Archive for March, 2018

Kalma Coastal Tourist Area Update

Thursday, March 15th, 2018

Planet Labs (@planetlabs) has posted some March 2018 imagery of construction of the Kalma Coastal Tourist Area construction site which help bring the project into greater focus.

There appear to be two staging areas for the construction site where workers live and supplies are stored.

Below are close-ups of the two large staging areas circled in yellow in the image above:

 

I overlaid recent Planet images onto Google Earth and outlined the building and facility construction site. The coastal resort is taking place in the area outlined in yellow below:

Here are a couple of Planet images of the construction site where we can see a few building foundations have been set:

I believe this project is supposed to be completed in about a year, so it will be worthwhile to check in on it periodically with Planet images to see how the project is developing.

See previous (and updated) blog post on this topic here.

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A Chinese ban on North Korean imports damages the North Korean economy

Tuesday, March 13th, 2018

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)

The North Korean economy is expected to face serious difficulties due to China’s ban on imports from North Korea. Having analyzed China’s sanctions against North Korea, KOTRA’s Korea Trade Center in Shenyang recently suggested that while North Korea depends overwhelming on China for its export, its exports are expected to plummet due to China’s measures.

After Pyongyang made its fifth nuclear test on February 18, 2017, China joined the sanctions imposed by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2321 and halted its import of North Korean coal until December that year.

Consequently, China’s import of North Korean coal was reduced by 60 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.

Furthermore, China imposed a complete ban on the import of coal, iron ore, lead and fishery products from North Korea, in accordance with the sanctions by UNSC 2371 adopted in response to North Korea’s IBCM launch on August 14, 2017.

Moreover, in response to North Korea’s sixth nuclear test on September 22 and the launch of an ICBM on January 5, 2018, China put a restriction on the export of refined oil, crude oil and refined petroleum products to North Korea.

The restriction on the export of refined petroleum products is expected to be a serious blow to the North Korean industry. Keeping China’s exports below 10 percent of total North Korean demand for the products, the new sanction will hit the North Korean economy across the board, ranging from industry, transportation, cargo transportation and power supply.

In addition, North Korean households, which have lower priority in power supply, would face increasing difficulties in getting electricity and heating. In the meantime, North Koreans may not suffer greatly from the shortage of oil because China has limited its export of crude oil to North Korea to its annual level of supply.

North Korea’s foreign exchange shortage is also expected to be aggravated following the shutdown of North Korean businesses in China and the repatriation of North Korean workers, both of which have been main sources of funds for the North Korean leader.

On September 28, 2017, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce announced that all existing North Korean businesses and joint ventures in China, including those managed solely by North Korean companies and individuals, should be closed by January 9, 2018.

In accordance with the notification of closure, the Shenyang Municipal Bureau of Industry and Commerce Administration issued a letter of notification to North Korean businesses and joint ventures in the city, leading to the shutdown of the Chilbosan Hotel and several North Korean restaurants.

In addition, North Koreans currently employed in China are allowed to remain while they have a valid visa, but have been asked to return to North Korea upon expiration of their visa.

Although the Chinese Ministry of Commerce completely prohibited the import of North Korean textile products on September 22, 2017, the import ban has created little export-ban effects to date, because cargo that has not completed the customs clearance procedure is excluded from the ban.

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Developments in North Korea’s electronic payment systems

Monday, March 12th, 2018

I have recently published most of the information below in Radio Free Asia (in Korean), so here it is again in English.

As an economist with an interest in North Korea’s monetary policy, banking, and capital markets, I have kept an eye on developments in North Korea’s payment technologies.

In this area I have previously posted about Koryo Bank Card, Narae CardKumgil Card, Ryugyong Commercial Bank ATMs, Jonsong Card, Golden Triangle Bank Card, Mirae Bank toll-road payments, e-commerce platforms Okryu, Sangyon, and Kwangmyong, and loyalty card programs at Haemaji Restaurant, Kwangbok Supermarket, and Moran Shop. There are, of course, other examples I have not blogged about.

Recently, however, the North Korean media has highlighted continued developments in this field, and I wanted to capture some of that information for readers here.

According to the North Korean media (2018-1-21), the Pyongyang Information Technology Bureau (평양정보기술국) and a subordinate organization, the Card Research Institute (카드연구소), appear to be developing cards for North Korea’s electronic payment system. Perhaps rather ominously, KCTV mentions that the agency is working to  expand the use of cards with features like user identification. Below is a screenshot of some of the cards that they are producing. 

