North Korean Economy Watch

(h/t Werner) According to a reader the MAK Museum Vienna (Museum of Applied Arts, Museum of Contemporary Arts) will hold from May 9-September 5, 2010 a special exhibition of North Korean paintings, posters, and architecture in collaboration with the National Gallery in Pyongyang (located here-satellite image).

According to the MAK Museum:

FLOWERS FOR KIM IL SUNG
Art and architecture from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
19.05.2010 – 05.09.2010

Through large format paintings and contemporary positions in the areas of film, poster art, and architecture, the exhibition offers insight into the art production of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. In collaboration with the National Gallery in Pyongyang, MAK has put together a comprehensive show offering the first presentation of the gallery’s original works in a foreign museum.

For several months, visitors to MAK will have the opportunity to gain, in a world premiere, an impression of the culture of the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea (DPRK). which has been isolated since its founding in 1948. Already in the past, MAK has offered insight into worlds beyond Western art and architecture movements with exhibitions, such as “Art and Revolution. Russian and Soviet Art 1919–1932” (1988), “The Tyranny of the Beautiful: Architecture in the Time of Stalin” (1994), “Architecture Again. The Havana Project” (1997), and “Cine Art. Indian Poster Painters at the MAK” (1999). After years of intense effort, it has been possible to arrange a collaboration with the National Gallery in Pyongyang that aims to present the officially recognized art of the Democratic People’s Republic, in context, and make transparent the development of art within the nation’s political framework. The paintings from the National Gallery, many of which present idealized everyday scenes, are able to offer revealing insight into this country’s largely unknown culture.

A majority of the work is comparable with Soviet Realism. Formally, the artists fall back on stylistic means from Realism and Romanticism: motifs from the working world and the revolutionary struggle are depicted in an academic painterly style, mediating a picture of the ideal world and showing new hero figures: workers, airplane crews and pilots are commonly the protagonists doing the “glorious and good.”

The exhibition will also document with photos, original designs, and models, the special architectural development of Pyongyang, which was entirely destroyed during the Korean War (1950–1953). The model of the Juche Tower, landmark of the city, is hereby attributed special significance. In the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea, the fine arts developed in a special way under the rule of State founder President Kim Il Sung and his son and successor President Kim Jong Il.

Taking recourse to historical role models, President Kim developed the “Juche” ideology, which postulates the concept of independence as the ideal view of the world. In art, promoted along with portraits and scenes showing heads of state, are primarily motifs displaying the country and life in the Democratic People‘s Republic of Korea in their most positive forms.

Curator Christiane Bauermeister
Consultant curator
Christiane Bauermeister
Project coordination
Dunja Gottweis

A catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

Guided tours
Sat, Sun 4.00 p.m.
Continuous information service and short tours: Sat 2.00-4.00 p.m.

Special guided tours by advance booking: Gabriele Fabiankowitsch, phone (+43-1) 711 36-298, e-mail: education@MAK.at

According to the Korea Times:

North Korea, the planet’s deepest information void, appears to be dabbling with electronic books (e-books), a South Korean activist claimed Thursday.

It’s questionable how much an ecosystem for e-books would be relevant to readers living in perhaps the most censored country in the world.

But according to Free North Korea Radio’s Kim Seong-min, North Koreans have choices beyond government propaganda books to read on their computers, including translations of Western classics such as Shakespeare’s plays, “The Iliad,” “Don Quixote,” “ Jane Eyre,” “ Les Miserables” and even “Gone With The Wind.”

“North Korea will have less complications surrounding copyright issues compared to the South, and with the government pushing the project directly, the country seems to have acquired a wealth of e-book content over a relatively short period of time,” Kim told Yonhap News.

Kim revealed “Electronic Library Mirae (Future) 2.0,” North Korea’s e-book computer program he claimed to have acquired from one of his foreign sources.

