According to Yonhap:
North Korea dissolved a well-known state-run company in charge of attracting foreign investment due to its unsatisfactory performance, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Friday.
“Daepung International Investment Group seems to have been disbanded, probably due to poor performance,” a ministry official said in a briefing on governmental and personnel changes taken under the Kim Jong-un regime over the past year.
The country also broke up another extra-governmental organization in charge of trade promotion and foreign investment with its work believed to have been reassigned to the government’s Commission for Joint Venture and Investment, according to the official.
Daepung Group was established at the instruction of the North’s highest political body, the National Defense Commission, in January 2010 as a means to attract foreign investment.
The group oversaw the now-suspended joint tourist program in Mount Kumgang on the eastern coast of North Korea.
The cross-border program had served as a cash cow for the North before Seoul halted it in 2008 following the shooting death of a South Korean tourist at the resort.
Additional Information:
1. Previous posts on the Taepung Investment Group can be found here.
2. NK Leadership Watch has an excellend review of the organization here.
3. The “Commission for Joint Venture and Investment” is also known as the Joint Venture Investment Committee (JVIC). See JVIC posts here.
Read the full story here:
N. Korea dissolves state-run firm in charge of attracting foreign investment: gov’t
Yonhap
2013-2-1
