Archive for April, 2007

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Russian merchants greatly increasing in Pyongyang

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Daily NK
Han Young Jin
4/5/2007

On the 30th, Huanqiushibao, an international affiliated magazine of the Chinese People’s Daily, noted the above statement on Russia’s recent movement to invest in North Korea.

The paper said, “The Russian natural fuel gas business has already completed the preparation for providing energy support and is planning to manufacture petroleum in North Korea.”

“Russia has pioneered the Chungjin-Siberia railroad for a long time” and “if they retain the Eurasia continental rail, then they will gain an annual economic profit of four hundred million dollars,” the paper commented.

Further, the paper said that “Russia is finishing its preparation of surplus concentration in the Wondong (Far Eastern region) to export to North Korea.” As a provision of support to invest in North Korea, Russia is also driving the construction of the Kraskino-Chungjin 50,000 kv railway line for exporting Korea remodeling business and concentration of energy in Wondong to three thermal generating plants in the North.

The paper relays a Russian economic expert’s voice to expand investment in North Korea

Prekofts, Russia’s Wondong Economic Research Institute Chair, said, while emphasizing the importance of investment expansion, “We cannot limit items to invest in North Korea to resource and energy areas. China has already built a glass factory in North Korea. Why can’t we do what China is doing?”

Russia Considers Cancellation of 80 percent of North Korean debt

The paper said, “According to the numbers of the Russian government authorities, the 2006 trade figure with North Korea amounted to 210 million dollars and has been reduced by 13 percent compared to the previous year.” In the midst of such a situation, Russia has sufficiently considered the development potential of the North Korean market and is establishing a plan to encroach on the market according to the forecast that “it will be advantageous for the pre-acquiring party.”

According to the paper, President Putin commented, “The economic power with the world’s fastest rate of financial progress is overwhelmingly the Asia-Pacific region.”

The paper also said that because Russia considers of importance the strategic position of North Korea for connecting Europe and Asia-Pacific countries, it has considered the forward-looking way of remitting 80 percent (64 hundred million dollars) of North Korea’s 80 hundred million dollar debt.

The current system of exchange between North Korea and Russia is the former exporting labor power and agricultural goods and latter exporting energy, oil, and raw materials.

The paper reported that there has been opposing public opinion regarding Russia’s investment in North Korea. Because North Korea is not economically well-off, short-term recovery of investment gains is difficult.

The paper pointed out that a Russian merchant Merikonoft, who engages in international trade, said the following, “I do not have immediate plans to invest in North Korea. North Korea does not have laws for protecting foreign capital, so doing business is a type of exploration.”

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Posted in Energy, International trade, Natural Gas, Railways, Russia, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

Pyongyang fills a long-vacant post

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Joong Ang Daily
Lee Young-jong and Ser Myo-ja
4/5/2007

As relations between the two Koreas warm, North Korea filled a key post that had been empty since August with a veteran diplomat, intelligence sources in Seoul said yesterday.

Kim Yang-gon is now director of the unification front of the Worker’s Party, a position roughly equivalent to South Korea’s unification minister.

“Kim was appointed to the post last month, shortly after inter-Korean relations were restored [in February],” a senior intelligence official said. “We assessed that North Korea was realigning its South Korea policy makers.”

Kim, 69, had been the councilor of the National Defense Commission, headed by Kim Jong-il. The Workers’ Party had left the unification front director post empty since Rim Tong-ok died in August of last year.

Since the 1980s, Kim Yang-gon has served in various key foreign affairs posts, including vice director and director of the international department of the party. Sources said Kim Jong-il wanted someone with international affairs ability because inter-Korean relations depend upon the six-nation nuclear talks and U.S.-North Korea relations.

Kim Yang-gon is also one of Kim Jong-il’s closest aides. After Workers’ Party Secretary Hwang Jang-yop defected to the South in 1997, Hyon Jun-guk was fired as the party’s international department director. Kim Jong-il appointed Kim, and he has accompanied the North Korean leader on many important meetings with foreign visitors. Kim also accompanied Kim Jong-il during rare trips to China and Russia. “We will look forward to appointments to other empty posts, such as the secretary of the Unification Front for the party and the chairman of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland,” the intelligence source said.

The two posts to be filled were left vacant after Kim Yong-sun died in a 2003 traffic accident. They are both key North Korea organs that make policy with regard to South Korea.

