North Korean Economy Watch

According to the Choson Ilbo:

Young North Koreans apparently prefer American soaps and films to South Korean ones, and they can now watch both easily. A defector who gave his name as Kim (43) and used to sell TV sets in the North said, “Used color TVs imported from China have both PAL and NTSC options, so there’s no problem receiving South Korean TV signals,” even in remote South Hamgyong Province.

North Korea and China use the PAL format to receive TV signals, while South Korea and Japan use the NTSC format. Some European countries and the Middle East favor SECAM. Most models manufactured after the 1990s allow users to shift formats.

“In South Hamgyong Province, only a few households are able to capture TV signals, but reception is quite good in Hwanghae or South Pyongan provinces,” Kim said. “People there look forward to the evenings when dramas are broadcast.” He said North Koreans also enjoy watching news and current events programs as well and power their TVs with their car batteries during power outages.

Another defector surnamed Yoo (40), who used to sell DVDs in the North and came to South Korea late last year, said North Koreans have grown tired of South Korean TV soaps with their stereotypical plots. “Nowadays, ‘Rambo 4,’ ‘007 Casino Royale,’ and other American action films or TV dramas like ‘Prison Break’ are popular,” she added.

According to Yoo, South Korean TV soaps like “Winter Sonata,” “All In” or “Autumn in My Heart” were popular in the early 2000s, while “Jewel in the Palace” and other historical dramas grew popular in the late 2000s. Recently, action movies are gaining more attention.

North Koreans also prefer American movies to Korean ones. “Practically everyone knows ‘Titanic.'” The movie classic “Gone with the Wind” is popular among upper-class North Koreans in Pyongyang, while young people enjoy action films. “DVDs of American movies or TV dramas fetched the highest prices,” she said. “But now USBs with American TV programs are more popular than DVDs.”

Additional information:
1. Titanic is rumored to have been screened in Pyongyang cinemas.

2. Also, Tom and Jerry was shown on North Korean television in the 1980s. See here and here.

3. We have heard conflicting reports about just how tolerant the North Korean government is of foreign films.

Read the full story here:
N.Korean TV Viewers Favor American Shows
Choson Ilbo
12/18/2010

According to the Korea Herald:

Although not so explicitly, the communist North Korea appears to be becoming more aware of capitalist cultures and trends, a change the Kim Jong-il regime has feared the most and tried to prevent for decades.

Not only the social upper crust, but the majority of the general public has seen popular South Korean TV series through copies that flow in from China and is aware of the financial gap between the two divided states, North Korean defectors said during a recent forum in Seoul.

According to the defectors ― among hundreds of others who attempt to abandon their impoverished state and escape to the wealthier South each year ― such changes are causing a headache for the North Korean leader trying to secure internal unity before handing over the regime to his youngest son.

“It is difficult to fend off South Korean products and TV shows from entering the country so as long as China remains to be its main trade partner and financial donor,” said Ju Seong-ha, a North Korean defector who graduated from the North’s top Kim Il-sung University.

“The recent phenomena may result in North Koreans choosing South Korea over their own country when the time comes for them to decide.”

North Korea, which is one of the world’s last remaining totalitarian states and also one of the most secretive nations, keeps its people largely isolated from outside news and strictly forbids them from possessing goods that are not distributed by the ruling Workers’ Party.

But the impoverished state’s heavy dependence on Beijing for food and other commodities is inevitably opening up its people to goods and cultures from capitalist nations, particularly South Korea.

China has emerged as the world’s second largest economy after abandoning Stalinist policies and is one of the largest markets for South Korean pop culture, also widely known as “hallyu.”

Most copies of popular South Korean TV series and news that flow into North Korea are produced in China, which is notorious for illegally making cheap, low-quality copies of copyrighted materials.

A 20-something North Korean who escaped to Seoul last year said he had been “shocked” at the sight of South Korea the first time he saw a soap opera starring the country’s top celebrities.

“We had been told South Korea was an underdeveloped country full of beggars,” the defector said, requesting not to be named for safety reasons. “What I saw were beautiful, trendy people living in a glamorous city.”

“I say 90 percent of North Koreans have seen a South Korean TV series at least once,” he said.

Even security and judiciary officials watch popular South Korean soap operas in secret, another unnamed defector told the Dec. 10 forum in Seoul.