When run on Microsoft Windows, Mirae 2.0 opens a page that resembles a conventional library search site, and provides access to the electronic versions of about 1,500 books and 350,000 kinds of other documents.

The books include a wealth of non-fictions work, mostly on political theories and history, but also a variety of literature, song collections, and educational content such as dictionaries and books of facts.

The e-book collection of literature contains some contemporary North Korean work that hasn’t been previously introduced to the South, Kim said.

Users of Mirae 2.0 can search for e-books by title or content.

They can even use its voice recognition system by clicking the “read” tab at the top of the screen, with the computer responding with a recorded female voice that seems “natural” by North Korean standards, Kim said.

Read the full article here:
North Korea has electronic books
Korea Times
Kim Tong-hyung
2/8/2010

UPDATE 16: 10/27/2010 – Robert Park has spoken of long-term psychological problems stemming from his captivity in North Korea.  According to the Choson Ilbo:

The evangelical activist Robert Park, who was detained in North Korea for 43 days after crossing the border from China in December last year, has spoken for the first time on South Korean TV about the ordeal. “They have really thought about this. How can we kill these people, how can we starve these people, how can we enslave these people, how can we control these people,” the Korean American told KBS on Tuesday.

He pledged to devote the rest of his life to fighting for the demise of the North Korean regime and the human rights of North Koreans.

Park recalled how he crossed the Duman (or Tumen) River on Dec. 25 last year, and was immediately arrested and beaten. “The scars and wounds of the things that happened to me in North Korea are too intense,” he said. He added that to prevent him from divulging the details of his detention, the security forces carried out humiliating sexual torture. “As a result of what happened to me in North Korea, I’ve thrown away any kind of personal desire. I will never, you know, be able to have a marriage or any kind of relationship.”

He attempted a suicide immediately after he returned to the United States and had to be treated by a psychiatrist for seven months.

Park insisted that an apology he read on North Korean TV was dictated to him. Asked why he decided to enter the North illegally armed with nothing but a Bible, he said, “I hoped through my sacrifice, that people will come together and they will liberate North Korea.”

UPDATE 15: 8/30/2010 – Doubts raised over whether Gomes attempted suicide. According ot the Choson Ilbo:

The North’s official KCNA news agency on July 9 reported Gomes tried to kill himself “driven by his guilty conscience and by frustration with the U.S. government’s failure to free him.” It said he was being treated in hospital.

After the news, the U.S. administration quickly decided to send Carter to Pyongyang. In mid-August, a U.S. State Department medical team visited the North to check on the prisoner.

But in an interview with the New York Times last Saturday, Gomes’ uncle Michael Farrow denied he attempted suicide but had gone on hunger strike.

“I wouldn’t say that he was anywhere near sick at all,” the daily quoted Farrow as saying. “Naturally he probably had some discomfort of being away from home, but other than that he held up pretty good.” This suggests that Gomes was protesting against his detention.

Gomes arrived at Logan International Airport in Boston on the same plane as Carter on Friday and went home with his family without talking to the press.

UPDATE 14: 8/27/2010- Here is KCNA coverage of Cater’s visit to secure the release of Gomes:

Report on Jimmy Carter’s Visit to DPRK

Pyongyang, August 27 (KCNA) — Jimmy Carter, ex-president of the United States, and his party visited the DPRK from Aug. 25 to 27.

Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, met and had a talk with them.

He discussed with Carter the pending issues of mutual concern between the DPRK and the U.S.

Kim Yong Nam expressed the will of the DPRK government for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the resumption of the six-party talks.

In particular, he emphasized that it is the behest of President Kim Il Sung to denuclearize the peninsula.

Jimmy Carter made an apology to Kim Yong Nam for American Gomes’ illegal entry into the DPRK and gave him the assurance that such case will never happen again on behalf of the government and the ex-president of the U.S. He asked Kim Yong Nam to convey to General Secretary Kim Jong Il a message courteously requesting him to grant special pardon to Gomes to leniently forgive him and let him go home.

