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Some cynical DPRK humor

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011

The Daily NK reports on how popular propaganda slogans are becoming cynical jokes in the DPRK:

Of course, North Koreans have made use of many other official slogans. “The collective farm field is my vegetable garden” (1987) is one other good example.

Originally, by alluding to the collective farm as being public property, this saying dressed labor up as an act leading to personal benefit and encouraged solidarity. However, as rations failed, workers stole grains from farms under the aegis of that very slogan, because after all, “Since this is my farm, my taking from it is not theft.”

“With 1,000ri [one ri being approximately 0.393m] of tribulation comes 10,000ri of happiness,” (1990) is another slogan aiming to suppress unrest by emphasizing unity. However, in response to the country’s continued economic frustrations, it was re-interpreted and turned into, “With 1,000ri of tribulation awaits another 10,000ri of struggle.”

Similarly, “Though the road ahead may be perilous, let’s travel it laughing,” (1998) has been changed to, “Let them laugh as they go, why are they making us go along?” and “[Life] is no laughing matter, so how are we supposed to laugh?”

“Comrades Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are a great sun for the people,” has been turned into “They are indeed the sun; if you go too close you burn to death and freeze if you go too far away.”

According to defectors, this slogan is popular for it’s accuracy; you can get rich and warm by fawning to the Kim family, but you can also get seriously burned by doing so. On the other hand, should you distance yourself from or oppose the regime, you are likely to find yourself in prison (in North Korea, prisons are known “the cold room”), where you can easily die.

“Let’s live in our own way,” (1998) is used as, “In the Party, we live well for ourselves no matter what you say.” As state propaganda continues to divorce itself from reality, the way it is interpreted offers good evidence of growing dislike of the Kim Jong Il regime.

I have also heard that North Koreans refer to people they can’t rely on as “8.3” (August 3rd) after the economic adjustment policy that sought to promote small scale, semi-private light industry.

Read the full story here:
Slogans Reveal the Real North Korea
Daily NK
Kang Mi-jin
2011-5-10

Posted in Art, Civil society, Political economy | Comments Closed

Chinese in DPRK, Koreans in PRC

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

According to Yonhap:

The number of North Koreans officially visiting China reached 28,600 in the first three months of the year, up 35 percent from the same period last year, a news report said Wednesday.

More than half of them visited China to work in either factories or restaurants, while 6,000 people visited China for conferences or businesses, the Voice of America reported, citing Chinese government data.

The VOA also said 700 North Koreans toured China for sightseeing, while fewer than 100 North Koreans visited China to meet relatives or friends and 7,300 visitors had other purposes. The report did not elaborate.

The data did not include information on North Koreans staying illegally in China after defecting, the VOA said.

Tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are believed to be hiding in China, a major land route through which many North Korean defectors travel to Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries before resettling in South Korea.

According ot the Choson Ilbo:

Chinese tourists will start visiting Russian and North Korean cities without visas on Wednesday under a formal agreement between Beijing and the two countries. The tour course starts in the Chinese border city of Hunchun in the lower reaches of the Duman (Tumen) River and goes on to eastern Russia and the Rajin-Sonbong special economic zone in North Korea.

A group of 21 tourists left Changchun, the capital of northeast China’s Jilin Province, on Tuesday for the Hunchun. Travelers will then visit Slavyanka, Vladivostok and Khasan, the official Xinhua news agency said. They then go to North Korea by train and tour the cities of the Duman River and the Rajin-Sonbong area.

The four-day tour starts every Wednesday and costs 2,300 yuan (approximately W390,000). Only Chinese travelers are eligible for the visa-free arrangement.

Read the full stories below:
Number of N. Korean visitors to China rises in first quarter
Yonhap
4/27/2011

Chinese Tourists Visit Russia, N.Korea Visa-Free
Choson Ilbo
4/28/2011

Posted in China, Civil society, International trade, Labor conditions/wages, Rason Economic and Trade Zone (Rajin-Sonbong), Russia, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013), Tourism, Transportation | Comments Closed

DPRK Moscow embassy home to casino?

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Accoridng to KBS:

A Russian company is facing charges of operating a gambling room in the North Korean embassy in Moscow.

The company, which leased the second and third floor of the embassy’s administrative building, has allegedly been running the illegal operation since December.

The North Korean embassy denied the allegations when reports surfaced last week. But signs of a gambling operation were detected in a recent investigation by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The Russian Foreign Ministry issued letters of protest to ambassadors from North Korea and Belarus and demanded the casino immediately shutdown to prevent further violation of Russian law and bilateral agreements.

Read the full story here:
Russia Protests NK Embassy’s Casino Operation
KBS
2011-4-21

Posted in Gambling, Russia, Sports | Comments Closed

Strange UK-DPRK fraud case

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

I still have not had time to pay much attention to this story, but here is the coverage by the major British media outlets:

The Economist:

SVEN GORAN ERIKSSON, a Swedish football manager of some repute, is a man known as much for his wide travels as he is for his colourful love life. After scoring great success in Italy, he managed the national teams of England, Mexico, and the Côte d’Ivoire. Even seasoned Sven-watchers however were surprised when he rocked up in North Korea in 2009.

