Civil society « North Korean Economy Watch

Archive for the ‘Civil society’ Category

Zimbabweans planning to protest DPRK football team (canceled)

Monday, April 19th, 2010

UPDATE 4: The DPRK has canceled its football team’s visit to Zimbabwe. According to the Times Live of South Africa:

The North Korean squad had been due to arrive in Zimbabwe on Tuesday to train and play friendlies against local teams before moving onto South Africa, where the World Cup kicks off on June 11.

But a senior source in the power-sharing government of President Robert Mugabe and former opposition leader, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, said the visit was called off after it provoked outrage among supporters of Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

UPDATE 3: Zimbabwe continues to put off deliberation. According to Voice of America:

Cabinet discussion of whether Zimbabwe should invite the North Korean soccer team to train in the country through the June-July World Cup period has been put off to next Tuesday as President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai are in Tanzania for the World Economic Forum, a ministerial source said.

Education, Sports and Culture Minister David Coltart told VOA Studio 7 reporter Gibbs Dube that the Cabinet will review the decision by the Zimbabwe World Cup 2010 Committee to invite the North Koreans.

“I presume that if the issue has to be discussed by Cabinet, it will be discussed on Tuesday and as far as I am concerned that team has not yet confirmed that it will be training in this country,” Coltart said.

Political commentator Samukele Hadebe said the North Korean team visit should be canceled to promote healing and reconciliation among Zimbabweans traumatized not only by political violence during the 2008 elections but by older episodes like the 1980s Gukurahundi purge of rival liberation activists in the Matabeleland region.

UPDATE 2: It is possible Zimbabwe could back out of the plan since they have yet to confirm a date. And according to the Guardian:

Zimbabwe’s sports minister, David Coltart, said the dates of the North Koreans’ visit were still to be confirmed. “It is important that the Zimbabwe government deals with this matter in a very sensitive way and does not ignore the history of North Korea here, and does not do anything that might inflame passions or reopen old wounds,” he said.

But he added: “I don’t think it is right to attack a group of young players for what happened 27 years ago in this country.”

Strangely…I met Coltart in Washington a few years ago. He was an MP representing Bulawayo at the time.

UPDATE 1: A Zimbabwe perspective:

Boycotting North Korea solves nothing
Tendai Huchu
4/21/2010

The people of Zimbabwe, more than any other nation in Africa, seem pathologically unable to come to terms with their past. As a nation we share the same psychological symptoms of people who have suffered abuse as children.

At the moment there are calls by some for the people of Matebeleland to boycott the visit by North Korea’s football team on May 25 for warm up matches before the World Cup. They site the Gukurahundi massacres in the mid 1980’s as the reason the North Koreans should be boycotted. These people forget that aggressive attempts to court teams like Brazil to Zimbabwe were rebuffed because of our current circumstances. A lot of countries want nothing to do with us but the North Koreans have agreed to come. They could have gone directly to South Africa like everyone else and found facilities there far superior to anything we can offer.

That the Gukurahundi atrocities were a great tragedy in the history of our nation is beyond debate. This is still an issue we have yet to come to terms with, but exactly how boycotting a team we have invited can help redress our past is difficult to understand. North Korea like Zimbabwe is an undemocratic state. These footballers have no influence whatsoever on their government’s policies, especially those from twenty years ago. The majority of them would have been toddlers or not even born when we were slaughtering each other in the 80s. It is absurd to punish these players for something that they had nothing to do with whatsoever. We are quick to protest when New Zealand and England boycott our cricket team because of their differences with the Mugabe government, yet here we are proposing to do the exact same thing to the North Koreans.

The Observer newspaper in the UK quoted Bulawayo-based activist Effie Ncube saying that the invitation is a “profound insult” because of North Korea’s role in training the Fifth Brigade. This is a typical Zimbabwean attitude of blaming everyone else except ourselves for things that have gone wrong.

The North Koreans are a people we should sympathize with. There are too many similarities between them and us to mention. Like us they depend on handouts from the international community or else they would starve. We, better than most other nations, know what it is like to be isolated from the rest of the world. We know what it is like to live under a government which has no regard for its citizen’s rights and opinions. This is an opportunity to show solidarity to a people who have many similar problems to our own.