After receiving a report on the request made by the U.S. government and Carter, Kim Jong Il issued an order of the chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission on granting amnesty to Gomes, an illegal entrant, pursuant to Article 103 of the Socialist Constitution of the DPRK.

Carter expressed deep thanks for this.

Earlier, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State for Consular Affairs and his party visited Pyongyang from August 9 to 11 in connection with the case of Gomes and met officials of the Foreign Ministry and a relevant legal body of the DPRK.

The DPRK side took measures as an exception to ensure that they met Gomes three times and confirmed his condition. The U.S. side offered gratitude for these humanitarian measures.

The measure taken by the DPRK to set free the illegal entrant is a manifestation of its humanitarianism and peace-loving policy.

During the visit Carter and his party met and had an open-hearted discussion with the DPRK’s foreign minister and vice foreign minister for U.S. affairs on the DPRK-U.S. relations, the resumption of the six-party talks, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and other issues of mutual concern.

They also enjoyed a performance given by the State Symphony Orchestra.

The Pyongyang visit paid by Jimmy Carter, ex-president of the U.S., provided a favorable occasion of deepening the understanding and building confidence between the two countries.

UPDATE 13: 8/25/2010 – Jimmy Carter has arrived in Pyongyang for the second time in his life.

UPDATE 12: Jimmy Carter is reportedly gearing up to go and get Mr. Gomes.

UPDATE 11: According to All Headline News:

The United States confirmed on Monday that a four-person team visited Pyongyang recently to meet with 30-year-old Aijalon Gomes, who has been held captive since January.

Asked to comment on the visit, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told journalists, “It was a four person team: one consular official, two doctors, and a translator. We requested permission to visit Mr. Gomes. That permission from the North Korean Government was granted. The basis of the trip was simply our ongoing concerns about Mr. Gomes’s health and welfare.”

“They (the team from the State Department, Washington) were in Pyongyang from August 9 through August 11. I believe they returned on August 12,” said Crowley, adding, “They visited him (Gomes) in a hospital.”

Crowley said that although the U.S. and Swedish officials on its behalf, “requested permission to bring Mr. Gomes home,” adding, “Unfortunately, he remains in North Korea.”

“We have had conversations directly with North Korea on this issue. We have encouraged them to release Mr. Gomes on humanitarian grounds and we will continue to have that direct conversation with North Korea as needed,” Crowley noted.

UPDATE 10: US in direct contact with DPRK re: Gomes (Daily NK)

UPDATE 9: (2010-7-19) Robert Park has apparently broken his silence to speak out for Gomes.  According to KOLD News 13 (Tucson, AZ):

For the first time since his release from North Korea, Tucsonan Robert Park is speaking out.

…

He’s speaking out now to send a message about Aijalon Gomes, a U.S. citizen who’s currently being held in North Korea.

“He’s a wonderful man,” Park said. “He’s a very good friend of mine.”

Gomes, a Boston resident, crossed into North Korea one month after Park did. Gomes has been sentenced to eight years in a North Korean labor camp. But North Korea has recently threatened to increase that punishment, by invoking the country’s “wartime law,” citing growing tensions with the U.S.

It’s still not clear exactly why Gomes entered North Korea, but based on limited communications with his friend, Park believes it’s because of him.

“He was very concerned about me,” said Park, who added that crossing into North Korea was uncharacteristic for Gomes. “He was so concerned that (I) was dead, so that’s why he took this risk and he just went in.”

Park says he’s now going on a hunger strike to raise awareness and urgency about Gomes’ situation.

“I’m on the third day of my hunger strike,” he said. “I plan to not consume any food until he is released, even if that means my death.”

Park is also urging Americans to contact lawmakers to intervene.

“If you would please contact your government leaders and plead with them, raise awareness with them concerning Aijalon Gomes’s case, and ask that they make a direct visit.”

