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North Korea’s Middle Class…“Money is Power”

Sunday, March 18th, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
3/18/2007

In socialism, the laborer and the peasant dominate the nation and society. However, since the late `60’s, the role of the laborer and peasant has decreased with the bureaucracy taking power, to the extent that a country can no longer remain in traditional socialism.

Currently, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il with a minority of the central class surround this core power. In North Korea, the laborers and peasants are rather subject to extortion.

Amidst a North Korean market economy, a middle class is being established. The middle class comprises of people who have assets that the average citizen cannot afford and own medium-sized businesses or engage in wholesale trade.

Undoubtedly, this group of people are dominating the middle class as well as playing a vital role in the lifeline of North Korean citizens and market, a fact that could not have been fathomable in North Korea’s past.

Until the 80’s, North Korea’s economy was a planned economy. Supply and demand of goods was distributed according to the national plan. However, in the late-80’s, small holes began to emerge in the socialist planned economic system and with a lack of daily necessities, people began to rely on the black market.

Arising from the major cities, goods were secretively traded in the black market and eventually the majority of North Koreans acquired their needed goods through this system. This system operated evading the control and regulation of North Korean authorities, but when caught, a person was condemned to severe punishment and the goods confiscated.

However, the mass food crisis of the mid-90’s completely collapsed the remnants of a socialist planned economy that had subsided unto the time. What had happened was the end of the national food distribution system.

In particular, the collapse of the food distribution meant the death sentence. Tens and hundreds of thousands of North Koreans began to die of starvation and as a means to live, people became active in the market and trade began to emerge in different regions of North Korea.

Mass starvation which created expert tradesmen

The immobilization of a socialist planned economy activated Jangmadang (North Korea’s integrated markets) which then led to the formation of a new class within North Korea’s own expert tradesmen. North Korean authorities who had no other countermeasures had little choice but to comply as the lives of the citizens were now left to the hands of trade.

In the mid-90’s, North Korean authorities approved personal trade to occur between North Korea and China and then permitted markets to exist along the border districts. Simply put, the mass food crisis created a new class which actually gave North Koreans an opportunity to trade.

At first, people would sell goods that they already had such as household appliances, television, recorder and bicycle. Furthermore, any type of stock accessible, particularly clothing, candy and other foods coming from China such as rice, flour and corn were also traded.

As people gained more experience and came to know the basics of marketing, tradesmen became more specialized. People who sold rice, only sold rice, whereas people who traded fabric only sold fabric.

North Koreans began to realize that specializing in a particular field was the way to make money and the people who were unable to assimilate to this culture broke away penniless.

Accordingly, the market gradually became a center for specialized tradesmen to provide goods and daily necessities. The goods sold by these tradesmen eventually became the mark for the middle class merchant. During this time, stabilized distributors began to dominate the market and more individualized entrepreneurs surfaced.

People skilled at cooking, baked decorative and delicious bread in their homes and then sell them at the markets. In addition, candy distributors have made a mark at the markets with candy making having become an advanced skill. People who once made candy in their homes now brag that they have been able to produce a small-scale sugar factory. In particular, clothes making and candy making has become enterprises leading to great money.

Today, 50% of candy, home-made clothing and 30% of uniforms, sold at North Korean markets are products made from home. Through goods such as these, Chinese merchants, tradesmen and the middle class are earning money through North Korea’s markets supplying the customers, the majority of the lower class.

Posted in 1990s Famine, Black markets, Civil society, Economic reform, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Price liberalization, Private property, Public Distribiution System (PDS), Restaurants | Comments Closed

Dining with the Dear Leader

Thursday, March 15th, 2007

Asia Times
Bertil Lintner
3/15/2007

Video of the Restaurant on Youtube: 1, 2, 3

Its undoubtedly the liveliest and most popular Korean restaurant in town. Packed for lunch and dinner, the Pyongyang Restaurant is famous not only for its cold noodles and barbecue served with kim chi, but also for its talented wait staff, which when not serving are dancing to traditional Korean tunes played on violins and electric piano.

But the Pyongyang Restaurant in Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh is no ordinary Korean eatery. For one, it’s owned and run by the North Korean government, a capitalist enterprise that sends its profits directly to state coffers in Pyongyang. As with most other upper-crust restaurants in Phnom Penh, the meals have to be paid for in US dollars, not in riel, as the local currency is not convertible outside Cambodia.

