Asia’s access to the U.S. financial system, alleging that North Korea used the bank to counterfeit U.S. dollars and engage in other financial wrongdoing.

North Korea boycotted the six-party talks on its nuclear disarmament until December, saying that the U.S. should discuss ways to lift the sanctions on the sidelines of the six-nation talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S. China, Japan and Russia.

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Posted in China, Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, International trade, Japan, Statistics, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

China Eyes Mt. Pektu V

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Chinese schools renamed after border mountain
Joong Ang Daily
2/2/2007

China has renamed 18 primary and secondary schools after [Pektu] a scenic mountain that straddles the border with North Korea, a Chinese committee said.

The Committee for the Protection, Development and Management of the Changbaishan Protection Zone under the control of the Jilin Province, northeast China, said Wednesday it changed the names in July of last year to boost the protection of the mountain. The provincial government administers the Chinese part of the mountain.

The schools now have 11,000 students and 1,720 teachers, according to the committee.

The 2,750-meter (9,000-foot) peak, the highest on the Korean Peninsula, is a major tourist attraction for both Koreans and Chinese. North Korea signed an agreement in the 1960s to secede the territorial rights to about half of Mount Paekdu to China.

China has irritated Koreans by claiming the ancient Goguryeo Kingdom (B.C. 37-A.D. 668), which ruled most of northeastern China as well as the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, was a Chinese provincial government.

Some South Koreans insist the 1904 agreement between China and Japan on the transfer of China’s Yanbian region, which encompasses Mount Paekdu, should be nullified because Korea’s diplomatic sovereignty was deprived at that time, several years before Japan formally colonized the Korean Peninsula in 1910.

In September last year, China issued a directive to about a dozen hotels operating there, including four run by South Koreans and one by an ethnic Korean resident of Japan, to cease operations and leave by year’s end. The move was seen as part of its initiative to make the Mount Paekdu area a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage site.

In a related move, Jilin Province has announced its plans to develop the mountain as the country’s highest-level tourism zone.

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Posted in China, Tourism | Comments Closed

Dear Leader’s Exiled Son Surfaces in Macau

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Chosun ilbo
2/1/2007

A man presumed to be North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s eldest son Kim Jong-nam appeared in Macau on Tuesday, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported. A South Korean government official confirmed the report on Wednesday. It seems Kim Jong-nam has not been allowed to return to North Korea and been wandering the globe for six years.

Once heir apparent of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-nam first grabbed international headlines when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport with his wife and son in May 2001. The reasons for his departure from North Korea are unclear. According to former high-ranking North Korean officials who defected, Kim junior was branded a traitor to the revolution by his father after he talked about a Chinese-style reform and opening policy at a private gathering in 2000. They say he was forced to leave the country over a power struggle with his stepmother Ko Young-hee, the mother of his younger half-brothers Jong-chul and Jung-woon.

Since then, he has reportedly been staying in China. He was spotted at expensive restaurants in Beijing several times in January last year. Kim contacted an ethnic Chinese trader who was arrested on charges of espionage in South Korea in April 2006, a government official said. He gets along with members of the so-called Taizidang or princes’ club comprising children of prominent Chinese leaders like former president Jiang Zemin.

Kim is said to have made money from a trade business, which he set up with the Taizidang group. He has shown interest in the IT sector since his Pyongyang days and now is in touch with IT experts he met when he visited Hong Kong and Macau to gather information. Despite being a stateless refugee, Kim does not appear restrained either socially or financially.

Analysts say China does not treat him as an unwelcome guest. Kim Jong-nam tried to return to Pyongyang after his stepmother died in June 2004, but to no avail. Security strategy specialist Lee Ki-dong says anti-Kim Jong-nam forces remain strong in North Korea, adding the fact that Kim junior has not returned proves that the North’s succession structure remains unstable.