“Because the DVD players are sold at a relatively cheap price in North Korea, many households possess them and share CDs among themselves,” the defector said. “Seeing for themselves how well-off and happy people in the South seem, many people build up admiration for the country.”

The apparent popularity of South Korean culture in North Korea coincides with President Lee Myung-bak’s recently made remarks during his trip to Malaysia.

“No one can possibly stop the changes brewing among the general North Korean public,” the South Korean president had said.

Read the full story here:
Changes brewing in ‘not so isolated’ North
The Korea Herald
Shin Hae-in
12/15/2010

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The Okryugwan chain of North Korean restaurants opened its first China branch in Beijing in 2003. Located in the Wangjing district, which has large numbers of Korean residents, it apparently makes more than W7 million (US$1=W1,141) a day in revenues.

The chain is most famous for naengmyeon or cold noodles, but its beef rib stew and kimchi are also popular, and customers can buy them to take home. Seasonal North Korean delicacies such as steamed crabs from the East Sea or wild mushrooms are also served.

So popular are the restaurants that a knockoff has popped up in Shanghai employing Korean Chinese instead of North Koreans.

North Korean restaurants are also famous for the performances put on by their staff, who sing not only their country’s folk and pop songs but also South Korean pop songs. Staff at the Shanghai Okryugwan reportedly sing even American pop songs like the “Titanic” theme.

Most of the North Korean staff are graduates of Jang Chol Gu University of Commerce or attended professional culinary school in Pyongyang. Earlier this year, a beautiful waitress at a North Korean restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia gained near-celebrity status in South Korea after a picture of her was posted on the Internet.

North Korean restaurants began opening overseas branches during the 1990s. Okryugwan has outlets in China, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Russia, Nepal and Dubai. North Korean provincial governments, their affiliated agencies and other organizations raced to open restaurants abroad, and now there are more than 100.

Depending on the size of their staff, the restaurants must wire back between US$100,000 and $300,000 to North Korea each year. Those with poor revenues are forced to close, so they advertise heavily, even featuring ads in South Korean community journals abroad.

The North Korean staff have experience working at restaurants in Pyongyang and spend around three years abroad. Even if they come from privileged backgrounds in the North, they are still vulnerable to the temptations of capitalism. In Qingdao, China, a North Korean restaurant was forced to close for months because its staff absconded. Last week, the manager the Okryugwan in Nepal apparently fled to India with a stash of dollars that were supposed to be sent to the North.

But with a drop in the number of South Korean customers following North Korea’s artillery bombing of Yeonpyeong Island, compounded by the defections, North Korean restaurants abroad may face a cold winter.

Read the full story here:
Why N.Korea Values Its Restaurants Abroad
Choson Ilbo
Oh Tae-jin
12/15/2010

According to the Choson Ilbo:

South Korean intelligence officials breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday. They had finally located Jon Il-chun, the head of a special department in North Korea’s Workers Party that manages Kim Jong-il’s slush fund. Jon, who had eluded intelligence officials for the past six months, was finally spotted on a North Korean TV broadcast featuring one of leader Kim Jong-il’s so-called on-the-spot guidance tours in Pyongyang.

The 69-year-old Jon went to high school with Kim (68) and was appointed head of the department, known as Room 39, early this year. It manages 17 overseas branch offices and around 100 trading companies and even owns a gold mine and a bank. The US$200-300 million those companies make each year is funneled into Kim’s secret bank accounts around the world.

Room 39 is targeted each time the U.S. and other foreign governments apply financial sanctions against North Korea. Kim replaced its head early this year because the former director, Kim Tong-un, was put on an EU list of sanctioned individuals late last year, making it impossible for him to manage the leader’s secret overseas bank accounts.

Due to the importance of the department and the clandestine nature of its business, the director of Room 39 rarely appears in public, but he sometimes accompanies Kim Jong-il on guidance tours when they involve organizations linked to Kim’s slush funds, an intelligence official said.

In the TV clip on Sunday, Jon is seen with Kim on an tour to Hyangmanlu, a popular restaurant, and Sonhung food manufacturing plant. A North Korean defector who used to live in Pyongyang, said the restaurant was built in the 1990s by a wealthy ethnic Korean from Japan and is located in a busy part of Pyongyang. “It was always packed with wealthy party officials,” the defector said, adding the party manages the restaurant so the entire proceeds probably go into Kim Jong-il’s coffers. He added there is a strong possibility that the food factory also belongs to the party.

