North Korean Economy Watch

Yonhap
10/11/2007

North Korea sees the legacy of Korea’s ancient kingdom of Koguryo, which controlled northern Korean Peninsula and northeastern China for more than 700 years, as a means of improving inter-Korean relations and an eventual unification of the two Koreas, a senior North Korean official said Thursday.

“I’m passionate about opening this exhibition, as I am confident that it will further boost our people’s struggle to achieve a unified powerhouse nation and promote the improvement of (North) Korea and Japan relations based on a drastic clearance of their past,”said Hong Son-ok, a North Korean official in charge of external cooperation in cultural cooperation.

Hong made the statement to Yonhap News Agency at a ceremony here to open an exhibition of photos of artifacts of the Koguryo kingdom co-hosted by Yonhap News Agency and Japan’s Kyodo News Service. Hong’s statement was referring to North Korea’s chilly relations with Japan, which colonized the Korean Peninsula for about 35 years until 1945.

The exhibition is taking place at the Korean Central History Museum here amid signs of warming inter-Korean relations just a week after the leaders of South and North Korea held their second summit in seven years.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il “paid special care and courtesy” to the exhibition, Hong said.

It is the first time that the South Korean news agency has hosted an event in North Korea. The exhibition of 121 photographs of tombs and murals of the Koguryo Kingdom (37 B.C.-668 A.D.) continues until Nov. 10, and includes World Heritage sites.

“The murals of the Koguryo kingdom, which controlled the northern part of the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria (northeastern China), are an element that links the people of South and North Korea,”Yonhap President Kim Ki-seo said.

Kim cited the popularity in South Korea of television dramas and literature featuring the ancient kingdom, which he referred to as a spiritual root shared by the two Koreas. Kyodo’s president, Satoshi Ishikawa, was also on hand at the opening ceremony.

About 100 Pyongyang citizens attended the ceremony with most of the women guests wearing Korea’s colorful traditional costume, hanbok.

Citizens expressed pride in their ancient legacy.

“It’s a centennial powerhouse in the East,” a North Korean said. “We should inherit the great spirit of our forefathers and develop our nation into a unified powerhouse.”

Horse-riding warriors of Koguryo dominated politics and culture in Northeast Asia until they were defeated by joint attacks from the southern Korean kingdom of Silla and China’s Tang Dynasty.

The Koguryo people left paintings on the walls and ceilings of tombs depicting their daily lives and mythical beliefs. A mural from Anak Tomb No. 3 shows a vivid image of a woman in white stirring soup in a big pot in a kitchen beside a meat storeroom. Other murals show a hunting scene of horse-riding warriors and a nobleman enjoying an acrobatic performance.

A total of 107 Koguryo tombs have been discovered, 76 in and around the North Korean capital of Pyongyang and the rest around the North Korean border with China.

As much of the kingdom was located in what is now northeastern China, Chinese scholars have recently begun claiming that the Koguryo kingdom is part of Chinese history. Last year, Yonhap and Kyodo co-hosted an exhibition in Seoul of photos that Kyodo took at Koguryo tombs in North Korea.

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
10/9/2007

Recently, it has been made known that sealed or closed-off rooms in up-scale restaurants and popular “karaokes” in North Korean provincial cities have been removed.

Since 2000, sex trafficking has rapidly increased at inns, saunas, spas, and karaoke bars in large provincial cities such as Shinuiju, Chongjin, and Hamheung.

In particular, corrupt businesses such as massage parlors and steam baths with the purpose of sex trafficking have proliferated, increasing incidents of solicitations in front of large-city stations and metaphoric advertisements, such as “flower” and “bed sales.”

Good Friends has released on the September Newsletter that after creating rooms in the basement of a restaurant in Wonsan, Kangwon Province and organizing young girls for prostitution and the owner of the restaurant and affiliates received maximum punishment such as the death penalty for forcing sexual trafficking.

After inspections and punishment, an inside source relayed that an order came down preventing operations of illicit rooms by karaoke and entertainment venues. Karaokes removed entrance and exit doors and restaurants enforced the opening of doors of each room. Due to such management, the number of guests has greatly decreased.