When the international community imposed economic sanctions against North Korea after its nuclear tests last October, the Pyongyang authorities were able to continue to run a string of small-scale companies and businesses across the region that kept foreign-currency earnings flowing back home. Restaurants such as the Pyongyang Restaurant in Cambodia have in no small way helped keep the North Korean government afloat during tough diplomatic times.

And the establishments’ often booming business are proving North Koreans are no slouches as capitalists. Government-backed North Korean eateries are mushrooming across the region. For years there have been various North Korean-themed restaurants in Beijing, Shanghai and other Chinese cities. But the first was opened in Southeast Asia only in 2002 in the Cambodian town of Siem Reap, a popular tourist destination because of its proximity to the Angkor Wat temple complex.

It became an instant success – especially with the thousands of South Korean tourists who flock to see the ancient Angkor ruins every year – so successful, indeed, that Pyongyang decided to open a second venue in Phnom Penh in December 2003. Most of the clientele there are South Korean businessmen who work in Cambodia as well as a smattering of homesick South Korean tourists who drool over the authentic Korean eats. And while severe food shortages still plague North Korea itself, the fare in Phnom Penh is good and plentiful.

The choice of Cambodia for this North Korean capitalist experiment was, of course, no coincidence. Norodom Sihanouk, the country’s erstwhile strongman – first as king, then as prince, later as leader in exile and finally king again from September 1993 until his abdication in October 2004 – is a longtime close friend of North Korea.

He met the late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung in 1961 at a Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Belgrade. Four years later, Sihanouk was invited to visit Pyongyang, and a personal bond developed between the two leaders. When Sihanouk was ousted by his own military in a coup in March 1970, he was immediately offered sanctuary in North Korea.

Sihanouk’s government-in-exile, which included senior Khmer Rouge cadres, was in Beijing. But by 1974, Kim Il-sung had built a special private getaway expressly for Sihanouk about an hour’s drive north of Pyongyang. A battalion of North Korean troops worked full-time for nearly a year on the palatial residence and, when it was finally finished, only specially selected guards were allowed anywhere near Sihanouk’s 60-room home away from home. Overlooking scenic Chhang Sou On Lake and surrounded by mountains, the Korean-style building even included its own indoor movie theater. Like the “Great Leader”, Kim Il-sung, and his son, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il, Sihanouk loved to watch movies.

Sihanouk returned to Cambodia after the government of Lon Nol was overthrown in April 1975 and Sihanouk’s communist allies, the Khmer Rouge, came to power. But when the Khmer Rouge put him under virtual house arrest in the royal palace in Phnom Penh, from where he narrowly managed to escape when the Vietnamese invaded in January 1979, Sihanouk was flown out on a Chinese plane and returned to his grand North Korean residence.

When Sihanouk triumphantly returned to Phnom Penh in 1991, he came with North Korean escorts, both as personal bodyguards and as diplomats, who took up residence in a huge new embassy built for them near the Independence Monument in downtown Phnom Penh. And in 1993, when Sihanouk was officially reinstalled as the king of Cambodia, he surrounded himself in the civil-war-torn country with people he knew he could trust – North Korean bodyguards.

So it is not surprising that hanging prominently on the wall at Phnom Penh’s Pyongyang Restaurant is a picture of Sihanouk, his wife Monique and their son King Norodom Sihamoni. According to locals familiar with the restaurant’s opening, the Cambodian royal family was among the first guests to dine there.

Business opportunities are still fairly limited in Cambodia, so last year the North Koreans opened an even bigger restaurant in neighboring Thailand. Its first day of operation was auspiciously chosen as August 15, coinciding with the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The Bangkok branch of the Pyongyang Restaurant is tucked away down a side alley in the city’s gritty Pattanakarn suburb, far from areas Westerners usually frequent but very near the North Korean Embassy.

Inside, the walls are decorated with paintings of Kim Il-sung’s alleged birthplace, a peasant hut in Mangyongdae near Pyongyang. An all-women’s band, dressed in traditional Korean dresses known as hambok and in the North, chima jogoiri in the South and, of course, with little Kim Il-sung badges on their blouses, plays upbeat music on electric guitars, drums and electric piano.

It’s not exactly a tourist attraction, but it’s a colorful backdrop for businessmen and diplomats to cut deals or exchange the information that has in recent years helped to make Thailand into North Korea’s third-largest global trading partner after nearby China and South Korea. There are no signs of economic sanctions or deprivation here, but rather, perhaps, a tantalizing glimpse of a one day more prosperous and joyful North Korea.