We can continue to be a bitter and angry people who constantly look back at the past, not taking responsibility for our actions and blaming everyone else for the things we have done to one another or we can move on. The North Koreans are not our enemy, they have never been. Sport is supposed to bring people together, not to divide them. There is nothing that can be gained by protesting against the North Korean football team for something they had absolutely no involvement in. They deserve to be shown our true Zimbabwean hospitality. We can only pray that the future of both our nations is going to be better than the past we are leaving behind.

ORIGINAL POST: According to Times Live of South Africa:

Zimbabwe’s tourism minister has appealed to activists in the western provinces of Bulawayo to drop plans to protest against the North Korean football team’s scheduled camp in the country during the World Cup.

The presence of the team from the dictatorship of President Kim Jong Il has stirred up strong emotions over the massacre in the early 80s of an estimated 20,000 civilians of the Ndebele speaking people of western Zimbabwe, carried out by soldiers of the Zimbabwe army’s notorious Fifth Brigade who were trained by North Korean instructors.

Groups have threatened to carry out protests against the team in the western city of Bulawayo and in South Africa where over a million Zimbabwean exiles from President Robert Mugabe’s rule now live.

“We are totally against bringing the team to Zimbabwe,” said Methuseli Moyo, spokesman for the Zimbabwe African People’s Union party. “Having a team flying the North Korean flag is very provocative.” The team is due in Harare on May 25 and is set to play friendly matches against the Zimbabwe national team in the capital and in Bulawayo, but activists have warned they would make Bulawayo’s Barbourfields stadium a centre of resistance against the North Koreans.

Tourism minister Walter Mzembi was quoted Sunday in the weekly Standard newspaper as appealing to the groups not to mix politics with sport and to allow national healing to take place.

“Sport must remain the bridge for people-to-people contact, probably the only bridge that has remained standing even when nation states are in a state of fall-out,” he said.

“I wouldn’t want to make this a political issue. It’s purely a sports issue.” He said he had extended invitations to the major teams in the World Cup, including Brazil, England and the United States, but North Korea was the only team that had responded.

The North Korean [5th Brigate] instructors were brought to Zimbabwe in 1983 at the request President Robert Mugabe to form a new brigade of the army, composed exclusively of Shona-speaking veterans of Mugabe’s civil war guerrilla army, to put down a limited insurgency against Mugabe’s rule by Ndebele-based guerrilla veterans.

The Fifth Brigade troops immediately developed a reputation for savage brutality, butchering children and pregnant women to deny the guerrillas support among the population of rural areas where they operated.

Military experts say that the Fifth Brigade’s methods were starkly different from the rest of the country’s largely British-trained army.

Mugabe, held responsible for the massacres, has only referred to the murderous period in the country’s history as a moment of madness. Demands for acknowledgment of the brutality are rising round the country, but two weeks ago police forcibly closed down an art exhibition portraying the suffering of the period, and arrested the artist.

Additional information:
1. Here is a satellite image of Barbourfields stadium. (I visited Bulawayo in 1996 and it was a lovely town at the time).

2. Last I read North Korean laborers were building football stadiums in South Africa for the World Cup. This was in dispute and I do not know whether it has been confirmed or disproven.

3. North Korean laborers built Zimbabwe’s Heroe’s Acre. Here is a satellite image of it.

4. And just for fun, here is a satellite image of Robert Mugabe’s retirement palace. If you view the location in Google Earth, you can scroll through historical imagery to see this and neighboring houses under construction.

Posted in Football (soccer), Sports, Zimbabwe | Comments Closed

Pyongyang’s Women Wear the Pants

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Andrei Lankov writes in the Wall Street Journal about the growing role women have come to play in the North Korean economy. According to the article:

A joke making the rounds in Pyongyang goes: “What do a husband and a pet dog have in common?” Answer: “Neither works nor earns money, but both are cute, stay at home and can scare away burglars.”

North Korea is still a strongly patriarchal society, so the popularity of jokes deriding men is a surprising sign of shifting attitudes. The cause is also a surprise—women are running the country’s booming unofficial economy.