UPDATE 8: KCNA reports Gomes attempted suicide:

American Prisoner Attempts Suicide
Pyongyang, July 9 (KCNA) — American Gomes serving a prison term in the DPRK recently attempted to take his own life, according to information available from a relevant organ.

Driven by his strong guilty conscience, disappointment and despair at the U.S. government that has not taken any measure for his freedom, he attempted to commit suicide. He is now given first-aid treatment at a hospital.

The Swedish embassy here representing the U.S. interests acquainted itself with the condition of the patient at the hospital.

According to the New York Times:

In April, North Korea sentenced Mr. Gomes to eight years of hard labor and fined him the equivalent of $700,000 for entering the country illegally and for “hostile acts.”

North Korea recently threatened to increase the punishment for Mr. Gomes under the country’s “wartime law,” saying worsening tensions with the United States had created a warlike situation on the Korean Peninsula.

Mr. Gomes’s motivation for entering North Korea is unclear. He had been teaching English in South Korea before his arrest in the North. In late April, he was allowed to speak to his mother by telephone.

UPDATE 7: DPRK threatens to increase punishment of Gomes over the Cheonan situation.  Apparenlty there is no North Korean word for “Double Jeapordy“.  According to the BBC:

North Korea said it would use “wartime law” against the 30-year-old if the US continued its “hostile approach” over the sinking of a South Korean warship.

….

According to North Korea’s state news agency, US requests to free Gomes will not be accepted while the dispute over the sinking of the warship continues.

Instead the Korean Central News Agency says “there remains only the issue of what harsher punishment will be meted out to him”.

“If the US persists in its hostile approach, the latter will naturally be compelled to consider the issue of applying a wartime law to him,” state media reported.

Analysts say “wartime law” could mean a life sentence or the death penalty.

UPDATE 6: Gomes has phoned home.  According to the AP (4/30/2010):

An American imprisoned in North Korea was allowed to speak to his family by telephone Friday, state media said.

North Korea sentenced Aijalon Mahli Gomes to eight years of hard labor and fined him $700,000 in early April for entering the country illegally in January and for an unspecified “hostile act.”

Gomes, from Boston, was the fourth American detained by North Korea for illegal entry in less than a year. He had been teaching English in South Korea.

The official Korean Central News Agency reported that Gomes spoke with family on Friday. The call was allowed after Gomes asked “for a phone contact with his family for his health and other reasons,” the report said.

The brief dispatch from North Korea’s capital Pyongyang provided no further details on the call.

KCNA also said Gomes had contact in prison with a Swedish Embassy official to whom he handed a “written petition.” The report said that happened before the phone call but wasn’t specific.

The United States and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations, and Sweden handles U.S. interests in the North.

UPDATE 5: Gomes has been sentenced.  According to the BBC:

North Korea has sentenced a US citizen to eight years’ hard labour for illegally entering the country, state news agency KCNA has said.

The man, named as 30-year-old Aijalon Mahli Gomes, from Boston, admitted his wrongdoing in court, KCNA reported.

Gomes had worked as an English teacher in South Korea, and reportedly crossed the border from China on 25 January.

Swedish diplomats were allowed to attend the trial, as the US has no diplomatic presence in North Korea.

Gomes, described by colleagues as a devout Christian, was also fined 70 million won ($700,000; £460,000 at the official exchange rate). It is not clear why he entered North Korea.

Goodwill gesture?
Despite the jail sentence, analysts suggested Gomes could be freed before too long as Pyongyang tries to improve bilateral relations with the US.

“The North is not going to hold him for eight years,” Professor Kim Yong-Hyun of Seoul’s Dongguk University told the AFP news agency.

“It is likely to suspend the implementation of the sentence and expel him as a goodwill gesture toward the United States.”

Gomes was the fourth American citizen to be accused of entering the country in the past year. In February, North Korea freed Robert Park, who had entered the country from China by walking over a frozen river.