Posted in Cambodia, International trade, Restaurants | Comments Closed

In Deep South, North Koreans Find a Hot Market

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

New York Times
NORIMITSU ONISHI
5/25/2006

TAEJON, South Korea — At the Pyongyang Moran Bar on a recent Friday evening, a large video screen showed uplifting images of rocky mountains and an open blue sky. A slogan appeared at the bottom: “Kim Jong Il, a man who comes along only once in a thousand years.”

The North Korean waitresses wore traditional dresses in the bright colors that were fashionable in the South some years back. The singer’s interpretation of “Whistle,” a North Korean standard of the 1980’s, was shaky and off-key. Service was bad and included at least one mild threat. Drinks were spilled, beer bottles left unopened and unpoured.

But the South Korean customers could not get enough of the Pyongyang Moran Bar.

“Encore!” cried Bae Seong Wan, 44, at the end of “Whistle.”

The Pyongyang Moran Bar is located, not north of the demilitarized zone, but here in downtown Taejon, a city in the South Korean heartland.

The 120-seat bar opened in February, complete with inferior North Korean beverages, North Korean landscape posters, North Korean songs, a photo of Mr. Kim above the bar counter with his South Korean counterpart and, most important, North Korean waitresses — or, as a sign outside announced, “beautiful girls from North Korea!”

Until the 1990’s, South Korean schoolchildren were awarded prizes for drawing posters depicting diabolical North Koreans. Then the South’s so-called sunshine policy of engagement transformed North Koreans into real human beings in the minds of South Koreans and in popular movies like “Joint Security Area.”

Now, after more than half a decade of rapprochement, the North is all the rage, in a retro-kitschy fashion, and North Koreans are seen not as threatening aggressors but as country bumpkin cousins, needing an introduction to big-city life.

North Korean defectors and South Koreans alike are opening North Korean-themed restaurants, selling North Korean goods and auctioning off North Korean artwork on www.NKMall.com.

Half a century of division has turned the South into the world’s most wired society, as its consumer products and pop culture increasingly shape the tastes of youth across Asia.

North Korea, meanwhile, has remained frozen in time, a repository — at least to someone with a sharp nose for marketing — of an unchanged Korea.

“North Korea is retro,” said Jong Su Ban, 42, a North Korean defector who plans to open a North Korean restaurant, Ok Ru Ok, in Seoul soon. “It reminds South Koreans of the 1950’s and 1960’s, before South Korea industrialized. They see handmade crafts that are not sophisticated, and they think, ‘It’s like us before we developed.’ ”

The timing was right, Mr. Jong said, pointing out that only a few years ago a restaurant in Seoul with a waiter dressed as a North Korean soldier went belly up fast. “He made people uncomfortable,” he said.

At a company called NK Food, Hong Chang Ryo, 45, a South Korean who opened two North Korean restaurants in Seoul this year and is planning to open a third here, agreed.

“Even two or three years ago,” he said, “we couldn’t have done this. We would have been fingered as commies.”

Mr. Hong’s first restaurant, Nalrae, Nalrae — or fast, fast in the North Korean dialect — “invites you to a different taste” with more than 27 dishes named after places in the North. Shelves stocked with mushrooms, alcoholic beverages, seaweed — “straight from Pyongyang” — are the main attractions in the restaurant, which is painted organic green. A menu promises “nonpolluted, well-being dishes using natural resources from North Korea.”

“It feels rural, natural, unpolluted,” said one first-time customer, Lee Sae Mie, 23, a university student.

While about 40 percent of the dishes’ ingredients come from the North, Mr. Hong said, the flavors had to be adjusted, considerably, to appeal to South Korean palates.

“We had to rack our brains,” Mr. Hong said. “We all know they just eat cornmeal over there. Well, we just don’t know what they’re eating over there. So we mixed and matched. Dishes may look North Korean but actually taste South Korean.”

Increasingly, though, people are parting with South Korean won to buy goods from www.NKMall.com, which Park Young Bok, a South Korean, set up in 2003. The site sells mostly food products, which shoppers can also buy at 70 stores nationwide.

Last September, Mr. Park added an auction for North Korean paintings, which have been selling briskly, reaching $115,000 in sales in April. With South Korean officials still banning artwork with political content, most of the imports are of landscapes — though, oddly, a tapestry of the Virgin Mary was auctioned off recently for $80.