The last time Jon appeared on North Korean TV was on June 20, at the opening of a mine in Yanggang Province. A North Korean source said the Huchang Mine is a famous copper mine that had been closed for some time but must have reopened. “Judging by the fact that Jon took part in the opening ceremony, it appears to be one of many mines run by Room 39.”

Jon was also spotted at Kim’s inspections of two fisheries companies last year and one this year. A Unification Ministry official said, “North Korean exports of fisheries products are handled by the party or the military and they’re sources of revenue for Kim Jong-il’s slush fund.” Fisheries products accounted for the second largest North Korea’s W1.64 trillion exports to South Korea last year, amounting to W173 billion or 16.3 percent. Textiles totaled W477 billion or 44.8 percent.

“This is one of the reasons why we blocked imports of North Korean fisheries products” following the North’s sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan, the official said.

Additional Information:

1. Michael Madden has written a biography of Jon Il-chun here.

2. Here is a satellite image of the Hyangmanru Restaurant.  Here is a satellite image of the Sohung Foodstuff Factory (right next door).

Read the full story here:
Elusive Manager of Kim Jong-il’s Slush Funds Pops Up Again
Choson Ilbo
12/15/2010

UPDATE: The “tree” was lit December 21.

ORIGINAL POST: South Korea plans to construct a “Christmas tree” on a hilltop tower across the river from Jogang-ri, in Kaesong (37.752445°, 126.593120°).

According to Bloomberg:

South Korea will allow a local church to turn a 30 meter (100 foot) tower at its border with North Korea into a brightly lit Christmas tree as part of “psychological warfare” between the two countries, the JoongAng Ilbo reported.

The tower hasn’t been lit up since 2004, according to the Korean-language newspaper report. North Korea, which suffers from energy shortages and relies on outside handouts to feed its 24 million people, had demanded the tower be demolished, JoongAng said.

Here is a link to the original story in the Joong Ang Ilbo (Korean).

Read the full Bloomberg story here:
South Korean Christmas Tree to Provoke North, JoongAng Says
Bloomberg
Bomi Lim
12/14/2010

UPDATE (1/3/2011): According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Korea has shut down a restaurant in Kathmandu and recalled all of its staff after the manager absconded with the takings in late November.

South Koreans in Kathmandu said the 13 to 15 North Korean staff of the Kumgangsan restaurant were recalled to the North right after the manager fled.

But the Kathmandu branch of the Pyongyang Okryugwan restaurant chain, which had been misidentified as the one where the manager worked, is still in business in a back alley about 1 km across the street from Kumgangsan.

Most South Korean tourists and about 400 expats in Kathmandu have stopped going to the restaurant since the South Korean Embassy in Nepal wrote to expats and tour operators asking them to refrain from visiting North Korean restaurants after the North’s torpedo attack on the Navy corvette Cheonan in March last year.

“Please refrain from visiting North Korean restaurants that are becoming sources of funds for the Kim Jong-il regime. Anyone who has visited such restaurants will be subject to investigation on charges of violating the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Law and the National Security Law upon returning home,” the embassy warned in an email.

A South Korean resident said the Kumgangsan and Okryugwan restaurants had depended largely on South Korean customers, so their sales must have dwindled.

The Kumgangsan manager, identified as Yang, reportedly came to South Korea via India. Nepalese police released two South Koreans who were arrested after North Korea accused them of kidnapping him and were deported on charges of violating immigration law.

UPDATE (12/23/2010): According to the AFP, the Nepalese have released the two South Koreans who allegedly assisted the North Korean to defect.

Nepal has released two South Koreans held for their alleged involvement in the case of a missing North Korean, the South’s foreign ministry said Thursday.

The two men, who live in Nepal, were ordered to leave the country within 15 days after being freed, the ministry said.

Yonhap news agency said the pair were accused of helping a North Korean surnamed Yang flee the Himalayan nation across the border into India, after which he defected to the South.

A local media report in the Himalayan country had said they were arrested following pressure from Pyongyang’s embassy in Kathmandu, which wanted them charged with kidnapping Yang.

South Korean newspapers have said Yang was the manager of the local franchise of an overseas restaurant chain operated by the North.

The franchises are an important source of scarce foreign currency for the cash-strapped regime.

Some 20,000 North Koreans have fled their homeland and arrived in South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 war, almost always through a third country.

UPDATE (12/15/2010): According to the Choson Ilbo the defector left with some substantial funds from the DPRK restaurant in which he worked.

