North Korean Economy Watch

Daily NK
Moon Sung Hwee
12/4/2007

An internal source conveyed on the 30th that due to an extreme decree which prohibits all sales of medical goods, the suffering of citizens has been increasing.

The source maintained that “In August, the sale of medical products was banned, and by the start of anti-socialism inspections in September, no medical products could be found in the jangmadang.”

The North Korean authorities have long since stated its position in prohibiting the sale of medical goods, saying that the sale of medical goods in the jangmadang is a show of democracy that undermines the national medical system. However, regulations usually never went beyond formalities.

Recently, however, anti-socialism inspections have been conducted on a large-scale in Yankang with the theme of “Abolishing capitalist trends in the market.” Medical products, which are mostly from China and South Korea, have been regulated more aggressively. Some have said that the authorities have strengthened regulations due to frequent incidences involving Chinese sub-standard medical products.”

With the harbinger of regulation of medical products, pharmaceutical vendors have sold medical products to their acquaintances on a limited basis. The price has increased significantly as well. Chinese-made aspirin, “Zhengtongbian”, which costs 20 North Korean won per pill, has hiked up to 30 won. A bottle of anti-diarrhea medicine has increased from 150 won to 300 won and penicillin from 120 to 200 won.

Especially the smuggling of Electrolyte Solution, used in IV’s to hydrate hospital patients, has stopped due to regulations, causing a jump in price.

From mid-August to the end of October, the anti-socialism inspections in Hyesan, Yankang were cooperatively conducted by the central Party, the Prosecutor’s Office, the National Security Agency and the People’s Safety Agency. Along with the strict regulation of cell phones, the market, and capitalist “corruption,” the medical goods ban has cast a heavy burden on the civilians.

“Good Friends” reported in October that “Thirty people have been incarcerated as a result of the anti-socialism inspections in Yankang since mid-August, and regulations have tightened.”

When the sale of medical products completely ceased in the markets, citizens and doctors who must treat their patients have been extremely disgruntled.

The source said, “People have to go to the homes of pharmacists in order to buy medicine, but they cannot if the pharmacists do not know them personally. The price has increased dramatically due to the regulations of medicinal products.”

“Even hospitals do not carry medicine and there is no way to procure them, even at doctors’ request.” Doctors have complained, saying “Are we supposed to just sit by and watch the sick people?”

A majority of medical products that could be found in the markets were Chinese-made contraband goods. In some cases, Party leaders or army hospital leaders have illegally procured medicine as well.

The source commented that when civilian discontent rose, the Party Municipal Committee explained the cause of the cease in sale of medical goods as, “In a socialist society, hospitals have guaranteed medical goods, but during this temporary time of suffering, some immoral people have hoarded the national medical supply and are making a profit.”

Korea Times
Jung Sung-ki
12/4/2007

Kim Chang-soon, director of the Institute for North Korea Studies in Seoul, died of a chronic illness Tuesday. He was 86.

Kim, a former North Korean journalist, has been recognized as the “pioneer” of North Korean studies in South Korea.

Born in Uiju, North Pyeongan Province, he was a journalist in the North before he fled the country about six months into the three-year Korean War in 1950.

Kim was a senior editorial writer for the communist regime’s newspaper, Minju Chosun, and had been once granted the rare opportunity of interviewing the late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung.

He said he learned first hand the “deceptive nature” of North Korea’s communism when he was imprisoned on charges of “anti-revolutionary” crimes in 1949.

In the early 1970s, Kim became the chief director of the private North Korean think tank in the South after spending several years with the now-defunct Naewoe Affairs Research Institute run by the Seoul government.

The area of North Korea studies was almost like a “barren land” in South Korea before Kim devoted himself to it as the head of the state-funded institute in 1962.

In an interview with Japan’s Kyodo News in the early 2000s, Kim said his hardships and inhumane treatment in North Korean prisons were almost “beyond description” and it made him become an incisive critic of North Korean communism and its followers.

He is survived by his wife, Jin Yong-joo, and two daughters.

A funeral service will be held at the Asan Medical Center in southern Seoul. His body will be buried at the Tongil Park in Paju near the inter-Korean border today. For more information, call 02-3010-2294.

Daily NK
Kwon Jeong Hyun
12/3/2007

The North Korean authorities have toughened their regulation of the market.