At his warehouse just outside Seoul, Mr. Park showed off some of the 30 North Korean alcoholic beverages he sells — some of them with labels slapped crookedly on the bottles, others with the contents partly evaporated because of poor bottling.

But to hear some of the patrons at the Pyongyang Moran Bar here tell it, leaking bottles, even bad service, are part of the North Korean appeal.

“I don’t know how to open this,” said one waitress struggling with a bottle of Budweiser. The waitress — who had worked at the bar for only two days and who, like many North Koreans, had never opened a bottle before — tried to get the top off, then handed the bottle to the customer, who opened it himself.

Another customer, Kim Chung Sig, 39, said, “I don’t expect the service to be good here.”

Choi Jung Hee, 37, the manager, said she had trouble training her North Korean staff of five waitresses. “At least, they should say, ‘Hello!’ properly when customers come in, but they don’t,” she said.

“Things are very different in North Korea,” she said. “Over there, waitresses and salespeople are kings because they have access to goods. But here you have to treat customers like kings. You have to bow to them and be polite even if they are rude.”

Reaction to the bar is decidedly split, an indication, said Mr. Jong, the North Korean who is opening up Ok Ru Ok, that South Koreans see in North Korea what they want to see.

Older South Koreans, who still look upon the North as an enemy, want to see images of starving North Korean babies, Mr. Jong said. Younger people, who often want friendly relations with the North, want to see the clean streets of Pyongyang.

“Both sides want to satisfy their beliefs,” Mr. Jong said, standing inside his soon-to-open restaurant. “That’s why I’ll put up only neutral images of North Korea in my new restaurant.”

Everything has fallen into place now for Mr. Jong, who came to South Korea in 2000 and earned a living writing pornography before plunging into food. He has even secured a supply of the North’s coveted Taedong River beer.

“When I lived in North Korea,” Mr. Jong said, “I never knew that this beer even existed. I’ll have North Korean beer for the first time in South Korea. I lived in a very funny country.”

Posted in International trade, Restaurants, South Korea | Comments Closed

Pyongyang restaurants

Sunday, February 26th, 2006

From the prolofic Andrei Lankov:

Koreans love eating out _ as every long-time Seoul resident knows from his or her own experience. Going to a restaurant is one of the most common leisure activities in this country. In this regard the North is not much different. Of course, decent restaurants are much more difficult to come across: Communist economies have never been particularly successful in meeting consumers’ demands in this area. Nonetheless, this does not mean North Korean cities do not have good restaurants. Perhaps, the very scarcity of such places, combined with the generally bad diet, make eating out there an even more remarkable experience.

For the last 25 years two major restaurants have defined the Pyongyang’s culinary life ㅡ Okryugwan and Chongryugwan.

Okryugwan (the Jade Stream Pavilion) is located on the left bank of the Taedong River. It commenced operations in 1960, and has since remained the major landmark of the North Korean capital. This large building, in a mock traditional style, boasts a number of dining halls including some special banquet rooms, and can seat up to 2,000 visitors. Obviously, the penchant for large-scale eateries has been common to all Communist regimes (the Soviet restaurants of the era also tended to be of truly mammoth size).

Okryugwan has an officially recognized standing as the major guardian of traditional Korean cuisine, functioning as a type of living museum of culinary arts. Recently it was reported that, together with a local college, it sent special research teams to the countryside. The teams were to gather data on traditional Korean cuisine in order to introduce new dishes onto the Okryugwan menu (I just wonder whether it was a good idea to look for new recipes at the time of famine).

Chongryugwan (the Pure Stream Pavilion) is almost equally famous. It opened much later, 1980, in a new building shaped to resemble a ship. The Chongryugwan sits on the banks of the Potonggang, a minor but capricious tributary of the Taedong River. It has two levels: the ground floor, occupied by a large dining hall, and the upper floor, used for small dining rooms and banquet halls.

Both restaurants specialize in traditional cuisine, with special attention given to cold noodles, a quintessentially North Korean dish. Generally, the cooking traditions in the North and South are slightly different, but South Korean visitors usually have a high opinion of the food in both of these famous restaurants.