A decade ago North Korea went through a man-made social disaster which exceeds everything East Asia has experienced since Mao’s ill-conceived experiments of the 1960s. An estimated 600,000-900,000 people perished in the 1990s famine, which was largely a product of the government’s unwillingness to reform the economy. The social and economic structure of a Stalinist society collapsed. Antiquated iron mills and power plants ground to a halt, and the rationing system did not provide enough food for the average citizen to survive.

Facing this challenge, North Korean society reacted in an unusual way: It rediscovered the market economy. Unlike China, where capitalism was re-introduced from above by Deng Xiaoping and his fellow reformers, in North Korea its growth has been largely spontaneous. Nonetheless, by 2000 market exchange, both illegal and semilegal, came to play a decisive role in the lives of North Koreans.

This worried the Kim regime’s leaders, who understand full well how the marketplace undermines their political control. In recent years they launched a number of policies aimed at undermining markets. The recent currency reform was meant to deliver another blow to the markets by annihilating the capital of private businesses. It backfired, though, and the economic situation worsened considerably.

However, the nemesis of the regime, the market vendors of North Korea, are by no means the kind of street toughs one might encounter in the black markets of other countries. North Korea’s “new capitalism” of dirty marketplaces, ancient charcoal trucks and badly dressed vendors has a distinctly female face. Women are overrepresented among the leaders of the growing post-Stalinist economy—at least at its grassroots level, among the market traders and small-time entrepreneurs.

This is partly due to a distinctive feature of North Korean society. Until around 1990, markets played a very slight role in the North Korean economy. Almost everything was rationed by the state. In those days, the North Korean state required every able-bodied male to be employed by some state enterprise. However, some 30% of married women of working age were allowed to stay at home as full-time housewives.

When in the early 1990s the old system began to fall apart, men continued to go to their jobs. At first glance this might appear irrational, since most state-run factories came to a standstill, subsidized rations were not delivered and an official monthly salary would barely buy one kilo of rice.

Nonetheless, North Koreans expected that sooner or later things would eventually return to what they thought of as “normal”—that is, to the old Stalinist system. They were not aware of any alternative. They also knew from experience that people who showed any disloyalty to the state—for instance those who cooperated with South Korean authorities during the Korean War—were discriminated against for the rest of their lives. Even the children of such “unreliable elements” faced many official restrictions. So men believed that it would be wise to keep their “official” jobs for the sake of the family’s future.

The situation of women was different. They had time, and their involvement with private trade was seen as less dangerous—precisely because of the patriarchal nature of a society where only males’ behavior really mattered. In some cases women began by selling household items they could do without or homemade food. Eventually, these activities developed into larger businesses, and today at least three-quarters of North Korean market vendors are women.

For many North Korean women, the social disaster of the 1990s has become an opportunity to display their strength and intelligence. In recent months those women have become the primary target of government policies designed to destroy private enterprises. But the experience of the last two decades suggests that the women are likely to continue wearing the pants.

Read the full article here:
Pyongyang’s Women Wear the Pants
Wall Street Journal
Andrei Lankov
4/16/2010

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

DPRK art on display in Vienna this summer

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

(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: [email protected]

Posted in Art, Austria | 1 Comment »

DPRK has e-books

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

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

Posted in Art, Domestic publication, Leisure, Library | Comments Closed

Park – Gomes Saga

Wednesday, April 7th, 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…)

Posted in Emigration, Religion, Restaurants, USA | 2 Comments »

RoK goods popular with DPRK women

Sunday, April 4th, 2010

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

Posted in Civil society, Dating/Courting, International trade, South Korea | Comments Closed

North Korean restaurants in Asia

Monday, March 29th, 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

Posted in Foreign direct investment, International trade, Restaurants | 1 Comment »

Friday Fun: Centre Forward and Mass Games photos

Friday, March 26th, 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: [email protected]

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

See more about his work here.

Posted in Art, Civil society, Domestic publication, Film, Koryo Tours | 1 Comment »

North Koreans working on South African football stadiums

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

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

Posted in Football (soccer), International trade, Labor conditions/wages, South Africa, Sports | 1 Comment »

Kang Chol-hwan on Hamhung

Thursday, March 11th, 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

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

North Korean Economy Watch