An inside North Korean source relayed that “After releasing the policy of market regulations, the inspections of the railway police have become more extreme. They carelessly go through the citizens’ bags or even search women’s undergarments.”

The North Korean authorities have strengthened market regulations, such as prohibiting goods that can be sold in the market or fixing prices.

Also, they have adjusted the minimum age of women who can sell in the jangmadang (markets) to 45 from 35 years. If women who are under 45 sell in the market or sell prohibited goods, the safety agents in charge or the managers of the jangmadang confiscate the products by force or charge fines.

The source commented, “The security agents search their bodies because merchants hide cosmetics, medicine, or precious metals in thick clothing. After the decree from the authorities, the safety agents have come forward for aggressive regulations.”

The regulation of the market has spread to long-distance merchants who use rails. If young women are carrying a lot of possessions in trains, the safety agents steal the goods by force and search their bags without discretion.

Pyongyang has also made public announcements to prohibit women under 49 from trading at the market starting December 1st. Currently, women under 39 are prohibited. Further, they are only allowed to sell at permitted locations in the market.

North Korean rail safety agents ride in every car of North Korea’s rails. The basic duties of rail safety agents consist of checking travel certificate and citizen cards and regulating suspicious passengers, including crimes of theft. On top of this, their authority to inspect women who are engaging in long-distance trade has increased.

The rail safety agents force passengers who carry large loads suspected of being goods for sale to come to the inspection car. The safety agents search the luggage and make threats, such as reporting them. Recently, after the prohibition of sales by women under 45, if the owner of the luggage is a woman under 45, she been threatened to be reported. Long-distance merchants can only claim their goods if they give bribes such as cigarettes or cash to the rail security officer.

The source stated, “After the market regulation, the amount of bribes to the rail safety agent has risen. Due to this decree, the safety agents become well-off.”

Also, with the increase in new regulation authority by the rail safety agents, the phenomenon of sexually harassing young women who engage in long-distance trade or requesting wrongful sexual relations has been taking place.

The agents take the women to regulation cars by saying, “We have to investigate whether or not you are engaging in gold trade,” and force them to remove their undergarments under the pretext of investigations and engage in illicit conduct. If the women protest, their luggage is confiscated or their citizen cards and travel certificates are handed over to the discretion of the local safety agency office at the train station and the woman is forcibly removed from the train.”

The source said, “In North Korea, there are no laws regarding human rights and the consciousness of average civilians regarding human rights is very low, so recent occurrences which have been frequent can give rise to societal issues.” He also noted, “As a result of the recent market regulation decree, the tyrannies of safety agents and party leaders have become worse and the situation of indiscriminate human rights violations has become even more conspicuous.”

Yonhap
Nam Kwang-sik
12/2/2007

The first South Koreans to tie the knot in North Korea wed in a ceremony at Mount Geumgang, a scenic North Korean mountain frequented by South Korean tourists, tour company Hyundai Asan said on Sunday.

Choe Jeong-in, a 32-year-old employee of Hyundai Asan, and Cho Ah-ra, 24, who works for one of Hyundai Asan’s business partners, married in a ceremony at a Mount Geumgang hotel on Saturday, three years after they first met while working at the North Korean resort.

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
12/2/2007

About a century ago, in the early 1900s, no major political movement could rival the Marxists in their commitment to gender equality. It was the time when women could not vote anywhere (well, anywhere apart from New Zealand and Australia), when their property rights were strictly limited, married unemployment was seen as the most natural state for “weaker vessels”, and most professions were not for women. In those days, the early Communists vocally demanded equal political and economic rights, equal pay, and also insisted that women should be given access to all professions, including the most manly ones.

When the Communists took power, for a brief while they tried to keep their promise. In the Communist Russia of the 1920s there were highly publicized cases of female air force pilots, military officers, and ambassadors. However, this drive did not last: Communism in power proved to be very patriarchal, and by the 1940s the earlier demands for gender equality were quietly scaled down in all Communist states.

Of all these states, North Korea probably proved to be most patriarchal, especially after its turn to nationalism in the late 1950s. Nationalism often goes hand in hand with anti-feminist sentiments, and North Korea was no exception. Soon North Korean women learned that they should know their proper place (of “wise mothers and kind wives”, of course) and be careful about their behavior, least it threaten public decency and morality.