ORIGINAL POST (12/14/2010): According to the Choson Ilbo:

A North Korean who went missing in Nepal recently had been the manager of a North Korean restaurant there, it emerged on Monday.

A diplomatic source said the man, identified as Yang, managed the Kathmandu branch of the Pyongyang Okryugwan restaurant chain and had been there for about a year. It seems he defected and is believed to be in New Delhi, India now.

Overseas branches of Okryugwan are a main source of hard currency for North Korea, and the regime carefully selects managers. The North is apparently very sensitive about Yang’s defection, according to South Korean intelligence, because he made off with a stash of dollars that were supposed to be sent to the North.

The North Korean Embassy has asked the Nepali authorities to investigate two South Koreans identified as Choi and Sun who it says had friendly ties with Yang and kidnapped him. Choi and Sun have been arrested, and South Korean Embassy officials are negotiating for their release.

Read the full story here:
N.Korean Restaurant Manager Absconds from Nepal
Choson Ilbo
12/14/2010

1. This first item is from the DPRK publication Korea Today—an article hilariously titled “For the Good of Ladies“:

For those who do not wish to visit the DPRK’s new Naenara webpage, I post the text below.  The story perfectly demonstrates the fundamental problem with economic calculation in a socialist society (or the non-price political allocation of resources):

One summer day in 1979 the leader Kim Jong Il went to see the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital under construction. Looking up with great delight at the grand concrete skeleton of the building completed in a short span of time, he entered the central hall, when an official told him that they were going to lay only the ground, first and second floors with marble and the rest with scagliola because it would cost too much to lay all the floors with marble.

“What then do we use marble for? All the floors should be laid with marble,” said Kim Jong Il. After a while of deep thought, he proposed making a decorative floor of jewels, which are much better than marble. The officials were all amazed at his suggestion of using valuable natural jewels for the floor decoration.

Kim Jong Il reiterated his suggestion, saying they had better make a jewel floor by plastering the central hall, the main passage for all patients and visitors to the hospital, with a mixture of natural jewels.

This was how over 100 tons of natural jewels and colour stones were supplied to the project, and the floor of the central hall was studded with rubies, sapphires, topazes and other precious jewels, reminding one of a jewel carpet.

I have no idea how to build a hospital, but I am fairly confident that this was a poor suggestion.

UPDATE: here is the “jewel carpet”

2. The second item is some interesting video footage shot by a representative of the Czechoslovakian Embassy (1989/1990) and posted on YouTube.  Check them all out here.  Below area  few select videos:

Pyongyang Military Circus (YouTube)

Mangyongdae Funfair (YouTube)

Panmunjom 1 (YouTube)

Panmunjom 2 (YouTube)

Panmunjom Service Center (YouTube)

3. The third item is a new web page featuring selected pictures of Kim Jong–il’s guidance tours.  Check out “Kim Jong–il looking at things“.

4. The Fourth item is a discussion that is part art and part propaganda.  Is this Kim Jong–un or not?

38 North and Leonid Petrov offer some information.

UPDATE: it is not.  The painting is of Kim Il-sung in Manchuria.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

South Korea gave North Korea an astronomical US$2.98 billion during the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations from 1998-2008, according to a government tally announced Thursday. That is 1.5 times more than the amount of aid China gave to North Korea over the same period, which totaled $1.9 billion.

The government and private businesses gave North Korea $1.84 billion through commercial trade, $544.23 million for package tours to the Mt. Kumgang resort, $450 million for an inter-Korean summit, $41.31 million in land use fees and wages for North Korean workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex and $30.03 million as part of various social and cultural exchanges, according to internal documents of the Unification Ministry and other government agencies.

Funds to Develop Nuclear Weapons

“North Korea is believed to have spent $500-600 million to develop long-range missiles and $800-900 million to develop nuclear weapons,” a South Korean government source said. “And the cash provided by South Korea could have been used to develop them.”

Former government officials during the previous administrations deny this. Lee Jae-joung, a former unification minister, said in a lecture in July last year, “It’s frustrating to hear claims that North Korea conducted nuclear tests using money that the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations gave. So far the government offered cash to North Korea only once.”