Below are the names of cards as best I can tell (L-R,T-B):
1. Koryo Bank
2. South Hamgyong Province Sci-Tech Library Card
3. Pyongyang Metro
4. KoryoLink
5. ?
6. ?
7. Yaksu (mineral water) Payment Card
8. Jonsong Card
9. Soson? Gas Station
10. Jangmi Health Complex
11. Jonsong Card (Duplicate)
12. ?
13.  Taedongmun Cinema?
14. ?
15. Mirae Health Card
16. “Juyu” Card

We already know that some of these cards are in use (KoryoLink, Jonsung) and others are apparently still in development (Pyongyang Metro Card) [As far as I am aware, people still pay for the metro with tokens]. Some of these are prepay cards for a specific service (KoryoLink for mobile phones), some are prepay cards for broader commercial transactions (Koryo Bank, Jonsong Card), others are probably a mix of loyalty and prepay cards.

A couple of recent articles in DPRK Today shed additional light these developments. The new smart card management system is called Ullim (Ulrim, 울림), presumably named after the famous waterfall in North Korea. The Ullim Network acts as a clearing house for outstanding fuel cards, bank payments, member card services, etc. The system is 100% locally developed (they claim).

I am unsure how the Ullim Network is related to the Narae Network which is managed by the Foreign Trade Bank. Narae Cards are noticeably absent from any of the information put out by/on the Pyongyang Information Technology Bureau. Since all of these products seem connected to the Jonsong Card, under the control of the Central Bank, it may be that the Central Bank and the Foreign Trade Bank, which are still legally separate organizations last I heard, are developing their own separate e-payment networks. But foreigners buy KoryoLink cards (featured in this material) with Narae Cards, so I am not sure what exactly is going on. Maybe KoryoLink Cards for North Koreans (as opposed to foreigners) can be bought on the Jonsong card on the Ullim Network and foreign KoryoLink cards care bought with Narae cards issued by FTB? Maybe I am just overthinking all of this… Here are  some other Ullim member cards featured in DPRK Today (KKG Bank was circled by me):

The cards featured in the lower image are (clock-wise from the top):
1. Koryo Bank
2. Jonsong Card
3. Pyongyang Children’s Hospital
4. Ryugyong Health Complex
5. Pyongyang Information Technology Bureau
6. Sci-Tech Complex

DPRK Today has also published information on the Pyongyang Bike Share Card, “Ryomyong” (려명자전거카드). This card is also part of the Ullim Network.

Recently, North Korean media also highlighted an electronic payment card for the Kwanghung Shop located in Rakrang District. It is unclear if the Kwanghung Shop card is related to the Ullim Network since it has not appeared in any of the marketing materials yet.

According to the report, the Kwanghung Shop card can be used offline and for online purchases. The shop also claims to offer delivery services for their goods if ordered online  or by phone.

According to KCTV news (2018-2-23), the Energy Information Research Institute (전력정보연구소) under the Ministry of Electric Power Industry (전력공업성) is developing a payment card and mobile phone payment app:

The research discussed in the video is part of the National Power Management System (국가통합전력관리체계) named Pulyagyung (불야경/Bright Night Lights). The phone payment system displayed is a prototype remote electricity allocation system that allows retail electricity consumers to order electricity service from their mobile device instead of going to a physical office to have power allocated to a specific location.

Implications: There is a bright and a dark side to this technology. On the light side, we can group benefits to consumers: Payments are facilitated, savings options are increased, transactions costs are lowered meaning consumers benefit even as individual firms may earn float from the technology.

The dark side of the technology is of course how it can be used by the government for purposes of control/appropriation. In the old days, North Korea (and many other communist and developing countries) kept foreign currency out of the hands of their people through the use of Foreign Exchange Certificates (FECs). People had to change their foreign exchange into “green” money (for capitalist countries) and “red” money (for communist countries) to spend in local hard currency shops. This allowed the spenders to use their hard currency value to purchase imported goods while the actual hard currency paper stayed out of the hands of the people in the shops. This system was scrapped in the early 2000s. Electronic payment technologies mark a return to the goals of the FEC system…People can have foreign exchange balances to spend on imported goods at hard currency shops, but the actual paper currency remains on deposit at a bank.

This is bad news for North Korea’s black market and unofficial economy as well. With electronic payments it is harder to hide income and transaction history from the government (for tax/appropriation purposes). It would be very easy for officials in an anti-corruption investigation to pull up a spreadsheet of ones legal income and transactions to see if there is a substantial mismatch with your assets and standard of living.

Anyway, we will see how this develops. There is still a great deal we do not know.

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“Maximum pressure” and the North Korean economy: what do market prices say?