North Korean businessman Mr. Park, who is residing in Dandong, China, said in a phone conversation with DailyNK, “Most sealed or closed-off rooms in restaurants or karaoke bars of large provincial cities such as Shinuiju and Hamheung have mostly disappeared.”

Mr. Park said, “I would often use sealed rooms because I could talk about business and entertain guests while not worrying about the eyes of others. However, recently, the government gave an order to get rid of these rooms due to prostitution.”

Further, he said, “Field security agents are checking up on internal facilities by making rounds at restaurants and karaokes. If sealed-off or blocked-off rooms are still reported, the business has to be shut down and the owner is taken to the Security Agency.”

He said, “People who have money nowadays seek out upper-scale restaurants for sharing important businesses. The presence of female entertainers elevates the atmosphere, but in some cases, the women are forced to ‘serve’ them.”

However, Mr. Park said, “Even if the government gets rid of sealed rooms and dividers, it is difficult to remove the root of the problem because women want to continue making money, and such “popular” spots have already become established as a means of doing so.

Mr. Park also said, “In Shinuiju alone, sex trafficking is known to have spread significantly. Women who are sold have separately rented rooms and receive 10,000 won ($3.30) per night.”

A Chinese businessman Lio Jilong confirmed these details. He, who frequents Shinuiju for trade with North Korea, said, “Even when I went to Shinuiju at the end of August, restaurants with special (sealed-off) rooms and dividers were common, but they have all disappeared by now.”

He also expressed discontent, “With the exception of restaurants and karaokes, there are no places where one can discuss business; other restaurants have been harmed by prostitution in Chosun (North Korea).”

The North Korean government sent “first-offender” women engaging in prostitution to a “labor detention facility” for six months at the discretion of the security agency and “repeat-offenders” were punished to the second-degree by being sentenced to over a year.

Daily NK
Kwon Jeong Hyun
10/8/2007

It was revealed that North Korea has revived the “30 days imprisonment penalty” to workers who were lazy or failed to complete their duties among the executives of factories and companies in their concentration of flood assistance of city.

The 30 day imprisonment penalty is a policy that confines executives, managers of factory or company in the prison for 30-50 days in case of their over usage of electricity, resources or laziness or failure to conduct their duty.

The inside source in North Korea revealed on the 28th of September that, “The authorities said that if the target figure is not achieved, they called it as neglect of duty and inflicted the “30 days imprisonment penalty” on them. It had disappeared during the famine but it is now revived again, causing the company managers and executives to become anxious. ”

According to the inside source, this treatment can be interpreted as a method to ask for business responsibilities in case the managers or executives takes the profit into their personal use and to create a scapegoat in case of low revenue.

The 30 days imprisonment penalty was established in 1990 at first. Back then the company workers was forced upon mobilized labor every day to assistance of agriculture or construction of houses and evaders increased, so that there needed to be a scapegoat who would take responsibility upon the people who would avoid the workforce.

However, with the March of the Tribulation (Mass starvation period in the 1990s) and with the factory’s operation rate at lower than 30%, this appeared to have been abolished.

The initiation of the 30 days imprisonment means there will be an additional method for the Party secretary posted in each factory to take political control over the manager of factories and companies. Therefore, there will be increased control by the Party departments. However, there was the structure of connection between the Party secretary and the manager in many of the companies even along with the corruption of the inspection groups. It is highly doubtful whether this measurement will be successfully implemented.

Joong Ang Daily
10/8/2007

Representatives of the New York Philharmonic were set to arrive over the weekend in North Korea to discuss the possibility of a history-making performance in the communist nation.

Philharmonic President Zarin Mehta and public relations director Eric Latzky said they planned to explore venues and other arrangements for a potential February concert in Pyongyang.

“It’s a country that none of us have ever dreamed of going to. The next three or four days are going to be very eye-opening for us,” Mehta said by telephone Thursday from Beijing.

He and Latzky said they were embarking on the discussions with United States government support. A State Department official was accompanying the Philharmonic representatives on the trip.

“In as much as this is something that both sides are interested in exploring, we will do what we can to facilitate it,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Relations between the United States and North Korea have been tense for years. President George W. Bush once branded the country part of an “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

But after North Korea tested a nuclear bomb last October, the U.S. softened its policy to facilitate progress on the North’s disarmament.