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Posted in National Defense Commission, Political economy, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

Inter-Korean commercial trade rises 40 percent in first quarter

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Yonhap
4/5/2007

Commercial trade between South and North Korea rose 40 percent to US$187.08 million year-on-year in the first quarter, a top unification official said Thursday.

The increase was mainly attributed to an influx of zinc bullion, sand, fishery items, shoes, clothing and watches into a joint industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Kaesong.

“But noncommercial trade between the two sides rose a mere 6.7 percent to $278.11 million in the first quarter because of the halt in government and civic aid to the North,” Vice Unification Minister Shin Un-sang said in a press briefing.

Last week, South Korea sent the first batch of its promised 300,000 tons of fertilizer aid as well as flood relief supplies to the North.

Shortly after the North conducted missile tests in July, the South suspended food and fertilizer aid along with its emergency aid to the impoverished North. In retaliation, the communist nation suspended inter-Korean talks, family reunions and the construction of a family reunion center.

In March, the two Koreas agreed to resume humanitarian aid and family reunion events just days after North Korea promised to take steps to shut down its main nuclear reactor and eventually disable it in return for energy aid from South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.

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Posted in International Aid, International trade, Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), South Korea, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013), Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

N. Korea’s taekwondo chief due in Seoul for talks on merging governing bodies

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

Yonhap
4/5/2007

The head of the world taekwondo body led by North Korea will come to Seoul on Friday to discuss details of merging the two world governing bodies of the traditional Korean martial art, officials here said Thursday.

Chang Ung, the head of the International Taekwondo Federation (ITF), is due to arrive in Seoul Friday morning via a direct flight from Pyongyang, leading a 47-member delegation including 30 North Korean taekwondo athletes, an official of the ITF Korea Corp. said.

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Posted in Civil society, Sports | Comments Closed

Update: North Koreans eating huge rabbits

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

London Times (Hat tip DPRK Studies)
Kim jong Il ate my rabbits for his birthday
David Crossland
4/5/2007

Karl Szmolinsky sold the rabbits to Pyongyang so that they could be used to set up a breeding programme to boost meat production in the Hermit Kingdom.

The 68-year-old breeder had been due to travel to North Korea after Easter to provide advice on setting up a rabbit farm. A North Korean official rang him last week to say that the trip had been cancelled. Mr Szmolinsky said he suspected that his rabbits, which grow to the size of dogs and can weigh over 10kg (22lb), were eaten at a birthday banquet for Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, although he emphasised that he had no evidence of this.

Original story below…

(more…)

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Posted in Agriculture | 1 Comment »

Imperialists’ Crafty Method for Domination Blasted

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

KCNA
4/5/2007

A carrot approach being taken by the imperialists serves as a lever to carry out their appeasement strategy. This is a very crafty and wicked plot to create illusion about them by appeasing and deceiving their opponents in a bid to benumb their anti-imperialist spirit and completely disarm them ideologically and morally.

Rodong Sinmun Thursday observes this in a signed article.

It goes on:

The above-said approach may bring consequences as dangerous as open aggression by force of arms.

One should not interpret the above-said approach as a sort of change in the aggressive nature of the imperialists. The carrot approach of the imperialists which is bound to be accompanied by appeasement tactics and smiling diplomacy is designed to do harm to their opponents at a slow pace till they prove ineffective in face of their moves for domination and end up collapsing.

It is the aim sought by the imperialists in the above-said approach to create illusion about them and thus put other countries under the yoke of domination and subjugation and gratify their interests.

The imperialists, while acting an “apostle of peace” by abusing the wish of humankind for a peaceful free world, are craftily working to confuse the spirit of people and cause them to harbor illusion about imperialism.

They are intensifying economic domination and subjugation of other countries by such levers as “aid”, “cooperation” and “loan”.

This is eloquently proved by the reality of those countries which have been put under the yoke of political subjugation after receiving the “aid” and “loan” offered by the imperialists as a “kind gesture.”

There will be disastrous consequences for those countries which abandon their revolutionary principle and meet the imperialists’ demand, taken in by glossy words uttered by them as part of their appeasement policy. Worse still, their wrong behavior may lead to the loss of their sovereignty. All countries should, therefore, be vigilant against the imperialists’ carrot approach and should not be tempted by it under any circumstances.

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Posted in Domestic publication, Finance, International Aid | Comments Closed

Education institutions in the DPRK

Thursday, April 5th, 2007

NK Choson.com

Kimchaek University of Technology, the top college of science and engineering as well as a central higher educational institution of North Korea, is located in Pyongyang, not in Kimchaek.