This week it was reported that he had been there at the behest of one Russell King, a convicted conman, who had managed to convince a London financial institution, the government of North Korea, and Mr Eriksson himself that he was managing billions of dollars on behalf of the Bahraini royal family.

A report on the BBC’s investigative news programme “Panorama” (or, if you’re outside the viewing area) has it that Mr King, who is now believed to be on the lam in Bahrain, first convinced directors of small investment bank First London Plc to hand over 49% of the company to him, in return for his apparently colossal business. This done, he used First London to finance an investment in Notts County, a Midlands football club with a proud history, now plying its trade in the lower divisions.

Mr Eriksson, drawn in by the promise of shares in Swiss Commodity Holdings (SCH), a vehicle of Mr King’s, was duly installed as football director at County. He was joined there for a time by another fellow dupe, Sol Campbell, an ex-Arsenal and England star. Messrs King and Eriksson ventured to Pyongyang on SCH business, where they are reported to have made a deal with officials in the North Korean government to grant them exclusive rights to the impoverished nation’s gold mines. “I was in the palace and they were handing over to the North Korean government so-called shares”, Mr Eriksson told BBC’s investigative news programme “Panorama”. “They used my name”, he laments; there was even talk of him managing the North Korean football team.

Those who follow developments in North Korea tend to prefer casting Kim Jong Il as an evil genius—crazy like a fox—rather than as merely crazy. While there can be no doubting that he has it in him to run circles around America and China, the Dear Leader appears to be no match for a silver-tongued conman of Russell King’s stature.

The Guardian:

The Serious Fraud Office is looking into an elaborate scam that took in the former England football manager Sven Göran-Eriksson, former spymaster Sir John Walker and the North Korean government.

Investigators are also looking at how the same fraudster took control of almost half of a London investment bank without paying for the shares.

First London plc – the investment bank whose shares were listed on the Plus stock exchange and whose advisers included Tim Yeo MP and Air Marshal Sir John Walker, a former head of defence intelligence – subsequently went into administration with debts of £8.7m.

BBC Panorama has discovered that Russell King, a convicted fraudster, took control of 49% of First London by claiming he was managing billions of dollars for the Bahraini royal family. The case has been referred to the SFO – which only looks at the country’s highest value frauds – by the Financial Services Authority.

An FSA spokesman said: “In this case the acquisition of control occurred without the FSA having been given the prior notice which the law requires it to be given. Had it been given proper notice it would have been in a position to consider whether it should use its powers to object to and prohibit the change of control. The FSA subsequently identified a number of concerns and pursued a series of leads into what was an extremely complex corporate structure. It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time due to confidentiality issues.”

The Panorama programme will show how King then used the name of the bank and its high-profile advisers to give credibility to deals.

They included an attempt to obtain funding for a new company that claimed to have assets worth $2tn and the short-lived takeover of the Football League’s oldest club. In 2009, King was behind a controversial takeover of Notts County which promised to bring millions of pounds of investment from the Middle East. The investment, which appeared to have been guaranteed by First London, never materialised and the club was left £7m in the red – but not before Eriksson agreed to join County as director of football. Nottingham police are investigating.

The coach’s contract included a clause entitling him to €11m of shares in a little-known company called Swiss Commodity Holding, which had been set up a few months earlier and was claiming to have assets worth $2tn from the exclusive rights to North Korea’s gold, coal and iron ore.

King persuaded the former England manager to visit the rogue state as part of an SCH delegation and Eriksson was present at a meeting with the North Korean leadership. “I was in the palace and they were handing over to the North Korean government so-called shares,” he tells the programme. “I asked them how much and what they told me was not millions, it was billions of dollars. They used my name. Of course they did. At the end it became a big, big mistake.”

Panorama’s investigation shows that King was secretly running SCH, which was considering a public listing.

Documents detailing SCH’s claims were prepared by First London plc. The investment bank also sent Walker, who sat on the bank’s advisory board, to check out King and his associates. The air marshal tells the programme: “What do I think of Russell King? Not a lot. He was good at chat, but that was his business. He was a con man. I was taken the same way Sven was taken. They just wanted names.”

King had gained control over First London plc shares after convincing the bank that he was managing billions of dollars of Bahraini cash by introducing some of its executives to senior members of the royal family. But Fawaz Al Khalifa, president of the Bahraini Information Affairs Authority, says King was lying about his royal connections: “He might have met members of the family here or there, but we have no financial connection to him or his company.”

King, who was jailed for insurance fraud in 1991, denies running Notts County, SCH or First London plc.

However, the programme has obtained dozens of emails and testimonies showing he was secretly pulling the strings, including some where he refers to himself as Lord Voldemort, the character from the Harry Potter books who can never be named.

First London plc’s parent company, First London Group plc, is still in business. In a statement, its lawyers said the failure to notify the FSA about the change in ownership was a mistake: “This was simply an error and not done for any ulterior or questionable motive. As far as our client is aware the FSA were satisfied that the information provided was in compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements. Our client is unaware of any investigation by the FSA or SFO into its activities so far as they relate to or involve Russell King.”