He claims that the government was not responsible for paying North Korea $450 million for the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 as that was provided by private businesses together with the cash for the Mt. Kumgang package tours and the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

However, the whereabouts of the cash payment of $400,000 Lee admits to is also uncertain. That was the money North Korea demanded in April 2007 to build a video-link center for the reunions of families separated by the Korean War. North Korea has yet to start construction. “I think they just extorted the money,” a South Korean government official said.

Hungry for Cash

“North Korea demanded money for every event,” said one Unification Ministry official who was in charge of humanitarian cooperation projects during the Roh administration. “We got the feeling that North Korea was trying to use the reunions of families separated by the Korean War as a means to make money.” The North even demanded that South Korea pay $1,000 for each video clip exchanged by families in addition to all of the filming and editing equipment as part of a project back in 2007 that would allow some separated families to stay in touch via video messages, the official said.

A National Assembly audit in 2006 revealed how North Korea made money off South Korean broadcasters. A key example is the W1 billion (US$1=W1,149) that state-run South Korean broadcaster KBS gave North Korea in 2003 to record a TV show about a singing contest in Pyongyang to mark Liberation Day.

In 2005, SBS gave W700 million in cash and W200 million worth of paint and other goods to North Korea for a concert in the North Korean capital by South Korean singer Cho Yong-pil, while in 2002, MBC paid the North W320 million in cash and provided 5,000 TV sets (worth W734 million) for two concerts in Pyongyang by South Korean singers Lee Mi-ja and Yoon Do-hyun.

North Korea also received sizable amounts from South Korean businesses and civic groups through unofficial channels or backroom deals. “Many business owners in the South had problems managing their companies because North Korea habitually made excessive demands for money,” said Cho Bong-hyun, a researcher at the Industrial Bank of Korea’s economic research center

This suggests that a considerable amount of bribes were paid. One South Korean owner of a garment company that was based in Pyongyang said, “Bribes South Korean businesses paid in the early stages to prevent any problems later became customary. After North Korean officials got a taste of the money, they ended up asking for bribes first.”

A Unification Ministry official said, “It’s impossible to estimate how much money was given to North Korea through unofficial channels. We can’t even trace the use of official government money given to North Korea, such as the $400,000 for building a video-link center for the family reunions, so there is no way of telling what happened to money handed over under the table.”

Read the full story here:
S.Korea Paid Astronomical Sums to N.Korea
Choson Ilbo
12/3/2010

Lankov writes in the Korea Times:

One of the most important peculiarities of North Korean life is the degree of isolation of North Koreans from entire world. The government does not want them to be aware of some facts which contradict the officially approved picture of the world and their own country. To make sure that propaganda has no competition, the North Korean authorities eliminate all possible sources of alternative information.

Few if any Communist countries were as efficient as North Korea in cutting their population off from the unwanted and unauthorized knowledge about the world beyond the nation’s boundaries.

Few North Koreans are ever allowed to leave their country. The only statistically large but non-privileged group of people with overseas experience was the Siberian loggers who were sent to the wilderness of Southern Siberia from the late 1960s onwards. However, that part of the world is not famous for a high density population, so their contact with the locals was kept at a bare minimum (and North Korean authorities saw to this).

All other groups of North Koreans who were allowed to travel overseas formed the upper crust of society and by definition were carefully chosen for their supposed political reliability. These privileged few were diplomats, crews of the North Korean ships and planes as well as a handful of the people who were allowed to participate in international exchanges, largely of academic nature. These people had a lot to lose, and they also knew that their families would pay a high price for any wrongdoing they committed, thus they seldom caused trouble. They are least likely to talk much about overseas life.

There were students, of course, but their numbers were very small ― perhaps, less than 10,000 North Koreans ever graduated from foreign universities (just for comparison: some 240,000 South Koreans are studying overseas right now).

The North Koreans cannot buy or read books published overseas ― no exception is made even for books from other Communist countries. All non-technical foreign publications are kept in special departments of libraries and one needs a security clearance to access them. In these departments the subversive material could be read only by the trustworthy people who obtained special permission from security police.

Of course, radio was the major source of worries for the Pyongyang leaders. So, North Korea is the only country which outlaws the use of the radio sets with free tuning. All radio sets are permanently fixed on the wavelength of the official Pyongyang broadcast, and police conduct random house checks to ensure that technically savvy owners have not re-modeled their sets.

In a clearly Orwellian twist, the government does its best to keep the populace cut off from the past as well. All periodicals and most books more than ten years old are to be sent to the same special departments with access being limited to the people with proper security clearance. Even speeches of the Great Leader are edited (rewritten) from time to time to meet the demands of the ever changing political situation.