Colleges and universities in North Korea are classified into two: central and regional. But criteria for the classification differ from those of the South. It’s wrong to assume that those located in the capital are central institutes of higher education, and those housed in provincial cities and towns are regional ones.

Central higher educational institutions as referred to in the North denote “central-grade institutions of higher education founded in Pyongyang and elsewhere in the provinces for the purpose of educating prospective national leaders, engineers and scientists.” Accordingly, colleges and universities located in Pyongyang are not necessarily central institutions of higher education; nor those situated in the provinces are all regional colleges and universities.

Chongjin Mining and Metallurgy College, the only one of its kind not only in the North but in Asia, and Wonsan Agriculture College, the first of its kind in the North, for example, are definitely central colleges, though the former is located in North Hamgyong Province, and the latter in Kangwon Province, respectively. The same applies to Shinuiju Light Industry College located in North Pyongan Province; Sariwon College of Koryo Pharmacy in North Hwanghai Province; and Hamhung Hydrographic and Power College in South Hamgyong Province. Though located in provincial cities, they are all central colleges founded with regional features taken into account.

On the other hand, Pyongyang Machinery College, Pyongyang Agriculture College, Pyongyang Printing Industry College, though all are located in the capital, are classified as regional colleges. Each province or special city under the direct jurisdiction of the central government in the North has two normal and teachers colleges and one arts and physical education colleges, all of which are typical regional ones. Factory, farm and fishing farm colleges attached to industrial entities also belong to the regional category.

What is the central criterion separating central high educational institutions from their regional counterparts? It depends on who administers and manages them. Those administered directly by the Education Ministry are central institutions of higher education; those administered by the Education Department of the People’s Committee of a relevant province or special city placed directly under the jurisdiction of the central government are regional colleges or universities. Needless to say, no regional institutions of higher education are free from Education Ministry guidance; the guidance is only given indirectly through the People’s Committee Education Department of a pertinent province or special city. In an exception, Kim Il Sung University, the most prestigious higher educational institute in the North, is placed under the direct jurisdiction of the cabinet.

Central colleges and universities, wherever they are located, recruit students from across the land, and their graduates are assigned to any agencies, factories, corporations or research institutes in the country. On the other hand, only seniors and graduates from senior high schools in pertinent provinces and special cities are eligible to enter regional institutes of higher education, whose graduates, when given job assignments upon graduation, are confined to offices or factories in their respective administrative areas.

North Korea has quite a few institutes of higher education that are called colleges, entirely unrelated to central and regional colleges, but whose nature and curricula are totally different. The Yalu River College trains espionage agents sent to the South under the jurisdiction of the Reconnaissance Bureau of the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces; Pyongyang College of Technology, also called the State Security Agency Political College, produces prospective leaders of the intelligence agency.

The Automation College, once called Mirim College, is a special college founded for the purpose of turning out manpower needed for waging electronics information warfare, placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces. The College of People’s Economics and International Relations College are institutes retraining leading staff of the party headquarters; the College of Communism run by each province or special city is a special educational institute retraining junior leaders of regional chapters of the Workers’ Party.

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Posted in Computing/IT, Education, Kim Chaek University of Technology, Kim Il Sung University, Light Industry, Manufacturing, Shinuiju Light Industry College, Wonsan Agriculture College | Comments Closed

North Korean diplomats resist order to send children back home

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Joong Ang Daily
Chang Se-jeong and Ser Myo-ja
4/4/2007

An order from Pyongyang directing North Korean diplomats in overseas posts to send their children back home has been met with defiance, sources in Beijing said yesterday. Pyongyang has extended the deadline for sending the children home until the end of this month in the face of the diplomats’ reluctance to obey.

On March 6, the JoongAng Ilbo reported that the communist Workers’ Party of North Korea had issued the order in February, but no explanation was provided. Under the order, children over the age of five were to go back to the North by the end of March.

A businessman in Beijing who has extensive contacts with North Korea said yesterday that the deadline has been extended because diplomats are demanding more time to complete paperwork for the forced homecomings.

In fact, they appear to be trying to resist. “Some are trying their best to make their kids an exception by using personal ties, and others are trying to delay the return as much as possible,” the businessman said.

Another source in Beijing said “diplomats were feeling insecure that their children may not be able to leave the country ever again after going back.”

About 3,000 children of North Korean diplomats in 50 countries are affected by the order.