BBC:

The Serious Fraud Office is examining a con that took in Sven-Goran Eriksson and the North Korean government, BBC Panorama has learned.

Investigators are also looking at how the same conman stole a football club and broke a bank.

Convicted fraudster Russell King persuaded the former England manager to join Notts County FC as director of football and to visit North Korea.

Mr King denies any fraud and said he was just a consultant on the deals.

Mr Eriksson was appointed at Notts County in 2009 following a takeover that promised to bring millions of pounds of Middle Eastern investment.

“For me as a football man it was fantastic, building a club from the bottom of League Two and having the funding to do it, to be a Premier League club. It’s like a dream, so I signed. Big mistake,” he said of the deal.

Milk bill
The promised money never arrived and the club was left £7m in debt. Mr Eriksson says there were early signs that all was not as it seemed.

“I started to have doubts when they came and told me the milk bill has not been paid,” he said.

Mr King claimed his Swiss-based mining company had assets worth almost $2 trillion because it had the rights to North Korea’s gold, coal and iron ore.

He told Mr Eriksson the Notts County cash would come from that mining deal. He then persuaded him to join a delegation visiting Pyongyang.

“I was in the palace and they were handing over to the North Korean government so-called shares,” Mr Eriksson told Panorama.

“I asked them how much that was and what they told me was not millions, it was billions of dollars. They used my name. Of course they did. At the end it became a big, big mistake.”

‘Con-man’
Russell King’s business deals had credibility because they appeared to have the backing of First London plc, an investment bank with advisers including Conservative MP Tim Yeo and Air Marshal Sir John Walker, a former British spymaster.

The bank sent Sir John, a former head of defence intelligence, to check out Mr King and the Korean deal, but he was also taken in.

Sir John said of the deal: “What do I think of Russell King? Not a lot. He was good at chat, but that was his business. He was a con man. I was taken the same way Sven was taken. They just wanted names.”

Mr King also managed to get control of almost half of First London plc without paying a penny for the shares, after he convinced its bankers he was managing billions of dollars for the Bahraini royal family.

But Fawaz Al Khalifa, President of the Bahraini Information Affairs Authority, says that Mr King was lying about his royal connections: “He might have met members of the family here or there, but we have no financial connection to him or his company.”

First London PLC went into administration last year with debts of £8.7m and the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has been examining the deal that gave King control of 49% of its shares. The FSA has now passed its finding to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

“In this case the acquisition of control occurred without the FSA having been given the prior notice which the law requires it to be given,” said an FSA spokesman.

First London plc’s parent company, First London Group plc, is still in business. In a statement, its lawyers said the failure to notify the FSA about the change in ownership was a mistake that had been rectified:

“This was simply an error and not done for any ulterior or questionable motive. As far as our client is aware the FSA were satisfied that the information provided was in compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements.

“Our client is unaware of any investigation by the FSA or SFO.”

Lord Voldemort
Mr King, who was jailed for insurance fraud in 1991, denies any involvement in the running of Notts County or First London plc.

But Panorama has obtained dozens of emails and numerous testimonies that show he was secretly pulling the strings at Notts County.

King even referred to himself as Lord Voldemort, the character from the Harry Potter books who can never be named.

The club had been owned by a supporters’ trust, but Mr King persuaded the fans to sell it for just £1 after they met one of his supposedly wealthy benefactors in Bahrain.

Abid Hyat Khan was introduced as a Middle Eastern prince, but Panorama has discovered he is actually on the run from British police.

He absconded from the UK in 2008, when he was due to stand trial for allegedly stealing almost £1m. Khan denies posing as a prince.

The BBC’s Panorama show can be found here.

Posted in Football (soccer), Gold, Mining/Minerals, Sports, United Kingdom | Comments Closed

On DPRK information sources…

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

UPDATE: On a related note…

“North Korea’s Digital Underground“, The Atlantic, April 2011

ORIGINAL POST: The following blurb appeared in a recent article on 38 North:

Feeding this confusion are serious problems with information collection about the domestic situation in North Korea. Policymakers in Seoul and Washington rely heavily (whether they know it or not) on testimony or information provided by North Korean defectors. Defectors and networks of informants who move across the China-North Korea border, are key sources for a new constellation of media organizations like Daily NK, Open North Korea Radio, Free North Korea Radio, Good Neighbors, Radio Free Asia (U.S.), Asia Press (Japan), and other internet media. To be sure, people coming out of the DPRK can be important sources of information—for example, these networks brought out information about the 2009 currency reform. However, the new “media” organizations are not staffed by independent, professional journalists. To the contrary, they are propaganda organs and advocacy organizations designed to undermine regime stability in the North. Their reports frequently lack verification, yet regularly appear in Yonhap News, the leading South Korean government news agency, without any filtering. Major conservative newspapers, such as Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo, and Donga Ilbo, quote them as is. International news media, including the wire services and leading American newspapers, in turn, reprint them as world news. Unverified reports and politically motivated characterizations of North Korean instability are transmuted into truth. There are even cases of defectors reportedly being pressured to tow the official line. For example, Yonhap News was pressured to remove a senior reporter, herself a defector, from its North Korea desk when she discounted exaggerated reports by defector organizations of instability around the Kim family succession and currency reform failures.