He had reportedly wanted to highlight human rights issues in North Korea, but was said before his release to have admitted his “mistake”.

Last year two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were also arrested by North Korea on the border with China.

They were sentenced to 12 years’ hard labour but freed in August after four months in captivity, as part of a diplomatic mission spearheaded by former US President Bill Clinton.

According to KCNA:

Central Court Gives American to 8 Years Hard Labor

Pyongyang, April 7 (KCNA) — A trial of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, male U.S. citizen, was held at a court of justice of the Central Court of the DPRK on Tuesday.

An examination was made of the hostile act committed against the Korean nation and the trespassing on the border of the DPRK against which an indictment was brought in and his guilt was confirmed according to the relevant articles of the criminal code of the DPRK at the trial. On this basis, the court sentenced him to eight years of hard labor and a fine of 70 million won.

The accused admitted all the facts which had been put under accusation.

The presence of representatives of the Swedish embassy here to witness the trial was allowed as an exception at the request of the Swedish side protecting the U.S. interests.

(more…)

According to the Choson Ilbo:

South Korean goods remain popular among well-to-do North Koreans, especially women, Open Radio for North Korea station reported on March 25.

The defector-run radio station said one North Korean official bought South Korean goods including a robot vacuum cleaner, air conditioner, heater, underwear, and cosmetic goods worth US$3,000 in December last year. He was quoted as saying his wife asked him to buy them and was very happy with them, so her circle of friends asked him to buy the same things for them.

South Korean goods are apparently no longer confiscated in customs. The official said customs officers do not mind as long as the goods are for personal use and not for sale. Control by Chinese customs is stricter than in North Korea.

It said South Korean robot vacuum cleaners are thought to be cheaper than Japanese ones, and the batteries last longer. South Korean underwear and cosmetic goods suit North Koreans better than those imported from other countries.

Read the full story here:
Rich N.Korean Women Lead Craze for S.Korean Goods
Choson Ilbo
4/3/2010

According to Slate:

North Korean government-run restaurants have existed for years in the regions of China adjacent to the DPRK’s northern border, but the 21st century has seen an expansion of the business into other parts of Asia. In 2002, the first Southeast Asian branch of Pyongyang opened in the Cambodian tourist hub of Siem Reap, and it became an immediate hit with South Korean tour groups visiting the nearby temples of Angkor. The success of the restaurant, reportedly opened by Ho Dae-sik, the local representative of the DPRK-aligned International Taekwondo Federation, led to the opening of the Phnom Penh branch in 2003. This was followed by more elaborate establishments in Bangkok and the popular Thai beach resort of Pattaya, as well as a small branch in the Laotian capital, Vientiane.

Little is known of how the restaurants operate, but experts say they are closely linked with other overseas operations run by the reclusive regime in Pyongyang. Bertil Lintner, author of Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korean Under the Kim Clan, says that in the early 1990s, North Korea was hit by a severe economic crisis caused by the disruption in trading ties with its former Communist allies. At that time, both the Soviet Union and China began to demand that Pyongyang pay for imports in hard currency rather than barter goods, forcing it to open “capitalist” foreign ventures to make up funding shortfalls. He says the restaurants are part of this chain of trading companies controlled by Bureau 39, the “money making” (and money-laundering) arm of the Korean Workers’ Party.

“The restaurants are used to earn additional money for the government in Pyongyang—at the same time as they were suspected of laundering proceeds from North Korea’s more unsavory commercial activities,” he says. “Restaurants and other cash-intensive enterprises are commonly used as conduits for wads of bills, which banks otherwise would not accept as deposits.”

According to reports from defectors, the eateries are operated through a network of local middlemen who are required to remit a certain amount every year to the coffers in Pyongyang. Kim Myung Ho, a North Korean defector who ran a restaurant in northern China, reported in 2007 that each establishment, affiliated with “trading companies” operated by the government, was forced to make annual fixed payments of between $10,000 and $30,000 back to the North Korean capital. “Every year, the sum total is counted at the business headquarters in Pyongyang, but if there’s even a small default or lack of results, then the threat of evacuation is given,” Kim told reporters from the Daily NK, a North Korean news service run by exiles and human rights activists.