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Posted in Computing/IT, Political economy | Comments Closed

Weird but Wired

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

the Economist
2/1/2007

Online dating in Pyongyang? Surely not

KIM JONG IL, North Korea’s dictator, has interests in modern technology beyond his dabbling in nuclear weaponry. In 2000 he famously asked Madeleine Albright, then America’s secretary of state, for her e-mail address. Mr Kim believes there are three kinds of fool in the 21st century: smokers, the tone-deaf and the computer-illiterate.

One of his young compatriots is certainly no fool. “Officially, our computers are mainly for educational and scientific purposes,” he says, before claiming: “Chatting on our web, I also met my girlfriend.”

Internet dating is only one of the surprises about the internet in North Korea, a country almost as cut off from the virtual world as it is from the real one. At one of the rare free markets open to foreigners, brand-new computers from China are sold to the local nouveaux riches complete with Windows software. Elsewhere, second-hand ones are available far more cheaply. In most schools, computer courses are now compulsory.

In the heart of the capital, Pyongyang, visitors are supposed to be able to surf freely through the 30m official texts stored at the Grand People’s Study House, the local version of the Library of Congress. The country’s first cyber café opened in 2002 and was soon followed by others, even in the countryside. Some are packed with children playing computer games.

But the world wide web is still largely absent. Web pages of the official news agency, KCNA, said to be produced by the agency’s bureau in Japan, divulge little more than the daily “on the spot guidance” bestowed by Kim Jong Il. No one in Pyongyang has forgotten that glasnost and perestroika—openness and transparency—killed the Soviet Union.

The local ideology being juche, or self-reliance, the country installed a fibre-optic cable network for domestic use, and launched a nationwide intranet in 2000. Known as Kwangmyong (“bright”), it has a browser, an e-mail programme, news groups and a search engine. Only a few thousand people are allowed direct access to the internet. The rest are “protected” (ie, sealed off) by a local version of China’s “great firewall”, controlled by the Korean Computer Centre. As a CIA report puts it, this system limits “the risks of foreign defection or ideological infection”. On the other hand, North Koreans with access to the outer world are supposed to plunder the web to feed Kwangmyong—a clever way to disseminate technical information to research institutes, factories and schools without losing control.

Yet even today, more and more business cards in Pyongyang carry e-mail addresses, albeit usually collective ones. A west European businessman says he is astonished by the speed with which his North Korean counterparts respond to his e-mails, leading him to wonder if teams of people are using the same name. This is, however, North Korea, and sometimes weeks go by in virtual silence.

In some places, North Korea’s internet economy seems to be overheating. Near the northern border, Chinese cell phones—and the prepaid phone cards needed to use them—are a hot black-market item, despite government efforts to ban them. The new web-enabled phones might soon give free access to the Chinese web which, for all its no-go areas, is a paradise of liberty compared with Kwangmyong. In this region, known for its casinos, online gambling sites are said to be increasingly active.

Last summer the police were reported to have cracked down on several illegal internet cafés which offered something more daring than the average chatting and dating. Despite the signs that North Korea’s web culture is ready to take off, internet-juche remains a reassuring form of control in the hermit regime.

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Posted in Black markets, Cell phones, Civil society, Communications, Economic reform, Internet, Korea Computer Center (KCC), Library | Comments Closed

N. Korea’s English-language newspaper distributed in some 100 countries

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Yonhap
2/1/2007

North Korea’s weekly English-language newspaper is distributed in some 100 countries abroad, and its reporters are regularly sent overseas to receive intensive foreign language education, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper based in Japan reported Thursday.

The tabloid eight-page Pyongyang Times, launched in 1965, also runs a Web site featuring both English and French-language editions, reported the Chosun Sinbo, a Korean-language newspaper published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan.

“All of its reporters and newsroom staff receive professional language education, and North Korean authorities are eager to send the reporters and translators abroad for hands-on experience,” the newspaper said.

Choe Chun-sok, editor-in-chief of the Pyongyang Times, said North Korea’s October nuclear device test inspired them to continue to engage in media activities with an eye toward the world. “Recently, we dealt a lot with stories on U.S. policy to stifle and isolate our country, as well as Japan’s crackdown on Koreans living there,” he said.

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Posted in Domestic publication | Comments Closed

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