Aidan Foster-Cater responds in this Asia Times article:

How do we know anything about North Korea? Where can you find reliable information? If sources conflict, how does one judge between them? Bottom line: Who ya gonna trust?

These are key questions. And they’re as old as the hills – which North Korea has more of than facts. My own interest in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is now, dare I confess, in its fifth decade. Even when I started, back in the 1960s, data of any kind were a problem. There were almost none to speak of.

No point asking Pyongyang. I was a fan in those days, but even so I winced at the regime’s clunky propaganda, and its emptiness: the absence of even the most basic facts and figures.

In the 1950s, North Korea did publish some statistics, but in the 1960s they stopped. Why? As growth slowed, paranoia and secretiveness ballooned. Nicholas Eberstadt has noted it was the same in the USSR and China, when Stalin’s and Mao’s excesses were at their height [1]. In Moscow and Beijing the mad blackouts eventually ended. In Pyongyang, darkness still rules.

Normal countries need numbers. A national budget with no figures: What a crazy idea! Not in North Korea, where this bizarre charade is enacted every year, most recently on April 7.

What passes for a parliament in Pyongyang usually meets for just one day a year, in spring. The main business is to pass the budget, which they duly do. (There’s no debate, obviously.)

And no numbers, either. Take a look at the official Korea Central News Agency [2]. Finance minister Pak Su-gil uttered a few percentages, but not a single actual solid figure. Weird.

Until 1994, they at least gave the budget totals, so we could work out some of the rest. South Korea’s Unification Ministry (MOU) reckons it heard a real number on the radio, once, and on that basis offers its own guesses here and there. Yet this is meagre stuff. A joke, really.

But I’ve banged on about this before in these pages [3], so what’s new pussycat? Two things.

First, I personally have taken this matter up, at the highest level. Only the other day I had words on the subject with the Speaker of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) himself. No really, I did. Choe Thae-bok, an urbane gent of 82 and a very senior figure, spent a week in London just before the SPA session. Tea at the House of Lords, that sort of thing. All a bit surreal, and it’s easy to scoff. But at times like these, it’s important to keep the doors open.

Over a convivial dinner at Asia House, I asked Choe about those budget blanks. He said he’d look into it, but I admit I wasn’t holding my breath. Ah well. He must be a busy chap.

Fortunately in 2011 we can supplement Pyongyang’s crummy crumbs with more solid fare. It’s a new world: the information age! NK may resist, but two things have changed – a lot.

First, and obviously, the Internet has been a boon. We who follow North Korea are no longer sad lonely nutters. Online we can find each other – we are legion! – and pool our knowledge. Kind folks like Curtis Melvin at NKeconwatch and Tad Farrell at NKNews, among others, have put a lot of work into creating crucial online resources on North Korea. (For their pains, they have survived more than one cyber-attack [4]. Who on earth would do a thing like that?) So now we can collate and compare notes.

Read the rest below the fold….

(more…)

Posted in Communications, Domestic publication, Radio, Supreme Peoples Assembly | Comments Closed

DPRK’s new magic show: Koryo Tours newsletter (Feb 2011)

Monday, April 18th, 2011

UPDATE 4 (2011-11-16): An American magician performed in the magic show. According to Foreign Policy:

An English literature professor from Southern California by day and a world-class magician by night, Dale Salwak holds the distinction of being the only American invited to perform his act in North Korea. At SAIS recently, Salwak chronicled his experiences in Pyongyang in 2009 and this past April for the Grand Magic Show, the largest ever in the country’s history. His perspective on North Korea offered a look beyond stereotypes of a totalitarian system, mass famine, and nuclear proliferation, and focused instead on magic as a great leveler which emphasized entertainment value before political differences between two countries.

–Magic, as a trade, is taken very seriously in North Korea. Similar in structure to the Chinese system, admission into its exclusive society is followed by a father-son bond of lifelong apprenticeship. Isolated from the West and having limited or no access to DVDs, books and the Internet, North Korean magicians have devised their own methods to magic that have long been known to performers like Salwak. A typical range of acts includes balancing telephones on handkerchiefs and life-sized dolls performing choreographed dance routines to traditional music. The local performers Salwak encountered on his trips cherished every new trick acquired and pleaded with him to share current “world trends” on magic.

–The culmination of Kim Jong Il’s investment in the arts took place this past April at the Grand Magic Show, a tribute to the late Kim Il Sung. Like his father, Kim Jong Il appears to hold a great interest in magic and the circus, dating back to the country’s early history of Soviet influence. In a place where high-tech entertainment is hard to come by, the Grand Magic Show dazzled a crowd of 150,000 at May Day Stadium, which is the site of the Arirang Games, an annual two-month-long gymnastics festival also in honor of Kim Il Sung. As a spectator at the Grand Magic Show, Salwak watched as the country’s most famous magician, Kim Chol, appeared in a cloud of smoke and fireworks, forcing a bus full of giddy local residents to levitate several feet above the ground, and later, make a horse, an elephant and a helicopter materialize out of thin air. What would have otherwise invoked a roaring response from a typical American audience, the crowd respectfully cheered with subdued, tepid applause.