A year ago, the Pyongyang restaurants in Cambodia and Thailand suddenly closed their doors, only to reopen again after a six-month hiatus. Lintner cited an Asian diplomat in Bangkok saying the restaurants, like all “capitalist” enterprises, were hit hard by the global economic crisis, but locals familiar with the establishment in Phnom Penh offered another explanation. One worker at a nearby business said Pyongyang closed after a dispute with a Cambodian customer who tried to take one of its North Korean waitresses out for “drinks” after dinner.

If true, it would not be the first time. In 2006 and 2007, Daily NK reported several incidents in which waitresses from North Korean restaurants in China’s Shandong and Jilin provinces tried to defect, forcing the closure of the operations. Kim Myung Ho added that two or three DPRK security agents live onsite at each restaurant to “regulate” the workers and that any attempts at flight result in the immediate repatriation of the entire staff.

Read the full story here:
Kingdom Kim’s Culinary Outposts
Slate
Sebastian Strangio
3/27/2010

Koryo Tours is distributing the North Korean film Centre Forward–a film which “critics are already hailing as the best North Korean-themed football movie of all time”.

See the trailer you YouTube here.

See the trailer on Youku (PR China) here.

You can order the film directly from Koryo Tours by email: info@KoryoGroup.com

Also, photographer Werner Kranwetvogel worked with Nick Bonner to produce high quality photography of the Mass Games:

See more about his work here.

UPDATE:  Football officials deny DPRK laborers working on stadiums. South Korea trying to confirm.

ORIGINAL POST: Over the last few years I have developed a growing catalogue of North Korean-made buildings and monuments in Africa (like this)–so I was very interested to read that North Korean laborers are working on South Africa’s World Cup football stadiums.

According to the Joong Ang Daily:

When North Korean national football players take the field against the Ivory Coast in their final Group G match in the 2010 International Football Association’s World Cup in South Africa, they will be playing at a stadium their compatriots helped build.

South Korean sources said yesterday North Korean laborers are helping to put the finishing touch on stadiums across South Africa ahead of the World Cup, which will kick off in June.

“North Koreans have been put to work on four to five stadiums that require renovation, including Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg [satellite image here], where the opening and closing ceremonies, plus the final will be staged,” a source said. “There are an estimated 1,000 North Koreans there.”

One such stadium is Mbombela Stadium in Nelspruit (Location here but image takem before construction). The North will face the Ivory Coast on June 25 in this 43,500-seat stadium.The South African government has slated 12 billion rand, or $1.6 billion, for 10 stadiums in nine different cities, and North Korean laborers are expected to reap tens of thousands of dollars for their job.

“During the Kim Il Sung era, North Korea built football stadiums and even presidential halls in African nations,” recalled Lim Il, a North Korean defector who used to work for a construction company in the North. “Perhaps such experience helped secure the South African job.”

North Korea and South Africa established formal diplomatic ties in August 1998. This is their first major personnel exchange since then. It is not yet clear if the workers in South Africa will return home upon completing the World Cup work or will be dispatched to other construction projects.

Helping South Africa can be interpreted as an attempt to earn some much-needed foreign capital. North Korea has up to 30,000 laborers in China, Russia and some Middle Eastern countries. Last September, North Korea sent nearly 50 workers from the state-run Mansudae Art Studio in Pyongyang to construct the 160-foot, $27-million statue depicting a family rising from a volcano in Senegal.

One South Korean government official said, “The North government will likely demand loyalty from those workers and collect their wages to add to their foreign currency reserve.”

If anyone can help me identify the stadiums on which the North Koreans are working I would appreciate it.