Friday, March 9th, 2018

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

With the news today about a summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump tentatively planned for the end of May, there has been much debate about the role of the US policy of “maximum pressure” through economic sanctions.

The efficacy of the policy is difficult to evaluate, particularly since it often takes many months or even years for the full effect of sanctions to play out. Whether the policy has been effective or not depends on, well, how you judge success or failure. There is little doubt that North Korea’s exports have taken a significant hit not primarily from the sanctions themselves, but from China’s enforcement of them. This is the single biggest difference between how sanctions have hit the North Korean economy during the past year, versus previous years. It seems fairly indisputable that sectors of the economy have suffered, with export industries taking the biggest hit.

But what has been the impact on the economy as a whole? It’s difficult to say, but we have two important indicators: prices of rice and foreign currency on North Korean markets. The data on these two indicators is far from perfect, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw firm conclusions from it. (For an explanation of this data, and the rationale for using rice prices in lieu of the formal goods basket used to measure inflation in other countries, see this article, for example). Nevertheless, neither of the two indicators suggest a situation out of the ordinary on North Korean markets during the period that “maximum pressure” has been applied.

First, a look at rice prices. If sanctions were truly devastating the North Korean economy, there is a whole host of reasons why one should expect rice prices to increase.

One of them is expectations of worse times to come as importing inputs for agriculture as well as food becomes increasingly difficult. Another is that if importing food products in general* becomes more difficult, perhaps because Chinese traders anticipate that their North Korean counterparts won’t be able to pay, consumers would be expected to switch more of their consumption to domestically sourced goods, increasing demand and thus prices. In general, anxiety about worsening times often leads to inflation.

This does not seem to have happened. In fact, rice prices have been remarkably stable over the past year (if the graph looks strange, click for full image):

There may well be other forces at work, too. Increased smuggling of cheaper Chinese rice, for example, may well have contributed to the price stability. But this is in itself a sign of the resiliency of the North Korean economy; when some supply decreases, there are ways of compensating through other means.

Exchange rates are another important metric. If the inflow of foreign currency (in this case US dollars) decreases, its price – the exchange rate – should go up. Expectations matter here, too: if the market expects that foreign currency supply will dry up in the future, it tends to act in the present and make purchases today to hedge for tomorrow. As with rice prices, exchange rates have been remarkably stable over the past year (again, click for better image):

In sum, we have little or no hard evidence that the North Korean economy, on the whole, has suffered significantly and harshly from sanctions thus far. That may itself not be an argument against sanctions, since again, it may take much longer than just a year for their full impact to play out. But it does call into question the claims that “maximum pressure” is the chief reason for Kim Jong-un’s outreach to Donald Trump.

*This likely holds true regardless of the level of self-sufficiency in North Korea’s agricultural production.

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North Korean markets insulated from sanctions, but not forever

Wednesday, March 7th, 2018

Posted by Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Analysis at Daily NK:

In 2017 alone, the United Nations Security Council passed four major sanctions resolutions against North Korea: Resolutions 2356, 2371, 2375, and 2397. Under the measures, the North’s crude oil imports were restricted, and coal and mineral exports were banned. Additionally, the North was prohibited from sending its laborers to work abroad – one of the key ways in which the regime earns foreign currency.
“One cannot say that, on a macro level, sanctions against North Korea have been ineffective,” said Lee Seok Ki, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET). “Since around August or September of 2017, the North’s exports have dropped significantly, and we have seen a major impact from sanctions on their industrial output. The country’s anthracite (coal) exports are down 66% compared to the previous year, which is a devastating hit to their mining sector, and the trend is expected to continue.”
Lee added that while most indicators point to declining imports, it remains difficult to conclude that sanctions have had the same effect on the North Korean manufacturing sector. Despite this, Lee noted that “sanctions are having an effect on the trade sector and we will continue to see both quantitative and qualitative effects in the long term.”
Other experts support the opinion that sanctions are working against the North’s overall trade. “North Korea’s exports to China are down 37%, which has led to a further 1.8% drop in growth for the North’s economy over the last year,” said Kim Byung Yeon, a professor at the Department of Economics at Seoul National University.
“If the North is unable to get sanctions lifted, the growth rate for their economy could drop to as low as minus 5% in the next year,” Kim added, explaining that the effects on economic growth will be significant due to the structure of the North’s economy and the relatively high proportion that exports contribute to it.
Kim said that citizens working in the trade sector have been most affected by sanctions, though he points to the government as taking the most damage. “Most trade has been conducted by state-owned and party- or military-run companies, meaning that the elite class and government officials take a big hit from sanctions,” Kim said. “Kim Jong Un relies heavily on trade as a source of income (for his regime), which means that the person most impacted by sanctions is none other than Kim Jong Un.”
But while sanctions appear to be having a significant effect on the North’s trade and industry, experts are noting that the local markets in the country have not been affected as heavily.
“When you look at the price of rice or the exchange rate over time, it’s hard to see any major effect of sanctions (on local markets),” KIET researcher Lee said.
Daily NK’s own research has come to the same conclusion, finding that the price of rice in North Korea’s markets has remained steady at around 4,000 to 5,000 KPW per kg since the beginning of the recent surge in international sanctions.
“People have been relying on themselves, actively participating in the markets and smuggling since the end of the Arduous March (great famine of the 1990s), which means that sanctions do not yet seem to be having an effect on the markets,” said a source in North Hamgyong Province, pointing to the steady availability of consumer goods as evidence.
“Kim Jong Un has instituted improvements in the quality of domestic-made goods, leading to these products in many cases pushing out Chinese versions from the markets,” said Lee Geun Young, Professor at the Yanbian University Department of Political and Public Administration. “There are now fewer items being brought in from China, so these products are having less influence on market prices.”
However, experts also believe that the damage inflicted by sanctions will inevitably reach the markets. “It’s not easy to precisely predict when the effect of sanctions will reach the markets,” Professor Kim said. “But one thing is clear: because many items rely on some form of importation, the long-term effects of a continuing decline in trade will inevitably lead to a reduction in the volume of available goods and a decrease in consumer purchasing power.”
Article source:
North Korean markets insulated from sanctions, though not forever
Jang Seul Gi
Daily NK
2018-03-07
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North Korea’s grain imports tripled in 2017