UPDATE 3 (2011-4-18): The DPRK has finally put on the long anticipated magic show. According to the Associated Press (via ABC News):

Amid a burst of fireworks and a haze of smoke, a burly showman in a white sequined suit and gold lame cape appears with a flourish. Over the next 45 minutes, he appears to make a Pyongyang bus levitate and wriggles free from a box sent crashing to the stage through a ring of fire.

This is magic North Korean-style performed in a show touted as the country’s biggest ever and mounted in a city where good, old-fashioned illusion, a dancing bear and a dose of slapstick comedy can still command the biggest crowds of the year.

The country’s love for magic is a legacy of the circus traditions they inherited decades ago, during an era of Soviet influence.

North Korean founder Kim Il Sung ordered the creation of the Pyongyang Circus in 1952 in the middle of the Korean War. The tradition of highly technical stagecraft — including the Arirang mass games, where 100,000 performers move in sync in a feat that has come to embody North Korean discipline and regimentation — still dazzles in a country where high-tech entertainment is scarce.

“They love magic shows, together with the circus,” said Tony Namkung, a scholar who often serves as a liaison between North Korea and the U.S. and other governments. “Like so many other things, it harkens back to a pre-electronic past when things were much simpler.”

In fact, North Koreans so love magic that two diplomats dispatched to the United Nations had a special request in 1995 of their American hosts: They wanted to go to Las Vegas to see David Copperfield.

Wowed by the world-famous illusionist, the diplomats were determined to bring Copperfield to Pyongyang. But politics and finances trumped entertainment, and plans to bring the American magician to a nation still technically at war with the United States vanished in the haze of diplomatic tensions.

Undeterred, North Korea has kept putting on shows of its own, and it unveiled a massive one Monday at the capital’s May Day Stadium. It was designed by Kim Chol, dubbed the “David Copperfield of North Korea,” and will include seven performances in all.

The show stars Ri Thai Gum, a beefy showman with the extravagant flair — and physique — of a pro wrestler and the skills of Houdini. He whips off his white suit with silver-sequinned lapels to reveal a tank top and then straps on a gold-appliqued cummerbund onto his hefty waist.

The event was a highlight in a week of festivities surrounding Kim Il Sung’s April 15 birthday. Many of the women turned out in festive traditional Korean dresses reserved for special occasions, sparkles sprinkled into their hair and wearing fur-lined vests to keep warm in the spring chill. Outside, pink and yellow lights illuminated a fountain as music played to crowds enjoying an evening out.

An advertisement boasts that the show features “aircraft and a large bus appearing and then suddenly disappearing, elephants and other heavy animals appearing mysteriously, a motorcyclist performing fantastic skills, magicians floating in the air as if in a gravity-free space.”

And it does, adding in a healthy dose of slapstick comedy.

The tricks are simple crowd pleasers: A Pyongyang city bus filled with waving passengers appears to levitate and then disappear; an acrobat seems to float through a magical skyscape of clouds.

There’s the classic magician’s assistant dressed in traditional Korean dress who gets into a box and reappears halfway across the stadium.

In another trick, a man goes into a box but after a wave of the Korean Houdini’s hand, out comes a girl in a short, spangly miniskirt with a prancing baby bear on a leash bowing hello to the audience

The highlight involves a helicopter and a ring of fire that aim to have the clapping audience, mostly Koreans and a smattering of tourists and foreign dancers and musicians visiting the city for an arts festival, on edge.

“I thought it was great. The quality of the tricks that they pulled off was really high,” said Chris Andrews, a tourist from Sydney, Australia. “That bear trick I thought was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

Current leader Kim Jong Il is said to have inherited his father’s love of the circus and is thought to be the one to push to bring Copperfield to North Korea.

Copperfield’s stage manager once called North Korea’s staging technology “among the most sophisticated in the world,” according to Namkung.

Namkung, who took the North Korean diplomats to Vegas and later brought a Copperfield delegation to Pyongyang to discuss a visit, recalled that the time was ripe to bring a big American star to the North Korean capital.

The U.S. and North Korea had just signed an agreement for Pyongyang to freeze its nuclear power plants and to replace them with light water reactors less prone to weapons proliferation as part of a plan to normalize relations between the longtime enemies.

There were high hopes that Copperfield’s show — to be broadcast live on state TV in North Korea — could pave the way for a new era in relations between the bitter wartime foes. And in a symbolic show of support for reunification, Copperfield agreed to travel through the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas and perform for the South Koreans as well.

“This was right after the ‘agreed framework’ signing at a time when it looked as if the two nations would go down an entirely new path, and the atmosphere in Pyongyang was giddy,” said Namkung, who also serves as a consultant to The Associated Press.

Copperfield himself was game, promising to make the city’s iconic Juche Tower disappear, just as he did the Great Wall of China and the Statue of Liberty.

So seriously did the North Koreans take Copperfield’s visit that they staged a private viewing of the circus for his production team’s visit to Pyongyang and promised to give the illusionist a vast suite once used by former President Jimmy Carter on his visit in 1994, Namkung recalled.