Both Okryugwan and Chongryugwan are sometimes described in the South as ‘mass restaurants’, and this description is true. Open to the average North Korean, they are not reserved for bigwigs or dollar-paying foreigners alone. However, this does not mean anyone can wander in off the street and enjoy a bowl of cold noodles at whim. In order to get access, North Koreans initially had to get tickets, and these tickets were notoriously difficult to acquire. One had to have connections or endure hours in long queues. Only in recent years has the ongoing “dollarization’’ of the North Korean economy changed the situation: if one has money then tickets are available (that’s a big ‘if’ of course).

In the countryside there are local analogues to the two Pyongyang heavyweights. Each major North Korean city has its own `special’ restaurant. Usually, their names include the characters ‘kak’ or ‘gwan’. Both words are of Chinese origin: they can be roughly translated as ‘pavilion’ and ‘hall’ and have been a part of the names of the restaurants in East Asian countries for many centuries

Apart from Okryugwan and its less successful rivals, North Korea has a number of smaller eateries. They are not as numerous as eateries in the South, but in major cities they are not so difficult to find. In the past there used to be a clear-cut difference between the hard-currency restaurants, which were off limits to commoners, and establishments for the not-so-well-heeled. However, the recent few years have seen a gradual blurring of this once impassable border.

North Korean specialities are noodles and, of course, dog meat. Incidentally, the latter is not called ‘dog meat’ (kae kogi) in North Korea. Once upon a time, Kim Il Sung decided that such a name was too unceremonious, and had it renamed ‘sweet meat (‘tan kogi’)!

The restaurant industry was one of the first in which private enterprise was reintroduced. This happened at a surprisingly early stage, in the late 1980s, when state control of the economy was still sound. In recent years, these private eateries have sprung up in very large numbers, reflecting the steady disintegration of the Stalinist economy.

According to a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan, in 2005 there were 500 restaurants in Pyongyang. Most of them charge prices well beyond the reach of the average North Korean, and cater to the tastes of the three major groups with money: foreign ex-pats, black-market dealers, and officials. These groups are large enough to sustain a number of quite sophisticated eateries.

There is sashimi to be eaten in the Galaxy, there is ostrich barbecue at the Arirang, and there is a micro-brewery where 5 people can feast on the locally produced dark ale and good noodles for a mere $15! A bargain, of course, at $3 per person ㅡ but, after all, the $3 is exactly how much the average North Korean worker is paid for one month… Some people have this money, of course. How? That is another story…

Posted in Restaurants | Comments Closed

Interview with a Citizen of Chongjin City

Wednesday, December 28th, 2005

Daily NK
Kim Young Jin
12/28/2005

The DailyNK has reported North Korean news vividly with the help of the voices inside North Korea during the year 2005.

North Korea expressed farming as ‘the major front line for the construction of socialist economy’ in the joint new year editorial at the beginning of this year. In fact, it has made every effort to relieve its famine by mobilizing a number of people to farming for the entire year. In October, it also announced to its people that it would resume its ration system that had long been stopped.

The DailyNK met a citizen of Chongjin City of North Hamkyeong Province to fully grasp the recent situation of North Korea as a whole at this moment of seeing the old year out and the new year in. The interview is presented in the format of 10 questions and answers. The reader is expected to feel the reality of North Korea in mid-December, 2005 by reading the interview.

1. How does the ration system work?
Workers in Giupso (State Owned Enterprise) receive a ration twice a month, the total ration being 700g a month. The government designated that the price of unglutinous rice is 46 won, while that of corn is 28 won. Those housewives who can work but stay home can buy 300g for 620 won. Children and the elderly, who are not able to work, can buy cereals at the government designated prices.

In short, the government has adopted a double price system. However, those who are rationed receive rice mixed with miscellaneous cereals whereas those who pay 620 won get unmixed rice.

Factories and Giupsos are assigned the farmland of No.112, and they have to produce cereals the quantity of which is equal to two month’s ration. In October, people were fully rationed, but since November, they have not been able to be fully rationed. People without the farmland of No.112 partly received their rations.

Additional question: What is the farmland of No.112?

It is a part of a cooperative farmland which is difficult to cultivate. Every factory and Giupso is assigned one. If a Giupso is influential, it is usually assigned a fertile land. It is so named because the policy was established on either November 2nd, last year or January 12th this year. I don’t remember the date.

2. How do people obtain their food if they are not fully rationed?
They get cereals in black markets. Transferring cereals in large scale is strictly prohibited, but people are selling them to acquaintances or under the cover of a bribe. Trading a large quantity of cereals is stealthily accomplished in a private home. Restaurants are also forbidden to sell processed cereals.