This week, the North pledged arms talks with Washington and other regional powers to disable its main nuclear facilities and declare all its programs by the year’s end.

Latzky said orchestra representatives had spoken with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill last month about the potential concert, and he was “very encouraging,” The New York Times reported Friday.

North Korea’s Ministry of Culture sent the renowned orchestra an invitation in August.

The Philharmonic has played in South Korea, as well as in other parts of Asia.

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
10/7/2007

The Chinese-Korean border is easy to cross, and it is clear that numbers of the defectors are kept small only by security measures undertaken by the North Korean side. However, the story of the region is essentially the story of the cross-border movement. Technically, the narrow Tumen and relatively broad Yalu divide the territories of two different countries. However, both banks of the Tumen are inhabited by the Koreans, and for large part of the last century neither state was either willing or able to control the border completely. It has been porous for decades, and in a sense it remains porous nowadays. The cross-border migration, legal or otherwise, has never stopped completely.

It might sound strange now, but until the late 1970s North Korea was seen by the Chinese as a land of relative prosperity, so the refugee flow moved from China to Korea. In the 1960s many ethnic Koreans fled the famine and the madness of the “cultural revolution,” looking for a refuge in Kim’s country. There, at least, people were certain to receive 700 grams of corn every day. Many of those early refugees eventually moved back, but only a handful were persecuted by the Chinese authorities. In most cases the returned migrants just resumed the work at the factories and people’s communes where they had worked before their escape. This movement was large, it involved few ten thousand people at least, and many of those people were saved by their sojourn in North Korea.

This episode, not widely known outside the area, is still well remembered by the Chinese. Many of my interlocutors explained their willingness to help the North Korean refugees in the following way: “When life was harsh here, they helped us. Now it is our turn.”

The Chinese border protection system has always been quite lax, but from the 1970s North Korean authorities have tried to the keep border tightly controlled. However, all their efforts could not prevent a massive exodus of the North Koreans, which began around 1995.

In those years North Korea was struck by a disastrous famine which led to massive deaths. The number of its victims has been estimated at between 250,000 and 3,000,000 with 600-900,000 being probably the most reliable figure so far. The northern parts of the country, adjacent to the border, were the hardest hit.

So it comes as no surprise that many North Koreans illegally moved across the border to find work and refuge in China. Around 1999 when the famine reached its height the number of such people reached an estimated 200-300,000.

This movement was not authorized, but from around 1996 Pyongyang authorities ceased to apply harsh penalties to the border-crossers. Until that time, an attempted escape to China would land you a prison for years. From the late 1990s, an escape to China was treated as a minor offence. It is even possible that the North Korean authorities deliberately turned a blind eye on the defectors: after all, people who moved to China were not to be fed, and also, being most active and adventurous those people would probably become trouble-makers had they been forced to stay in North Korea.

A vast majority of those refugees stayed in the borderland area where one can survive without any command of Chinese (the ethnic Koreans form some 35% of the population, and Korean villages are common). The refugees took up odd jobs, becoming construction workers, farm hands, waitresses and cooks in small restaurants. The authorities hunted them down and deported them back to North Korea, but generally without much enthusiasm, since both low-level officials and population by and large was sympathetic to the refugees’ plight. The older Chinese know only too well what it means to suffer from famine.

Most of the refugees were women, some of whom married the local farmers – usually those who would not find a wife otherwise. In most cases it means that they were paired with drunkards, drug addicts or gamblers, but in some cases their partners were merely dirt-poor farmers. These marriages were not usually recognized by Chinese law since these women, technically speaking, did not exist. In some cases, they saved enough money to bribe the officials and had a Chinese citizen ID issued. If this happened, a refugee woman changed her identity, becoming a Chinese national.

Nowadays, the refugees’ number has shrunk considerably, even though old figures are often uncritically cited by the world media. Nowadays, people in the know believed that between 30-50,000 North Koreans are hiding in China.