But the State Department thought it was too early to back the venture, and the plan eventually foundered over how to finance the trip.

The AP was not allowed shoot video of the performance, but here is the AP’s video coverage of the event.

UPDATE 2 (2011-3-14): KCNA reveals a little more information about the DPRK’s upcoming magic show:

A large-scale magic performance will take place in Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The program will include appearance and disappearance of aircraft, large bus with full passengers and big animals like elephant, as well as a motorcyclist’s fantastic skill and the magician’s floating in the air as if in a gravity-free space.

The aircraft, large bus and elephants are all real ones.

The spectators will enjoy a new form of magic show with several numbers connected with each other.

The performer is Kim Chol (50), a vice-chairman of the Magicians Association of Korea and head of the magic creation group of the Pyongyang Circus.

His father Kim Thaek Song and his younger brother Kim Kwang Chol are also talented magician.

He became an eye-catcher already in his teens, drawing the limelight of the magic circles.

He began to distinguish himself with his marked individuality at international magic festivals from the 1980s.

His masterpieces are “Girls Reflected in a Mirror” and “A Rich Catch of Catfish”.

Magic pieces of the DPRK won more than 20 top prizes at international magic festivals..

Founded in Juche 41 (1952), the Pyongyang Circus has produced 1,200 acrobatic works, winning more than 70 awards including 36 gold prizes at 38 international circus festivals.

The circus has performed on 35,000 occasions in total at home and abroad, including 250 tours around the globe, earning international prestige.

The premiere of the magic show will be given on April 18, a day of the 27th April Spring Friendship Art Festival.

The performance will be staged about six times, twice a week.

Its venue is May Day Stadium, well known for the grand gymnastic and artistic performance “Arirang.”

Many local and foreign people have booked tickets for the spectacle.

UPDATE 1: Xinhua (PRC, 2011-3-9) offers some more information on the DPRK’s upcoming magic show mentioned in the Koryo Tours newsletter below:

According to the KCNA, the performance will include the appearance and disappearance of an airplane, bus and elephant, and a magician floating in a weightless state.

Kim Chol, the performer, is a magician with the Pyongyang Circus, according to the report.

It would premiere on April 18 at the stadium, which was also the venue for the grand gymnastic and artistic performance “Arirang,” the report said. There would be six performances in total, given twice a week.

ORIGINAL POST:

Koryo Tours is the leading DPRK travel coordinator. The company is operated by some very pleasant Brits based in Beijing. Each year they expand the range of options available for visitors to the DPRK, and this year seems to be no exception. According to their most recent email newsletter they are offering trips to the DPRK’s first ‘Grand Magic Festival’, the Tax Abolition Day tour, and resuming the fascinating Tumen Triangle tour. See excerpts from their email below:

Grand Magic Festival in May Day Stadium
This is an all new event that is taking place for the first time this year between April 18th and May 9th in the massive May Day Stadium in Pyongyang. The exact nature of the event is thus-far unclear so we cannot confirm or deny that any actual ‘magic’ will take place but suffice to say it will be an event on a very large scale comparable to the Arirang Mass Games (running this year from Aug 1st – Sept 10th). We Will be able to take anyone who visits DPRK during this time to the event which is running every Wednesday and Saturday night.

This should be something not to miss and anyone who goes will be seeing one of North Korea’s trademark spectacular events for the first time, something to make all your friends jealous!

Our full tour list is online here and any tour during that date will get you to the Grand Magic Festival!

No tax on the March tour!
Our March Madness tour this year is closing fast but we still have time and space to add more people to this economically priced but amazing trip. The full details are online here and we’re accepting applications until the end of this month. The chance to be in North Korea on the anniversary of tax abolition is priceless indeed!

Tuman Triangle May Tour
For the second year running Koryo Tours is proud to run this utterly unique tour, something available only through us and we would love you to come along and join us on this amazing trip that goes from North East China into the obscure and little-known North Korean free trade zone of Rason, then to become only the second ever tour group (our group last year being the first) to cross into Russia by train, we enjoy sometime at and around a local beach there before heading to Vladivostok, the main city of far-eastern Russia to see what this previously-closed city is all about.

The full details for this tour are online here. Please ask us any questions about this tour, if you ever wanted to do anything completely unique then this is your chance. It’s an amazing trip and something truly memorable!

Although I have never traveled with Koryo Tours to the DPRK, I have traveled with them to Turkmenistan and that was an amazing trip.

Also, “Magic” seems to be popular in the DPRK. A quick search through YouTube finds lots of North Korean magic shows. I even posted a North Korean magic show that aired on TV earlier this year. You can see it all on YouTube starting here.

Posted in Art, Koryo Tours, Magicians Association of Korea, Tourism | 3 Comments »

Competition in “oldest profession” in Sinuiju

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

According to the Daily NK:

An inside source has reported that the number of pimps in Sinuiju continues to increase, with security agents driving up prices by taking a growing slice of the profits. As a result, many women are apparently working to find other ways to make money from the activity whilst avoiding losing money to a growing list of middle men.

The source, who comes from the city explained, “Since there is so very little food, it is not difficult to find cases of even university students selling their bodies. Young women sit around in the market selling themselves.”