Yonhap News Agency also reported the rare challenge by the diplomats to their dictatorial regime. “North Korea has reportedly dispatched Kim Chang-kyu, a vice foreign minister, to China, where such resistance has been most visible, to survey actual conditions and sentiments of its diplomats there,” Yonhap reported.

The report also quoted an anonymous source as saying that none of the North Korean diplomats in China have sent their kids back home.

While it was unclear why the North decided to place such strict controls on the diplomats’ children, sources in Beijing speculate that the reason could be related to fears that the children could become a destabilizing force due to their contact with the world beyond the reclusive communist country.

The North Korean leadership is concerned that these children may inform their North Korean friends and relatives about life in the outside world, said another businessman.

It is not the first time that the North has summoned its citizens home. After the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the North ordered all its overseas students to return home.

N Korea envoys ‘keeping children’
BBC
4/3/2007

North Korean diplomats stationed overseas are reportedly refusing an order to send their children home, according to South Korean media.

The order was issued earlier this year in an apparent attempt to stop defections from the hardline regime.

It said diplomats should send all but one of their children back to North Korea by the end of March.

But South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said diplomats were resisting the order, in an “unprecedented” move.

Yonhap quoted an unnamed source as saying the incident could trigger a “major political scandal”, given how unusual it is for North Korea’s ruling Communist Party to be disobeyed.

Old regulation

Diplomatic postings are highly sought-after jobs in North Korea, and are only given to the most loyal supporters of the regime.

But analysts say that once overseas, diplomats’ exposure to foreign thinking brings them under official suspicion in secretive North Korea.

Earlier this year the regime revived an old regulation which said that diplomats posted overseas could only take one child with them, Yonhap reported.

The regulation was suspended in 2002, allowing diplomats to take out many more children.

North Korea now wants the children sent home, and there are reports that hundreds of children could be affected.

Yonhap’s source said opposition to the move was particularly strong among North Koreans living in China, the North’s closest ally.

The reports said that diplomats in China had yet to send a single child back to North Korea, prompting the despatch of a senior official from Pyongyang to Beijing to investigate.

NKorea Orders Return of Diplomats’ Kids
Guardian
3/7/2007

North Korea has ordered its diplomats stationed overseas to send their children back to the communist nation in an apparent attempt to prevent the diplomats from defecting, a news report said Tuesday.

About 3,000 children aged 5 and older must return home within 30 days, according to the order issued last month by North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party. Younger children are exempt from the order, which was reported by South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.

The measure is believed to be aimed at preventing defections by diplomats and their families by raising the possibility that their children might be persecuted, the newspaper said.

Yonhap news agency carried a similar report, but said each diplomat would be allowed to bring one child to their overseas post. It cited an unidentified South Korean government official.

An official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, the main government agency dealing with North Korean affairs, said it was checking the reports. The reports did not say what prompted North Korea to take the measure. There have been no known defections by North Korean diplomats in recent months.

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N. Korea to celebrate late leader’s birthday amid economic hardship

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Yonhap
4/4/2007

Despite years of economic hardship and an ongoing dispute over the dismantlement of its nuclear arms program, North Korea is once again setting up the mood for a nationwide celebration of the country’s largest holiday, the birthday of its late leader Kim Il-sung.

Kim, the founder of the North, died of heart failure on July 8, 1994, and his son Jong-il took power afterward in the first hereditary succession in a communist state. The junior Kim was officially named successor in 1980.

The celebrations follow weeks of festivities to mark leader Kim Jong-il’s birthday on Feb. 16, but they also come amid a dispute between Pyongyang and Washington over the North’s first steps toward ending its nuclear weapons program by mid-April.

A mass gymnastics event called “Arirang” is to begin in the North’s capital Pyongyang next Sunday to mark the 95th anniversary of the birth of the late leader, which falls on April 15, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Wednesday.

The Arirang festival was held in 2002 and 2005, but was called off abruptly last year due to floods, causing hundreds of U.S. and other Western citizens to cancel their planned trip to one of the world’s last remaining communist states. North Korea said it will organize the event in April and August every year.

The anniversary comes amid a stalemate in international negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear development program, which is adding to the country’s economic difficulties that followed nationwide floods and droughts and ensuing famine in the mid-1990s.

On Feb. 13, North Korea promised to shut down and seal its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon and allow international inspectors back into the country within 60 days. In return, North Korea would receive aid equal to 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil from South Korea.

But the latest round of six-nation talks, involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, broke down in Beijing last month when North Korea refused to participate in further meetings unless its frozen assets at a U.S.-blacklisted Macau bank were released.