Why did their numbers go down recently? There are few reasons for that. To start with, a remarkable improvement of the domestic situation in North Korea played a role, but most people with whom I talked to in China in July agreed that the major reason for this change is the revival of the North Korean border security in recent few years. Until 2004 or so, North Korean authorities usually turned a blind eye to mass exodus of their people to China. Now their position has changed. They understand that the border serves as a major conduit for unauthorized information about the outside world, and now this information is becoming dangerous. They also believe that the famine is over, so people can be fed if they stay in North Korea. So, it seems that the era of large-scale illegal migration is over. Nonetheless, history of the region indicates that this movement is unlikely to ever be stopped completely.

Version 5: Download it here (on Google Earth) 

This map covers North Korea’s agriculture, aviation, cultural locations, manufacturing facilities, railroad, energy infrastructure, politics, sports venues, military establishments, religious facilities, leisure destinations, and national parks. It is continually expanding and undergoing revisions. This is the fifth version.

Additions to the latest version of “North Korea Uncovered” include updates to new Google Earth overlays of Sinchon, UNESCO sites, Railroads, canals, and the DMZ, in addition to Kim Jong Suk college of eduation (Hyesan), a huge expansion of the electricity grid (with a little help from Martyn Williams) plus a few more parks, antiaircraft sites, dams, mines, canals, etc.

Disclaimer: I cannot vouch for the authenticity of many locations since I have not seen or been to them, but great efforts have been made to check for authenticity. These efforts include pouring over books, maps, conducting interviews, and keeping up with other peoples’ discoveries. In many cases, I have posted sources, though not for all. This is a thorough compilation of lots of material, but I will leave it up to the reader to make up their own minds as to what they see. I cannot catch everything and I welcome contributions.

I hope this map will increase interest in North Korea. There is still plenty more to learn, and I look forward to receiving your additions to this project.

Korea Times
Kim Tong-hyung
10/5/2007

It will be quite a long time before Pyongyang earns its stripes as a hip and happening city if it ever does. But, judging by the glimpses revealed during the three-day summit, it seems that not all is gray and grim in the North Korean capital.

First lady Kwon Yang-suk and other South Korean officials ran into a room full of headsets Wednesday at Pyongyang’s Grand People’s Study Hall as students managed to keep a straight face scribbling down English conversations played on tape.

“Repeating is the best,” said a North Korean student when asked what is the secret to learning English, providing no relief to his peers in the South who hear the same thing until their eardrums wear out.

Perhaps improving cooperation between the two Koreas will do little to better the foreign language skills of students from either side of the border who grab English books with the same enthusiasm as a kid force-fed vegetables.

However, it seems clear that Pyongyang’s youngsters of today are more concerned about internationalization than they appeared in the first inter-Korean summit seven years ago.

South Korean delegates went on to tour the Kim Chaek University of Technology where they found students, mostly studying English, searching for video files and text stored in computers.

The university’s library has 420 desktop computers, 2 million books and more than 10 million electronics books that can be accessed via a local area network (LAN) connection or from telephone modems at home.

North Korean officials were eager to show their elite students studying English to South Korean authorities, quiet a surprise from a country dominated by the “Juche,” or self-reliance, ideology.

And at least on the educational front, it seems that computers are becoming a part of everyday life for Pyongyang’s younger generation, although they are far behind their tech-savvy southern neighbors who have television on their cell phones.

Not every picture of change in Pyongyang was staged. South Korean correspondents have sent photos of young North Korean women gliding through the streets in clothes that seemed to be ripped from Vogue magazine. Some even had heavy mascara that would qualify them for a Johnny Depp pirate movie.

Bright colors of yellow and pink were easily seen among the women waving their hands to the limousine convoy of South Korean delegates upon their Pyongyang arrival.

Surely, North Korean fusionists have come a long way since their universally pale makeup and grayish attire seen by South Korean reporters during the 2000 summit.

Even North Korean government officials involved in the formal talks looked a little more contemporary than last remembered, with many of them suited up in tailor-cut, three-button suits.

The security officials looked better too. Gone were the bodyguards with big hats, khaki uniforms and oversized gun holsters who flocked around former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung back in the first talks.

Instead, North Korean bodyguards today were dressed in black suits and moved with a hand on their earpieces, making them hardly distinguishable them from their South Korean counterparts.