According to the source, the cost of sex with a local university student (20~25 years old) is around $100, but can run to a maximum of $130. In the case of a working woman (19~25 years old), it is $70~100, and housewives (26~30 years old) allegedly cost $20~30.

The security services, which should be controlling the situation, have joined the process. According to the source, they demand a substantial cut of the illegal profits.

He explained, “Security agents and pimps are both involved in the business, colluding to fix the price at whatever level they want,” before adding, “Therefore, the person directly involved is unable to earn much money.”

For this reason, many prostitutes have begun to sell themselves secretively in local markets.

According to the source, if a woman is selling a small number of eggs in the market, it means that she will sell herself. When a man asks “How much is this?” bargaining over the price of the woman rather than the eggs begins. The source reported that it is commonplace to see a woman and man disappear off somewhere shortly after reaching agreement on price.

The source added, “Recently the number of women selling flowers one-by-one has been rising. These are also women selling their bodies.”

However, the source pointed out that because security agents are connected with pimps and profit from prostitution, those women who try to sell themselves individually face strict inspection. The source said, “In front of train stations and markets, for example, it is not rare to see a struggle between prostituting females, their customers and the security agents who chase them.”

Other well-organized prostitution is conducted in established brothels, but these are not inspected either because there, too, security agents simply take money to look the other way.

Read the full story here:
Battle for Prostitution Profits Fierce in Sinuiju
Daily NK
Park Jun Hyeong
3/29/2011

Posted in Black markets, Civil society, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market) | Comments Closed

DPRK fashion update

Friday, March 25th, 2011

The Daily NK on earrings and cosmetic surgery:

Earrings, once seen as a capitalist symbol and a target for crackdowns, are becoming more and more popular with North Korean women of all social levels in urban areas, while the growth of cheap, unregulated surgical procedures is apparently attracting attention in the capital.

This desire for beauty has even forced the authorities onto the back foot; they have reportedly stopped attempting to control some of the social changes.

A source from the West Sea port city of Nampo explained the situation there on the 13th, saying, “In the past, long earrings were a crackdown target, but now they stop it so people are wearing them a lot.”

Of course, in past years young women in major cities and around the border region also wore earrings, but did so more furtively. If and when caught, they were criticized as examples of an anti-socialist trend at a time when the standard ‘Chosun woman’ was advertized as one who had short bobbed hair, wore no make-up and was to be seen in a dress that came to between knee and ankle.

However, starting with the more affluent families of government officials and now found throughout society, this officially decreed standard of dress is no longer accepted. Indeed, even Kim Jong Cheol was seen with an earring at a recent Eric Clapton concert in Singapore, and, according to North Korean Intellectuals Solidarity, “A decree from Kim Jong Eun was handed down this past January stating that earrings are to be accepted.”

Indeed, while official controls on issues of beauty and accessories have been melting away, clothing including skinny jeans, which reveal the figure very closely, have grown in popularity for affluent Pyongyang women.

Even cosmetic surgery is said to be gaining in popularity. Although still illegal, some doctors will apparently perform certain procedures on the side for extra money, while there are also unqualified surgeons offering their services.

One Pyongyang source explained, “Double eyelids, eyebrows, lips and tattooing around the eyes are popular,” adding, “Seven out of ten women between 20 and 40 have had one or other of these procedures done. Mostly it is women who do it; there are many who feel they must do it even if they are short of food.”

According to the same source, part of this popularity stems from the surprising cheapness of the processes concerned. The tattooing of fake eyebrows costs in the region of 1,000-2,000 won, while double eyelids cost just 2,000-3,000 won. This at a time when a kilo of rice in the market costs only slightly less than 2,000 won.

However, the Nampo source explained that there are still some limits in that city at least, where “university students are not permitted to wear striking earrings inside their schools.”

And more on the DPRK people seeking to emulate the clothing of characters in ROK dramas:

The so-called ‘Korean Wave’ is strong with today’s young North Korean adults. As copies of illegally-recorded South Korean dramas flow into the country in greater numbers, some affluent young adults are keen to imitate the main characters in the dramas they are watching.

Of late, some children of rich parents are said to have tried to obtain the kind of tracksuit worn by Hyun Bin, who recently personified the life of a ‘self-centered and arrogant urban male’ in the popular SBS drama ‘Secret Garden’. For women, the trend is to follow the fashion of Kim Nam Joo, who played the main character in another drama, MBC’s ‘Queen of the Turn Around’.

Kim, a Korean-Chinese who trades between Dandong and Sinuiju, recently gave an interview to The Daily NK about the trend towards South Korean fashion in contemporary North Korea.

– Recently, what South Korean products have been the most popular with North Koreans?

All South Korean products are popular. There are many customers who want to buy South Korean products, so there are many sellers. Products with South Korean letters on can be sold for two or three times the price of other products.

– But what about the security services?

Agents who perform the inspections say, ‘we’ll let you sell them as long as the Korean letters are erased’. However, the trend is that more and more customers are looking for South Korean stuff, and since there is no way to prove whether the product is from South Korea if there is no Korean lettering, increasing numbers of merchants, who don’t want to miss a sale, think ‘I’ll just sell it as it is’ despite the crackdowns.