This “proper” behavior was enforced through a number of restrictions: certain types of activity were denied women. North Korea has its own version of the “glass ceiling”, not allowing women to rise above a certain level. However, there are also bans on some mundane daily activities which for some reason are proclaimed to be “unbecoming of women”.

To start with, women are not allowed to smoke. In North Korea, female smoking is an absolute taboo, at least for young and middle-aged women. Female smokers in the South are disapproved of, but in the North the approach to the transgression is much tougher. As one defector put it: “A North Korean woman must be crazy to take up smoking”. There have been reports about women being sent into exile for their persistence with the smoking habit. I am slightly skeptical about these reports, but it is clear that in smoking a woman risks some serious “criticism” during an ideological study session, and this is not a good turn of events in North Korean society. This is in stark contrast with males’ behavior, since most North Korean males are chain smokers.

However, older women are exempted from this ban, and there are many North Korean women who begin smoking when they turn 50 or soon afterwards.

Pyongyang, the “capital of revolution” is somewhat notorious for many bans of seemingly normal things which are declared improper and unbecoming. Some of these bans are gender specific. For example, in Pyongyang and other major cities, for a long time women were not allowed to wear trousers. It was OK to work in trousers, but once the shift was over, decent North Korean women were supposed to dress in a “womanly manner” – that is, to change into a skirt. Those who appeared on the street dressed in trousers could be sent home by a police patrol. Once again, the ban did not apply to older women, and in the mid-90s trousers were partially pardoned.

In general, “proper female modesty” has always been extolled. In 1982 Kim Il-sung, while addressing the North Korean rubber-stamping parliament issued a warning: “It does not conform with the socialist lifestyle if women wear dresses without sleeves or a dress that shows their breasts!” North Koreans tried to ensure that the skirts were of an appropriate length to “conform to the socialist lifestyle”. Even nowadays, in the days of relative openness, skirts should safely cover the knees of the wearers.

Driving is not regarded as an activity suitable for a woman, and women are never issued a driving license. Of course, the number of private cars is very small, and their owners are naturally overwhelmingly male. It is remarkable that in the past, back in the 1970s and 1980s, even foreign women could encounter difficulties if they applied for a driving permit in Pyongyang. Obviously, North Korean officials could not comprehend how the female brain would be able to master such a technology.

However, the most bizarre of all these bans is one which deals with cycling. Bicycles were prohibited in Pyongyang for decades, and the ban was lifted only around 1992. However, this relaxation was not for everybody. In 1996, authorities decided that the bicycle was not suitable for women. The official press explained that “beautiful national customs” do not permit such debauchery. Allegedly, this judgment was the decree of Kim Jong-il himself.

At first, police worked hard to enforce the ban, and some female riders had their bikes confiscated, but then things cooled down and some women began to defy the prohibition.

However, it is increasingly clear that these and other bans are enforced by police with ever diminishing zeal. The North Korean dictatorship is running out of steam, not least because its own servants do not believe the official slogans anymore.

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 07-11-30-1
11/30/2007

The first bi-monthly magazine reporting internal news directly through North Korean undercover journalists was launched on November 20th. The Korean language magazine, “Rimjingang,” is also expected to launch in English and Japanese by the end of this year. The inaugural issue contains interviews with staff members of the central state enterprise on current North Korean economic issues, public sentiment following the North Korean missile launch last year, interpretations of the North Korean internal image, as well as reports on local occurrences and accidents.

Once news is directly gathered and prepared by North Korean residents, the manuscript is then sent to the outside world where it is printed as the “Rimjingang” magazine. This magazine’s inaugural press conference was held at the Seoul Press Center on the afternoon of November 20th. The conference attracted enthusiastic coverage, with over 30 domestic and international press corps members in attendance, including Fuji TV and international wire services such as AP and Reuters.

With the help of Japan’s Asia Press, the North Korean journalists involved in the production of “Rimjingang” have been filming local footage, conducting interviews with residents, and recording the daily debriefing sessions of citizens for the past five years. Much of the video footage currently distributed to South Korea and Japan has been recorded by the journalists themselves.