The impoverished country has depended on international handouts to feed a large number of its 23 million people, but continues to mobilize massive resources and people to celebrate the late leader’s birthday, known as the “Day of the Sun.”
In a recent meeting with U.N. World Food Program officials, a North Korean vice agriculture minister acknowledged that the communist country has a shortfall of about 1 million tons in food and called for aid from the outside world.

National committees in many countries, including China, Cambodia, Indonesia and France, have been established weeks ahead of the holiday to prepare celebrations and other commemorative events marking the birthday of Kim Il-sung, who the North calls the country’s eternal father and president.

Kim Jong-il rules the country with an iron grip, but officially he is only the chairman of the National Defense Commission and general secretary of the Workers’ Party. He reserves the office of president for his late father as a way of showing his filial piety.

The North is officially headed by its titular leader Kim Yong-nam, the president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the country’s parliament.

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Posted in Civil society, Mass games | Comments Closed

South, North Korea to open joint college in September

Wednesday, April 4th, 2007

Yonhap
4/4/2007

South and North Korea will open their first joint college later this year in a show of warming ties between the two sides, officials said Wednesday.

The Pyongyang Science and Technology College is scheduled to open in the North’s capital on Sept. 10 and will initially house 150 graduate students for such courses as master of business administration (MBA).

“We had originally planned to open it in April but strained inter-Korean ties delayed the project. The favorable environment will make the project go smoothly this time,” said Lim Wan-geun, a boarding member of the Northeast Asia Foundation for Education and Culture.

Kim Jin-kyong, dean of Yanbian Science and Technology College, will be the first dean of the inter-Korean college, the official said. The college will consist of a five-story building for lectures, a four-story building for a library, dining facilities and research and five dormitory buildings.

Inter-Korean relations have warmed considerably since the 2000 summit of their leaders, but tension persists since the rival states are still technically in a state of war, as no peace treaty was signed at the end of the Korean War.

South Korea suspended its food and fertilizer aid to North Korea after it conducted missile tests in July. A possible resumption of the aid was blocked due to the North’s nuclear bomb test in October.

But the relationship was revived after North Korea promised to end its nuclear weapons program in return for energy aid, and the two sides held the first ministerial talks in seven months in March.

Koreas to open first joint university
Korea Herald
Cho Ji-hyun
3/15/2007

The first joint university between South and North Korea will open in Pyongyang in September, a senior member of the founding committee told The Korea Herald.

South Koreans including Park Chan-mo, president of POSTECH in Pohang, visited Pyongyang yesterday to discuss the establishment and operation of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, or PUST.

Early last year, the Northeast Asia Foundation for Education and Culture, a Seoul-based nonprofit organization, agreed with the North’s education authorities to open PUST as early as last October.

The schedule has been delayed due to the lack of progress in their talks amid tensions caused by North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests last year.

Their contacts have recently resumed as the ties between the two Koreas improved following the six-party agreement on the North’s nuclear programs in Beijing.

In an interview with The Korea Herald, Park, a member of the founding committee, said the school will open in September and that further discussions will take place before the opening.

The visiting delegation includes Kim Chin-kyung, president of Yanbian University of Science and Technology, who assumes the post of founding president of the Pyongyang university.

Choi Kwang-chul, professor of Seoul’s Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, also joined the trip.

For the four-day trip, they are to inspect the progress of construction work, and discuss the cross-border passage of faculty and internet connections for the school.

“We will raise two demands – constructing a land route between the two Koreas to allow professors to travel across the borders and providing internet connection,” Park said.

A Seoul government official also confirmed that the school will open in September.

The project was first initiated in 2001. The Northeast Asia Foundation for Education and Culture plans to expand the school into a university with 240 professors and more than 2,000 students from both countries.

However, the university plans to open with 50 professors and 200 students participating in master’s and doctoral programs in its first year, university officials wrote on their school website.

The university project is led by Park, Lee and Malcolm Gillis, former university president of Rice University in Texas.

In a separate effort, POSTECH has worked on a joint project with the Pyongyang Informatics Center, or PIC, since April 2001, according to Park.

Using PIC’s three dimensional computer aided design program, POSTECH has completed the development of a software called “Construction,” which offers a virtual walk through the construction site to detect errors, he said.

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Posted in Education, Foreign direct investment, Pyongyang Informatics Center (PIC), Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, South Korea, State Offices | Comments Closed

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