The price of rice has not risen. It ranges from 800 to 820 won ($0.4-0.41). The price of corn is 300 won ($0.15) while that of potatoes is 150 won ($0.075). Because people in Chongjin City do not enjoy eating corn, it is cheap here.

3. How are farmers rationed, and how much is the government’s purchasing price of cereals?
The farmland of No.112 is divided by fertility. The worst class is the 12th. 1,500 won ($0.75) is collected from 9,917.4 square meters of 12th class farmland as a tax. It can be payed with corn. 1kg of corn is bought for 24 won($0.012).

I heard a squad leader of a cooperative farm located near Chongjin say, “Every person on my farm was supposed to receive the prize of some 17,000 won ($8.5) because the government sent the prize to the farm for good farming, but the farm has not given the prize out to the people, saying that it would be a better idea for the money to be used to buy trucks and farm equipment, and thus people are full of complaints. The farm distributes ordinary rations to the workers.

4. What are people’s reactions to the resumption of the ration system like?
Most people are pessimistic about it. They grumble, “We do not understand why the government does not sell cereals indiscriminately. It has just made things complicated.” On the other hand, those who do not have a means of making a living hope for the ration system.

5. Do you have something to talk about regarding companies and work place lives?
In former years, there were people belonging to the circle called ‘the rest’ in companies. These people could do their own business by giving some part of their profits to their Giupso. However, all people are required to come to the Giupso to work these days. If there are some surplus workers, they are fired.

Since it was said that every Giupso should ration its workers, those who are not able to do their own businesses, especially women, have made every effort to be employed by a Giupso.

Rich people are not interested in companies, but the poor are full of complaints because ‘the rest’ circle was eliminated. The poor are getting much more interested in job opportunities.

6. As far as I know, the rate of factory operation is 20% or so. Has there been any changes recently?
No, there is almost no change in the rate. Earning foreign money is active, but I’ve never heard that those factories that had stopped before resumed its operation, or that they changed their business category to be operative.

7. Can you come up with a concrete example that shows that the status of partisans is getting lower?
Factories and Giupsos are reluctant to employ partisans because it is difficult to lay them off. If one says he is a partisan during a job interview, he will probably be turned down. Non-partisans are definitely preferred.

8. Is the control over people getting tighter?
The control in matters of food is getting tight. Because controlling restaurants and processed cereals has been getting tighter, more and more stalls are being emptied in markets, and the price of stalls is decreasing. A stall 50cm wide and 1.5m long for selling apparel can be bought for 120,000 won ($60).

Food for a family of 4 members costs 120-130 thousand won ($60-65) a month. The family also has to spend money for housing and clothing.

Additional question: I heard that even though many people are moving from one place to another, and a number of people dare to complain, punishments are getting weaker and weaker. Can you give me some examples regarding that?

The security agents say that they no longer arrest blasphemers. They even say that they will enforce laws on the basis of scientific evidences. (Blasphemers refer to those who blaspheme the system of the Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il regime.)

Punishments for defectors, radio listeners, and other such crimes are considerably moderated.

A neighbor in his 70’s was arrested due to his acquaintance’ betrayal. He revealed that he had been listening to the radio, but he was just called names during the investigation and criticized publicly in front of a crowd of people. That was the punishment. Even though blaspheming is said to be forgiven, you cannot call Kim Jong Il’s name. Maybe it would be okay for you to say South Korea is rich.

Additional question: Recently, it has been reported that Kim Jong Il ordered that torturing be checked and human rights be respected. Have you ever heard from security agents such a story or instructions?

No, I’ve never heard that.

Additional questions: Because punishments are getting moderated, what kind of countermeasures do North Korea take to protect the regime?

The National Security Agency is said to employ and use many informants. It lets people watch each other. According to one of my acquaintances, those who have an experience of escaping from the North are especially encouraged to watch each other.

9. How is the electric power supply like?
Electric power is supplied for 3 to 4 hours a day from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. Middle class people usually have both a black and white TV set and a color TV set. They use only batteries for the black and white TV. Electric power supply is poor for winter. It starts getting better in the spring and is best in summer.

10. Recently, North Koreans are said to widely use horse-drawn or cow-drawn carriages. Is that true?
They are widely used for carrying cargo. They are seen even in urban cities. Recently, individuals or Giupsos are trading cows. The price of a cow in black markets range from 400 to 700 thousand won ($200-350). Recently, the price for using such a carriage is determined in relation to the distance instead of the weight it should carry. 3 to 4km costs 2,000 won ($1), while anything more than 5km costs 3,000 won ($1.5). The weight of the cargo usually does not exceed 700kg.