Magazine publication officials revealed that the “Rimjingang” would also be distributed within North Korea. They added, “the North Korean reporters seek subject matter that reflects how North Korean people live, what they think, and what they want,” and, “the only real evidence that reflects how North Korea is changing is given through the North Korean people.”

There are currently 10 North Korean journalists affiliated with “Rimjingang.” The diverse list includes a staff member of the central state enterprise, a schoolteacher in his thirties, a worker from a foreign currency earning company, the first journalist to release his pen name to the outside world, a resident in her forties from Pyongan Province, and journalist in his thirties from South Hamkyeong Province.

An official from Asia Press said, “Over the years, more than 600 North Korean defectors have been interviewed around the China-North Korea border,” and, “there have been a few among them with intentions, like us, of delivering news from within North Korea to the outside world, so we have been training them in journalism since 2002.”

“We explained to them what ‘journalism’ was, and taught them the format of news articles as well as the operation of video camera..they then returned to North Korea and began gathering news, and since 2004, some of the news they collected has been released through Japanese and Korean press, as well as U.S. and European press.”

Institute for Far Eastern Studies
NK Brief No. 07-11-27-1
11/27/2007

Following Kim Jong Il’s August 26 announcement that, “Markets have become anti-Socialist Western-style markets,” measures to increase restrictions on markets across North Korea have also restricted individuals’ ability to migrate.

The Central Committee of the (North) Korean Workers’ Party released a statement in October, revealing that Kim Jong Il had stated, “The current state of anti-socialism should not be moderately opposed. A strong and concentrated attack must be laid out in order to thoroughly eliminate [this anti-socialist behavior].”

According to the Daily NK, an informant inside North Korea revealed that authorities are “contacting people who have applied for permission to travel to other regions at their trip destination and setting up interviews in order to verify that interviewees are conforming with their [stated] intentions,” and, “ultimately, long distance wholesalers are restricted in their movements, cause a reduction in the amount of goods circulating on the markets.”

Good Friends, a South Korean NGO for North Korean aid, also reported, “In North Hamgyung Province, if someone is absent from work for two days or not seen in their neighborhood, that person’s actions are carefully investigated,” and, “if someone does not check out, each of their family members are called in for interrogation.”

After the ‘Arduous March’, as market activity grew in North Korea, the number of whole-saling ‘middle-men’ grew considerably. These traders received travel permits by applying under the guise of visiting authorities, family matters, special occasions, or other personal reasons. Long-distance traders need a travel permit. In order to get such a permit, cash or goods were frequently offered as bribes.

Now, as it is becoming more difficult to receive travel documents, not only long-distance traders but also even normal vacationers are facing growing difficulties. In particular, people who need to travel to China for family visits are especially worried due to the increasingly strict issuance of travel permits.

The insider reported, “As markets grow, because wholesalers are gaining power as they make large amounts of money, authorities seem to be strongly restraining them,” and “if a wholesaler is caught, his goods are taken, leading to difficulties for market traders.”

According to a North Korean defector in the South with access to DPRK information, university students in Pyongyang are also being subjected to increasingly strict personnel inspections and restrictions. Even when they go to the library, they must fill out an exit record and can only remain out for one day before student leaders pay a visit to their home.

Students not strictly obeying school policies have their bags and pockets searched while being put under investigation and being further restricted. Of course, in the past, as well, students with problems faced inspections of their dormitory or personal goods, but recently, inspections of even everyday students are on the rise.

Daily NK
Lee Sung Jin
11/25/2007

A source inside North Korea reported on the 22nd of November that all sorts of crime are rampant in Hoiryeong of North Hamkyung Province, and locals, especially women are so afraid that they dare not go outside at night.

The source said, “At meetings of people’s units, locals received instructions not to go out late at night and women were especially advised to get back home not too late.” The source added, “Most crimes are committed by soldiers who have been posted to Hoiryeong for construction work.

Since early this year, the North Korean authorities have been carrying out apartment building construction and road expansion work in Hoiryeong under the project named “Embellishing Mother’s Hometown.” Hoiryeong is known as the birthplace of Kim Jong Suk, Kim Jong Il’s mother.

This year celebrates the 90th anniversary of Kim Jong Suk’s birth, and many construction projects are being proceeded under the slogan, ‘‘Let’s invite our benevolent general to Hoiryeong.’’ Last year in November, a mosaic mural depicting Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il was installed in both Poongsan-ri and Daedeuk-ri in Hoiryeong.