Joong Ang Daily
Brent Choi
10/2/2007

At 10 a.m. on June 28, I boarded a Koryo Air flight at Seoul’s Gimpo Airport, bound for Pyongyang. It took only one hour for the flight, organized by the non-governmental organization Movement for One Corea, to arrive at Pyongyang’s Sunan Airport, a two-story building bearing a large photo of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung ― not exactly an impressive sight for an airport.

There were 14 aircrafts at Sunan, including one helicopter. Seven were jets and six were old-style propeller planes. Most seemed in disrepair and sat beneath large covers. There wasn’t a single foreign plane there, a reminder of how isolated North Korea has become.

Four tourist buses came to fetch us. Each one carried about 30 visitors. About half were members of the Movement for One Corea. The rest were paying customers like me who had forked over around 2.5 million won ($2,750) for the tour of the North.

Several North Korean guides, who seemed rather shy, met us. They warned us not to take photos while the bus was moving and not to approach local people.

That afternoon our group toured Pyongyang. We first went to Mansudae to see a giant statue of Kim Il Sung. The guides lined up visitors in four groups and bowed low before the statue, in the manner of a Japanese person stooping before their emperor. Less than a tenth of our party followed the guides’ example.

Most were more impressed by the sheer size of the statue and wanted to take a picture. My roommate, a man named “Jo,” the head of a sewing factory, started taking pictures like crazy, using four different cameras.

I was a North Korea specialist for one of the major dailies in South Korea for almost a decade. In the eyes of the journalist that I am, North Korea seemed to have long ago lost sight of the balance between the spiritual and physical worlds.

Wherever we went there were slogans saying “Revolution” and anti-Japan exhortations, along with praise for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong-il by female guides who spoke as if they were still living the 1930s.

The North’s excessive deification of the two Kims seemed ironic, given that its ideology is based on Marxist-Leninism.

I stayed at the Yanggakdo Hotel near the Taedong River. It was in a relatively good state with abundant food and clean rooms. But it was reserved for foreign visitors. The rest of Pyongyang still seemed to be struggling with the “Arduous March” that began in the 1990s. The grey, sordid building next to ours seemed like it hadn’t been repainted or repaired in any way for at least 10 years. The roads were also bumpy with cracks.

Passersby, men in gray suits and women in traditional hanbok, all looked tired and depressed and looked at the ground. Only the little children shot occasional glances toward our modern foreign bus, a rare sight in Pyongyang.

Our dialogue with the guides proved to be one of the most interesting aspects of the five-day trip.

At first the visitors and guides gave basic introductions and began talking about non-contentious issues like the weather. After “testing the waters,” the North Korean guides then began to ask about South Korea’s political situation including the upcoming presidential election, while the South Koreans barraged the guides with questions about nuclear programs. Not everyone was engrossed in politics. Some guys asked about local women.

The guides I met this time differed from those I encountered in the past. When I visited Mount Kumgang in 1998, all the guides were over 50 and would start arguments with visitors over things like unification and the presence of U.S. forces.

The guides in Pyongyang were much younger, mostly in their 30s. It seemed like a rapid generational change is under way in the North, with the older generations who survived the struggle against Japan or the Korean War, and even those who grew up under Kim Il Sung in the 1970s and 1980s being supplanted by those in their 30s and 40s, the so-called “Arduous March” generation who were teenagers during the famine years of the 1990s.

Our young guides were from this group and displayed a strong loyalty toward Kim Jong-il. They belonged to the elite class of the country, having graduated from Kim Il Sung University.

These guides didn’t bother to hide the tough conditions faced by North Koreans. When I asked about the food situation, they replied that everything was “tense” and rations were suspended from time to time. When that happened they came to Pyongyang Market a couple of times a week to purchase rice. If that was the life of young elites from the ruling Workers’ Party, I was afraid to ask about the common people.

However, from the bus window I could see people flocking to fish in rivers, lakes and just about any little puddle they could find that might contain some food.

The energy supply wasn’t good either. We went to Mount Myohyang on the third day. During a two-hour ride from Pyongyang I saw only nine cars; two Mercedes that belonged to high officials, four of our tour buses, two trucks and an old bus.