Monday, March 5th, 2018

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)

North Korea’s grain imports from China last year showed a threefold increase over the same period of the previous year. Having analyzed a set of data released by the Chinese General Administration of Customs, Tae-jin Kwon, a South Korean expert on North Korean agriculture and the head of the Center for North Korea and North East Asia Studies of the GS & J Institute, disclosed this analysis to the Voice of America on February 14.

This means North Korean grain imports have more than tripled from 54,683 metric tons imported in 2016—the amount of imports totals $67.33 million, a 2.3-fold increase from $27.91 million in the previous year.

Wheat flour (81, 654 tons) made up 46 percent of the total North Korean imports, accounting for the largest part of the imports. This is followed by corn (57,887 tons) and rice (36,408 tons), along with starch and soybeans. In particular, corn imports grew more than 16 times compared to 3,125 tons the year before, and flour imports, which stood at 7,000 tons in the previous year (about twelvefold).

During December 2017, North Korea’s grain imports from China grew more than four times the amount it imported in the same period a year before. In particular, imports of flour increased to 25,000 tons, more than 22 times from the same period last year.

Last year, as the crackdown on the DPRK-China border tightened due to the international sanctions on North Korea, formal grain imports seem to have increased while the informal imports were restricted.

Although North Korea’s grain production in 2017 seems to have declined slightly from the previous year, its grain imports from China are expected to remain at the same level.

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A small update on the Nampho leadership boat

Thursday, March 1st, 2018

Contemporary North Korea watchers (including myself) first noticed this boat in a Google Earth satellite image dated 2015-10-4. I mentioned it in articles for RFA (2016-2-3) and NK News.

A check of historical imagery of the Nampho area also reveals the boat docked there on 2013-11-4.

The boat is quite large (appx 50m in length). At the time of publication, I speculated that it might be stored at a large boat house in north-eastern Pyongyang with some other leadership boats. Though this is the largest boat house I am aware of on the Taedong River, I am still not sure if this is the case.

 

Subsequent imagery shows the boat berthed on Chol-do at KPA Navy Unit 123 (2016-5-31).

Despite the boat’s size, it does not appear on any other public (Google Earth) satellite imagery as far as I am aware.

Although its current purpose remains a mystery, it was recently featured on KCTV. According to the footage, the boat is actually quite old, and it used to be one of Kim Il-sung’s.

So despite only being recently “discovered” by the open source community, the boat appears to have been around for some time, and it does not appear to violate the UNSC prohibition on the export of luxury goods to North Korea. It may be one of Kim Jong-un’s boats (he may have inherited it), but it is possible it has been “handed down” to some other agency (for use by senior navy personnel for example) at some point when the Kim family upgraded their transportation options. The evidence for this latter theory is that the boat’s location does not coincide with any of Kim Jong-un’s guidance trips. However, this is not definitive evidence since Kim makes public appearances that are not reported in the official media, or are reported to have taken place on different days than they actually occurred.

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