Early May, the nation’s new prime minister Kim Yong Il visited Hoiryeong by train. His train was loaded with glass and cement, and the minister delivered the construction material to Hoiryeong’s people’s committee, leaving a message saying, “Hoiryeong is the birthplace of Kim Jong Suk. Clean up and embellish the entire city.”

As the authorities started carrying out the extensive construction work in Hoiryeong, it needed more labor power. Starting with last month, the state began to bring construction units of the People’s Army into the city for the expansion and pavement works of the road between Hoiryeong-Chongjin. It is the solders of these construction units who are responsible for ongoing violent crimes such as rape and plunder occurring in Hoiryeong

The source said, “Ever since those soldiers came to Hoiryeong, the city has been afflicted with many incidents and crime, all of which concern the city’s party committee to great extents.” The source said, “Even though October is the harvest season, there is not enough corn left for harvest in many cornfields around construction sites.”

What is worse, many households are being sacked by the soldiers, and local residents cannot leave home empty even for a moment, the source said.

The city’s party committee is casting suspicion on the soldiers. However, it cannot recklessly push for an investigation against the soldiers because the committee lacks hard evidence and the army has gotten too powerful over the years.

“A few days ago, there was an incident where a soldier broke into a house, raped a twenty-two-year old woman, and ran away,” the source said. “In order to protect themselves from the soldiers, each community has placed a guard at its people’s unit guard post twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and made sure that the guard reports to the People’s Safety Agency in case an incident takes place.”

Individuals who go to a night market and females who get back home from the market late at night are particularly vulnerable. The Safety Agency of Hoiryeong has decided to increase the number of patrols and ordered the locals to organize their own securities in their areas, the source said.

A defector who came to the South in 2006 said, “People used to admire the People’s Army. Nowadays, the Army is treated as a gang of thieves.” The defector said, “The army behaves highhandedly, and there are always conflicts in the areas around army bases.”

Daily NK
Yang Jung A
11/24/2007

It turns out that the North Korean regime asserts to its people that the South has decided to invest in the North because the South’s shipping industry is doomed.

The North Korean authorities argued such at public lectures held in October to report on the results of the second Inter-Korean Summit, according to a report released on Wednesday by Good Friends, a Seoul-based aid organization for North Korea.

The report says that a cadre from Pyongsung delivered a public lecture saying, “South’s shipbuilding industry is on the verge of doom, and that is why it has decided to build a shipyard in Anbyun of Kangwon and to establish cooperative complexes for shipbuilding in Nampo in the West Sea.” The cadre also announced that two Koreas have agreed to transform the military demarcation line in the waters of the West Sea into ‘peace line’ and create a joint fishing zone there, the report says.

Nevertheless, the report says, “Most participants had no interest in the lecture. They could only care about putting some bread on the table and making money, instead of wasting time on discussing the country’s affairs”

According to the report, the North Korean people strongly oppose the recently market regulatory measures. It has been reported that the number of individuals who violate the measures is increasing.

“Lately, the chairman of People’s Committee in Pohang district of Chongjin was fired and demoted to a regular worker’s position because the chairman had complained about the state’s measure, which bans females under 45 years old from doing business in the market starting with December 1st this year,” the report says. The chairman is quoted as saying, “In today’s society, women are breadwinners. If women under 45 are banned from making a living in the market, who is going to earn bread and butter for their households?”

“In Sinam district of Chungjin, a female was arrested after having expressed discontent about the regulation. She was pulled along to a Social Safety office and underwent all sorts of hardships. Later, she was made to take criticism at a regular evaluation meeting of a women’s unit in her district, and then released,” says the report.

“In Pyongyang, agents on a mission to crack down anti-socialist activities are going the rounds of the households of individuals who do business in the market. The agents ask the individuals when and how they started business, what their children do, and where they procure sales items,” says the report.

The report also tells an account of an old couple who has retired from the party and recently visited by inspection agents. The report says, “Although the couple spent most of their life serving the party, they had to come to the market to make a living at their old age. The old couple felt very bitter about their situation. They grumbled against the regime saying that it frequently regulates the market and inspects those engaged in the business. The old couple was at a loss what to do.”