– What clothing is the trendiest these days?

The recently-aired South Korean drama ‘Queen of the Turn Around’ has been the most popular. Clothing worn by the main characters is popular. Except those things which reveal too much chest and the skirts, it’s all very similar to China. Now, skinny jeans are being worn by a surprising number of women.

– This is true even though South Korean products are more expensive?

It is such a big trend that even young adults who are having trouble making ends meet feel that they have to buy these things; fights with parents over it are on the increase, too. The price of boots and such like is $20~30, but they sell a lot to young females. Clothing sells for between $15~100.

– Do the wealthy classes or children of cadres also by many South Korean products?

They buy the most. Children from the houses of cadres or the wealthy seek the exact clothing which appears in South Korean dramas. Recently, fake mink has been popular. Especially, middle aged people in their 40s and 50s are wearing clothing made of fake mink a lot.

– What about when the product is different from that which the consumers are looking for?

There is a separate person who amends clothing. The cost of getting something changed is about 10,000 won, so they also make a lot of money. As a result, security agents try to get close to them. They visit them sometimes to get bribes; the agents don’t bother them.

– Why are South Korean products so popular?

It is because people are watching CDs of South Korean dramas secretively and imitating them.

– What if the same product people see on film is not on sale?

The person makes a drawing of the nice clothes which appeared in the drama or brings a picture. Clothing manufacturers have a hard time when young females bring an image and beg them to make the clothing no matter what.

– Especially is that the case with the children of cadres?

Once I met a child who brought the image of an item which would have been impossible to obtain, and then asked whether I could even get it by going to South Korea; that was a difficult situation. Not long ago, there was also one person who asked me to obtain the tracksuit worn by the main character in a recent South Korean drama.

Previous posts on DPRK fashion here.

Read the full stories here:
Push for Beauty Altering Official Curbs
Daily NK
Park Jun Hyeong and Jeong Jae Sung
2011-5-16

Looking Like Hyun Bin or Kim Nam Joo
Daily NK
Park Jun Hyeong
2011-3-25

Posted in Civil society, Clothing | Comments Closed

South Korean entertainment increasingly popular

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

According to the Daily NK:

The names Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok are growing in popularity in urban North Korea now that variety shows hosted by the two South Korean entertainers, KBS show “One Night, Two Days” and MBC’s “Endless Challenge”, are becoming popular there.

One source who trades in Pyongyang said, “I rented ‘X-Men’ (a variety show on another big South Korean station, SBS), the show hosted by Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok, from a CD store; it was really entertaining.”

“One of the popular things with Pyongyang elementary and middle school students is the games they can see in this show,” he added.

He noted, “Parents believe the games in X-Men can develop their children’s brains, so they also try to occasionally show it to them. Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok are really popular here; we laughed until we cried.”

According to the source, people in Pyongyang do not generally purchase CDs of North Korean products, but rent them for around 500 won each, while illegally-produced South Korean dramas and variety shows are generally 2,000 won each, approximately the price of a kilogram of rice.

Another source from Shinuiju said, “The shows with Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok, ‘One Night, Two Days’ and ‘Endless Challenge’ are so popular that they sell for 4,800 won.”

The reason why people like ‘One Night, Two Days’, in which a number of South Korean entertainers, led by Kang, take a trip to little-known South Korean places to camp out, mingle with locals and play a range of games, the source said, is “because people can see a lot of the scenery of South Chosun, as if they were sightseeing for real. It gives comfort to those who are in the situation of being unable to so much as dream of a trip to Chosun.”

There is another background reason for their growing popularity: they are also popular among Korean-Chinese people in the border provinces of China, leading to these illegally copied CDs flowing into North Korea.

In Yanji, Dandong, Shenyang and other Chinese cities with big Korean-Chinese populations, internet cafes have their own servers to download South Korean TV shows so that local people can see them easily at a decent speed.

North Korean or Korean-Chinese smugglers then take illegally copied DVDs or CDs containing the shows into North Korea. One smuggler generally carries between 1,000 and 3,000 recordable CDs or DVDs including such shows into North Korea at any one time.

Another defector, Kim Seong Cheol explained, “I can copy thousands of CDs cheaply and send them to North Korea all at once.”

When he crosses the river, Kim says he ends up giving away a few hundred discs in the form of bribes, and wholesales a few hundred to each North Korean trader.

Read the full story here:
South Korean Entertainers Gaining in Popularity
Daily NK
Park Jun Hyeong and Jeong Jae Sung
3/23/2011

Posted in Black markets, South Korea, Television | Comments Closed

Pyongyang Times available at Naenara

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

The Pyongyang Times is the DPRK’s weekly English-language newspaper. It has long been available via Naenara, but restricted behind an exclusive login and password. On Friday I noticed that the articles are now free to view without an account.

Pictured above is the main screen for the current issue.

Click here to read the Pyongyang Times in English. It appears to be available in the other languages in which Naenara posts as well.

Posted in Art, Communications, Domestic publication, Internet | Comments Closed

North Korean Economy Watch