Read the full story here:
North hard at work on Cup stadiums
Joong Ang Daily
Lee Young-jong
3/15/2010

From the Choson Ilbo:

I visited Hamhung many times before defecting to South Korea, and whenever I went I felt distinctly uncomfortable. Hooligans clustering at the railroad station glared at the goods carried by pedestrians and provoked quarrels if they thought you were looking at them. At construction sites in Pyongyang, the word was that Hamhung people were wild. Often there were gang fights at project sites where tens of thousands of youths from different regions had been mobilized, and Hamhung youngsters were always the most violent. The city was home to the greatest number of organized gangs, and even police officers couldn’t handle them. Hamhung also has more access to outside world as it is an intermediary place through which all things coming in through the northern border with China pass.

As long as 20 years ago, markets in Hamhung were so active that almost everything was available there. It was here, among other cities, that market traders rioted in the wake of a recent disastrous currency reform since they suffered greater damage due to the bigger size of the markets.

I also got the impression that many young people in Hamhung listened to South Korean broadcasts, and those who didn’t know South Korean pop songs were treated as country bumpkins. The people there struck me as more resilient than in any other city, and that may be a reason that the city often sees public executions.

Read the full story here:
Kim Jong-il’s Visit to Hamhung Is a Bad Sign
Choson Ilbo
Kang Chol-hwan
3/11/2010

Yonhap
3/6/2010

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) provided US$115,200 worth of support for the training of North Korean athletes who took part in the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, a Washington-based radio station said Saturday.

From November 2008 through last month, the IOC provided monthly support of $1,500 to each of five North Korean athletes, two of whom participated in the Olympics that ended March 1, the international broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported, citing an e-mail from the committee.

The communist North sent figure skaters Ko Hyun-sook and Ri Song-chol to the Vancouver Olympics, but failed to win a medal.

The impoverished Pyongyang, which relies on outside aid to feed its 24 million people, has won a total of two [WINTER] Olympic medals — a silver in women’s speed skating in 1964 and a bronze in women’s short track skating in 1992 — in its history.

Establishing the Olympic scholarship program in the 1960s, the IOC provides cash support to impoverished nations like North Korea to encourage participation of all countries in the international sports event.

The IOC is willing to support North Korean athletes again for the 2012 London Olympics, the committee said in the e-mail, adding it will accept applications from September this year.

UPDATE 1 (2011-6-21): Slate covers Prof. Fenkl’s collection

ORIGINAL POST (2010-3-4): Taking a page from the Brian Myers playbook, Heinz Insu Fenkl, a literature professor at the State University of New York, produces English translations of hard-to-find North Korean Comic Books (“Gruim-chaek”).

According to Reuters blog:

Heinz Insu Fenkl, a literature professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, has cracked one secret to understanding the bizarre regime of North Korea: by reading its comic books.

The academic, who refers to himself as an American-Korean, spends hours in his office tucked away in upstate New York, churning out English translations of the rare books (called “gruim-chaek” in North Korea) after he gathers them at shops in China and from colleagues who travel to Pyongyang.

The plots are often wacky, usually pinning blame on loud-mouthed Americans and opportunist Japanese for cursing their promised land with vice. Most books are leaked to China through the border town of Dandong — a hub of smuggling in North Korean goods. Others end up in a single shop in Tokyo that specializes in hermit-state memorabilia. Still, others mysteriously make their way to university libraries in the U.S.

Of the “gruim-chaek” I’ve located, those published this decade tend to be spy thrillers probably aimed at young boys and teenagers. The cartoonists establish the storylines strictly as moralistic good-versus-evil tales. And almost all the books are printed in black-and-white on poor quality paper.

“I’ve also seen some covers of more recent comics that seem to be re-establishing a mythic narrative by referring back to old folktales,” Fenkl said, adding that he’s planning a single massive web archive for all his North Korean comic books.