Bloomberg
Bradley Martin
Hideko Takayama
11/21/2007

In some parts of the world, floods and famine are acts of God. In North Korea, they’re acts of government.

For decades, the late North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung mobilized vast work teams to fell trees and turn the mountainsides into farmland, allowing rainwater to wreck roads, power lines and agricultural fields.

Following Kim’s death in 1994 — just before a flood- linked famine gripped the nation — his son and successor Kim Jong Il continued the sacrifice of forest cover until 2000, when he began encouraging reforestation. But the shift hasn’t reversed the damage, and some analysts warn that another famine, close to the scale of the 1990s disaster that may have killed millions of people, might occur as soon as next year.

“Next year’s food situation is quite serious,” said Kwon Tae Jin, a researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul. The famine risk is greatest starting next spring, after the current harvest is used up, he said; North Korea’s best hope may be for more food aid from abroad as a result of its agreement to begin dismantling its nuclear-weapons program.

Floods in August and September left 600 people dead or missing by official count, and 270,000 homeless. “Corpses were dug out of the silt” still clutching vinyl-wrapped photos of the Kims, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

`Bad Governance’

South Korea has similar rainfall but has largely avoided such calamities. The North’s flooding “is a product of bad governance, economic mismanagement, poor agricultural policy and haphazard short-term survival strategies of the starving, desperate population,” Alexandre Y. Mansourov, a Korea specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, said in a study.

North Korea’s deforestation program dates back to a 1961 speech by Kim Il Sung. In a mostly mountainous country, he proclaimed, “it is necessary to obtain more land through the remaking of nature.” Not only tidelands but “hills throughout the country and plateaus” should be “brought under the plough,” he said.

“The hills and mountains still had trees, and I never heard of floods,” said Hiroko Saito, a Japanese woman who moved with her Korean husband to North Korea in 1961. Her husband joined one of Kim’s vast mountain work teams in the early 1970s, said Saito, now 66 and back in Japan.

Workers and Soldiers

The crews included “city workers, students, soldiers of the Korean People’s Army and anybody else who could move,” said Lee Wo Hong, a pro-communist Korean agricultural expert living in Japan who began spending time in North Korea as a teacher and adviser in 1981.

What he saw there turned him into a critic of Kim Il Sung’s agricultural policy, he said. The country “was filled with bald mountains” on which the North Koreans had planted fast-growing maize; even relatively light rain would wash the crop away.

Reclaiming marginal land appeared successful for a while as North Korea’s overall crop yields increased, agriculture specialist Edward Reed wrote in a 2001 University of Wisconsin study. “Yet from the mid-1980s on, there appears to have been a slow decline in production, probably due to soil depletion from overintensive production,” he said.

By the early 1990s, yields dropped so low that hungry North Koreans went to the mountains to bring even more land under cultivation. Meanwhile, increased demand for firewood — the result of an energy shortage caused when former communist trading partners halted cut-rate fuel exports — added a new incentive to strip the mountainsides.

Death Toll

The results came to the world’s attention in 1995, with the worst floods in a century. The lost farmland contributed to a famine — already under way — that killed somewhere between 600,000 and 1 million North Koreans, according to “Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform,” by Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland. Other estimates put the death toll as high as 4 million.

As floodwaters poured into coal mines, the energy shortage worsened and the state-run economy all but collapsed. Economic recovery — which didn’t begin until 1998 — was halted by further catastrophic floods in 2006, when the economy again shrank, according to an estimate by South Korea’s central bank.

A report on North Korea’s environment as of 2003, jointly prepared by North Korean government agencies, the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Development Program, blamed severe “land degradation” on “conversion of forest land in hilly areas to agricultural land.”

Enthusiast

The report portrayed Kim Il Sung as a forest-planting enthusiast from as early as six decades ago. Nick Nuttall, a spokesperson at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, said the agency was “not in a position to comment” on why the report didn’t mention Kim’s mountain-clearing policy.

While the report said reversing the environmental damage through reforestation has become “an all-out campaign,” hungry people have continued cultivating crops between the tree seedlings, according to Han Young Jin, a defector from the North who lives in South Korea.

As the branches spread, “people would tie the sprigs together so the trees could not grow,” Han wrote on a defector-staffed Web site, Daily NK. “When the trees inevitably died, new saplings would be planted.”