Pyongyang is divided into 10 administrative districts. At present they receive electricity in turns. Even the Juche Tower on the Taedong River turns off its lights at 11 a.m. Outside Pyongyang the hardships must be far more severe.

One of the guides insisted that the “war-mongering” United States had provoked the North into developing a nuclear program. He added that the United States can never be trusted. It sounded like the North would never give up on its nuclear program.

It seemed like even these new, young guides didn’t really understand the contradictions and problems within the regime. I told the young quides that to end its isolation and improve its economy, the country must improve relations with the United States by giving up its nuclear program and adopting some of free market principles.

The young people in the North didn’t seem to understand this. For example, I asked one guide about prices ― a basic of the market economy.

He said prices are determined by “the state authority.” He and his colleagues knew nothing about concepts like marginal cost or profits. I realized it was useless to mention interest rates, inflation or foreign exchange.

The guides were also nostalgic for the past. “In the ’80s we were able to buy cheap rice, fish and clothing,” one pretty guide told me, adding that the North’s goal is to return to this “golden era of socialism.”

The guides knew next to nothing about life overseas. Only two out of 10 guides had visited Seoul. Nobody else had been outside North Korea and nobody spoke English or Chinese.

On the other hand, they were both “well-informed” and “ignorant” about the situation in Seoul. They seemed to know all the little details of the nomination race between Grand National Party candidates Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, yet they lacked the political common sense to interpret them. To them the Grand National Party was a synonym for “the bad party,” just as Washington was a synonym for evil.

A tailor’s shop on the third floor of the Yanggakdo Hotel was the most popular place for tourists. Complete suits were priced at $130, half the cost of a similar garment back in Seoul. I bought one and it was no different from those made by skilled tailors in the South.

The problem was that the tailor had limited raw materials. When the tourists heard about the shop 100 of them rushed to place an order, but it could only satisfy the first 20 people.

I couldn’t understand this. The tailor could have earned much-needed foreign currency. But she lacked the fabric and staff and she needed permission from above to get more of either. “North Korea has truly screwed up its distribution of resources,” one professor on the trip said.

Another example of the “screwed-up” economy was our hotel. The Yanggakdo was built in 1995 and is supposed to be the best in Pyongyang. It has 47 stories and 1,001 suites, yet only 300 rooms were occupied during our stay ― a 70 percent vacancy rate.

“If this was Seoul, you’d probably be fired for leaving the place this empty,” I told the hotel manager. He wasn’t the least bit impressed. “My duty here is to make sure everyone is comfortable. It’s the state’s responsibility to bring in the guests,” he replied.

I came to realize that the inefficient management of the North Korean regime stems from this “instruction policy” in which everything is determined by one person ― Kim Jong-il, the Chairman of the National Defense Commission.

North Korean society revolves around instructions given by Chairman Kim ― literally.

On the fourth day we went to Okryugwan, a famous naengmyeon cold noodles restaurant, where the food lived up to its reputation. I complimented the guide and she said the tasty noodles were thanks to “The Dear Leader.”

According to the guide, Kim instructed the cook how to make the soup and where the vinegar should be added, in the soup or in the noodles. I thought she was kidding but her expression told me otherwise.

Then I learned that Kim Il Sung University teaches that the Goryeo Kingdom (918 to 1392) was the first kingdom to unite the Korean Peninsula, instead of the Silla Kingdom (57 BC to AD 935) as believed by the South. Until the ’60s, the North learned the same thing as the South but then instructions to change came from above.

Having the same leader intervene in every little decision from food to history is bound to extinguish the creativity and richness of people and culture.

North Korean propaganda is also a source of inefficiency. Around 75 percent of television news was filled with the late leader Kim Il Sung’s past activities or praise for current leader Kim Jong-il. The media in South Korea is an agent for change, because it shows new developments around the world. In the North it blocks society from growing up.

North Korea’s Juche ideology is about self-reliance, but the people of this country long ago lost the ability to stand on their own feet. They blindly hang on to every word and action of their single leader.

Back on the plane, two thoughts crossed my mind.

First, how long will the North be able to withstand this inefficient regime? Second, if the North is able to maintain its backward-looking society through isolation and propaganda, perhaps it will last longer than anyone imagines. Only the future will tell.