The books are also designed to instill the father of North Korea, Kim Il-sung’s, philosophy of Juche — radical self-reliance of the state, added Nick Bonner, founder of Koryo Tours, an English-language tour company in Beijing that takes visitors to North Korea several times each year.

“They’re much like the themes I read when I was a kid, on the British Army fighting the ‘Nazis and Japs,’” Bonner reflected, pointing out that some propaganda plots nonetheless resemble our own. “But [in North Korea] their themes are either historic or based on the Anti-Japanese Guerilla War, or the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War [the North Korean name for the Korean War in 1950-53].”

In “A Blizzard in the Jungle,” published in 2001, a group of Americans and North Koreans traveling on an airplane crash in an unnamed African country. When they’re stranded in the jungle, the Americans selfishly split ways with their North Korean colleagues, only to be devoured by alligators in a nearby river.

Let it be a warning from the Dear Leader: never embrace the self-indulging lifestyle of the American warmongers.

The fact that North Koreans were writing politically charged comic books set in Africa comes as no surprise, Fenkl said. Quite a few North Koreans live as expatriates on that continent: for years, North Korea has sent military advisers to Angola, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ethiopia and Uganda to supply weapons and train soldiers in exchange for mineral concessions.

Strangely, one character onboard the crashed airplane is named Zacharias — possibly an allusion to Zacarias Moussaoui, a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers. “A Blizzard in the Jungle” was published in that same year, though Fenkl concedes this is probably a coincidence.

Other comic books directly point fingers at American leaders, rather than only bashing capitalism.

In a similar storyline from 2005 called “General Loser and the Gnats,” Americans who go by the last name “Bush” find themselves disgraced by their president’s policies. They change their names and confide in the revolutionary cause. (I have not yet found satires on Barack Obama out of the hermit state.)

North Korea’s comic craze is nothing new. For decades, the communist regime has distributed books to elementary school students.

One of North Korea’s most famous comic books aimed at children is “The Great General Mighty Wing,” an epic narrative published by a state-run press in 1994.

Mighty Wing the honeybee confronts a horde of imperialist wasps — cunningly dressed like Japanese soldiers from World War II — trying to invade his land. After the wasps lay dead, he quickly rallies his enthusiastic colony into a workers’ collective.

By working together, they build an extensive irrigation canal that flows abundantly to all the bees — not just the powerful wasps.

Concerned about a drought and famine that would eventually kill about 600,000 people, North Korea at the time was looking for ways purvey water to its people. The regime was constructing a large irrigation canal at the same time Mighty Wing became a sensation.

“Mighty Wing, in some ways, was an iconic image,” Fenkl said. “It was a brilliant move to use bees, or beol, as a symbol to resonate with the historical irrigation project, the Yeoldu 3,000 Ri Beol.”

“The books were in color, unlike most comics,” he added, pointing out the importance the regime might have placed on this cartoon.

Mighty Wing gained fame in North Korea at the same level of Mickey Mouse in the West, thanks to the national fears the artists touched on. Kim Il-sung had died that same year — and many North Koreans were secretly uncertain about what would come next.

In his research, Fenkl recently noticed one anomaly: the “gruim-chaek” that reaches the international black market usually differs from those intended for a North Korean audience.

It appears that the editors “step in,” he said, imputing the black-market comics with less ideological content. This could mean they are purposely sending the comics across the sealed Chinese border to expand their readership.

“I will have to look into it before I come to any conclusions. ‘The Crystal Key,’ for example, is pretty indistinguishable from a non-ideological comic book,” he reflected, referring to another famous book published in 1992. “[With the ideological content taken out] it would be an internationally accessible graphic novel about pirates and a virtuous family protecting their community.”

Mr. Fenkel’s web page is here.

Here are excerpts from some of the comics he has translated:

1. Great General Mighty Wing

2. The Chrystal Key

3. Blizzard in the Jungle: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

4. Here are some other covers.

5. Here are images of some other DPRK comics