Why did they do it? The answer seems to be obvious: the governments know that they have to hide the huge difference in economic performance between North Korean and its neighbors, and above all ― between North and South Korea. Currently, the ratio of per capita income between two Korean states is estimated to be at 1:15 at best and 1:50 at worst. This is the largest gap which exists worldwide between two countries which share a land border, and this gap is powerful proof of North Korea’s economic inefficiency. The government understands that once the populace learns about the gap, the situation might get out of control. To prevent it, they work hard to keep people ignorant about the outside world.

Until 2000 or so, they have been generally successful, even though some snippets of dangerous information found their way to North Korea. Things began to change in the late 1990s when North Koreans began to move across the porous border with China. Most of the refugees did not stay in China, but eventually returned to North Korea. They brought back stories of Chinese prosperity, DVDs with South Korean TV shows and small, easy-to-hide transistor radios with free tuning.

Since then, things began to change, and the information self-isolation system began to fall apart. However, it might be premature to believe that it has been damaged beyond repair. Yes, people in the borderland area are aware that they live in a poor and underdeveloped society. Many people in Pyongyang also came to realize this. But it seems that in more remote parts of the country the isolation still works reasonably well.

Sometimes I wonder how shocked North Koreans will be when exposed to the outside world for the very first time. We can be sure that their surprise will be huge ― and perhaps, their disappointment about their country’s past will be huge, too.

Read the full story here:
Crack in Orwellian paradise
Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
11/21/2010

According to the Daily NK:

A number of criminals judged to have committed their crimes due to poverty were granted an amnesty in commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Workers’ Party founding in September, in a move characterized as being a result of Kim Jong Eun’s boundless consideration for the North Korean people. However, this has led to serious adverse effects.

A Daily NK source reported on the 12th that, upon a decision of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North Korean authorities reduced the prison terms of around 150,000 criminals across the country in the amnesty, entitled “On the reduction of prison terms for prisoners in commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Party founding and the Party Delegates’ Conference.”

For example, around 1,500 out of 2,100 prisoners in No. 12 Reeducation Camp under the Reform Department of the People’s Safety Ministry in Pungsan-ri, formerly Jeongeo-ri, Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province had their sentences reduced.

According to the source, “Around 250 prisoners were released and three special contributors had their sentences reduced by four years, 20 model prisoners by three years, and around 1,500 other general prisoners by two years.”

He added, “Only violent offenders (robbers, murderers and rapists) sentenced under article 141 of the Penal Code and human trafficking offenders (defector-related offences) under article 117 of the Penal Code were excluded.”

After the head of the camp announced the list of prisoners who would benefit, he reportedly added, “Those who are being released and having their sentences reduced should feel deeply the consideration of the Youth Captain,” going on to say, “The consideration given by the Party is not a gift sent equally to everybody, but only to those who have done well, and gives more consideration to them.”

Generally, amnesties in North Korea are undertaken on every fifth birthday of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and the founding day of the Party, ratified by Kim Jong Il after the Standing Committee of the SPA submits a proposal to him. The 12 reeducation camps under the PSM then decide the scale of the amnesty, depending on the size of the prison population.

However, the amnesties can have undesirable consequences, and this one is no different; the PSM has been reportedly devoting itself to filling up the empty camps, because each camp contains production units.

The source said, “The PSM was concentrating on criminal investigations even before the official announcement of the amnesty, because they had received indications of the decree. With the help of the Prosecutors’ Office, they caught a lot of people and kept them in detention centers, then after the announcement they started putting them in camps.”

“In 2002, commemorating the 60th birthday of the General (Kim Jong Il), although around 30 percent of the prisoners in each camp were released, the same amount of prisoners filled the former prisoners’ places.”

The 12 reeducation camps in North Korea each have unique production facilities. In the No. 12 Camp in Hoiryeong, for example, there is a wooden goods factory, copper mine, dressing plant, limestone mine and farms. Defectors suggest that the profits from these factories cover 80% of the management costs of the PSM.

The camps can be found all over the country including Pyongyang, Kaechoen and Sariwon in South Pyongan Province, Deokwon in Kangwon Province, Hamheung and Hoiryeong.

Read the full story here:
Kim Jong Eun’s “Magnanimous” Amnesty
Daily NK
Im Jeong Jin
11/13/2010