Yonhap
10/2/2007

South Korean First Lady Kwon Yang-suk might have found herself in a rather awkward position on the first day of the inter-Korean summit due to the absence of her official counterpart.

The North’s reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, showed up at Pyongyang Square by himself to greet President Roh Moo-hyun and Kwon, disappointing South Korean and Western media, which expected to get a glimpse of Kim’s current spouse and successor of the world’s only communist dynasty.

There is no clear information available on Kim’s marital history, but he is said to have lived with a total of four women: Kim Young-suk, Song Hye-rim, Ko Young-hee, and Kim Ok.

Song is the mother of Kim’s oldest son, Jong-nam, while Ko is the mother of Jong-chul and Jong-un. One of Kim’s three children is widely expected to replace him as the ruler of the tightly-controlled regime.

Kim has never been accompanied by his wife at a diplomatic occasion, including the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000.

Instead of meeting with the North Korean first lady, the visiting South Korean first lady spent Tuesday afternoon meeting with several leaders in North Korean women’s circles.

Daily NK
Kwon Jeong Hyun
9/28/2007

With the 2nd Inter-Korea Summit Talks coming up in five days in Pyongyang, the North Korean authorities have officially begun regulations of civilian migrations.

An inside source in North Korea said in a phone conversation on the 27th, “Control of civilians have become significantly toughened due to events of national importance, so the top (government) has completely limited travel permit approval numbers of average civilians to Pyongyang and the border regions.”

People’s Units’ chairs are in the midst of temporarily working on a reporting system which analyzes the data of civilian migrations and daily reports them to the security office.

North Korea still requires travel permits for moves to other regions from the place of residence. The inspection of permits becomes even more difficult when public transportation such as rails are used.

In particular, entry into Pyongyang, Yongbyun (nuclear power plants), Hwadaegun (Musoodan rocket launching site), and the northern border unit requires special travel permissions that are different from normal permits. For these special regions, an approval number, which signifies “special business,” is needed.

After the March of Tribulation, incidents of the Safety Agents issuing travel permits after receiving bribes were rampant, but recently, the regulation of such permits and travel restrictions on special regions have become more stringent. Restrictions on the issue of travel permits have significantly increased since the Local People’s Assembly representative elections on July 29th.

The source said, “After Chuseok (fall holiday), the order restricting the issue of all border and Pyongyang-related permits was announced at the People’s Unit meeting. With the Summit talks several days ahead, meetings of key leaders have all been cancelled and all entry and exit prohibited.”

Further, he said, “The northern border region or other controlled areas are not exceptions. Money will not do anything when trying to attain travel permits. Due to the fact that the issue of permits, with the exception of deceased reports, has been completely disallowed in surrounding cities of Pyongyang, such as Pyongsung or Nampo, the discontents of merchants who are dependent on travelling are high.”

With restrictions on civilian migrations, the price of commodities at the Jangmadang (market) has also been raised. Chinese products have to be brought back from the North Korean-Chinese border region, but because travel permits have not been issued, the transport of goods is difficult.

For industrial products, if the border region lowers the price, then prices go up in inland regions such as Kangwong, South and North Hamkyung, etc., because Chinese products coming in from border cities Shinuiju and Hyesan, Yangkang are not able to move inland. The inland is the opposite. However, the amount of rice coming in from inland regions is high, so their prices end up hiking up.”

However, the source said, “This time, the management will probably end at one-time inspection because the South Korean President is visiting. The jangmadang price levels will not skyrocket.”

Regulations regarding private visits of Chinese through Chinese travel agencies have not occurred yet.

It appears that the North Korean authorities, in order to prevent accidents and events which could happen around the Summit talk period, have strengthened preventative means.

One source who is residing in Musan, North Hamkyung, said, “In order to ensure the success of national events, lectures for leaders, with the content of hindering behind-the-scenes maneuvering of enemies and accidents and events on a timely basis, are taking place. Strict disciplinary actions for those who divulge national secrets and illegal use of cell phone are being emphasized.”

The source relayed, “Border guards are telling smugglers, ‘Wait just a few more days. After the national event (the Summit Talks), regulations will be relaxed. The situation nowadays is that smuggling is self-restrained.”