If one uses a truck, he must pay for the fuel in addition to the fee. 1kg of diesel costs 2,000 won ($1).

Posted in Agriculture, Black markets, Civil society, Economic reform, Electricity, Energy, Labor conditions/wages, Ministry of State Security (MPSS, NSA, SSD), Price liberalization, Public Distribiution System (PDS), Restaurants, Transportation | Comments Closed

Last orders, please

Monday, October 3rd, 2005

The Guardian
Jonathan Watts
10/3/2005

Of all the bars in all the world, there is probably none as exclusive, surreal or intriguing as the Random Access Club in Pyongyang. There are also few institutions that are quite so necessary to the mental well-being of the customers.

Open for business only on Friday nights, the RAC is a watering hole for North Korea’s tiny expatriate community; the 300 foreign residents allowed to live among the 22 million population of the planet’s most reclusive nation.

At first sight, the club inside the compound of the United Nations World Food Programme could not look more mundane nor the clientele appear less exotic. Apart from the decor – mostly copies of Chinese contemporary artworks – the simple bar, concrete walls and well-worn pool table might as easily belong to a church hall in Croydon as an expat hang-out in Pyongyang. The few dozen customers seem so earnest and engaging that they too could be mistaken for a suburban congregation rather than the disaster and war hardened aid workers and diplomats they really are.

What is bizarre is the context. The RAC is an oasis of modern globalised normality inside a land where time has not only stood still but gone backwards. North Korea exerts more control over its citizens than the Soviet Union in the dark days of Stalinism. It takes the ideology of 1984 to levels that George Orwell could not have dreamed of. It is rusting proof that the engine of industrial development has a reverse gear. And it is a dark and uncomfortable warning of what could happen to the world if we ever run out of oil.
To find a place like the RAC in the midst of this is like seeing a tiny postcard of Brighton beach stuck on Picasso’s Guernica, or having the latest Peter Greenaway film interrupted by a few seconds of Neighbours.

The bar’s short history is the story of the gradual opening of North Korea since the government reluctantly requested outside help to feed a population racked by famine, droughts and floods.

When it started in 1995, the WFP had just two representatives running a small aid project from rooms in the Koryo hotel. By 1997, North Korea had become the biggest humanitarian operation on the planet, with international organisations providing food and medicine to more than a quarter of the population.

In the meantime, the resident aid community – which included other UN agencies and about a dozen NGOs – had swollen to more than a hundred and been moved to the diplomatic district. The RAC emerged in response to the growing need among this group for a communal gathering point and a place to let off steam about the frustrations of working in such a difficult political and humanitarian environment.

Foreigners in Pyongyang arguably face more restrictions than their counterparts in any other country. They cannot make private visits to the homes of North Koreans, they cannot travel outside of Pyongyang without permission and they are not supposed to exchange their dollars and euros for local currency.

The work can be harrowing. Although the worst of the food crisis passed more than five years ago, some areas still suffer from poor nutrition and a lack of basic medicines. In remote outposts, WFP monitors can be extremely isolated. In Hyesan – a four-day drive from Pyongyang – the organisation’s representative lives alone for eight weeks in a basic hotel where the temperature in the lobby can fall as low as minus 17 degrees in the winter. There are no other foreigners, their local guides leave them at the weekends, and they are not allowed to socialise privately with Koreans.

In Pyongyang, the situation is not nearly as bad. Many visitors are surprised at the beauty of this showcase city. Compared to most capitals, it is clean, quiet and safe. There is sufficient food, some fine duck and noodle restaurants and even a little capitalist entertainment in the form of the casino, karaoke bar and golf course at the Yanggakdo hotel.

In addition, years of pure ideology – the utter subjection of the individual to the collective will of the state embodied by the leader Kim Jong-il – have produced some impressive (or scary, depending on your point of view) cultural marvels, such as the circus and the performances by young dancers and musicians at the children’s palace.

Those looking on the positive side of life in North Korea also point out the friendliness, innocence and high levels of education of many of the people they meet, as well as the cleanliness of the air in a country starved of energy and short on traffic. Because of this, and the frequent blackouts, Pyongyang is probably the best capital in the world for stargazing.

But the political problems undermine most of these benefits. Most foreigners accept their phones are bugged. Some suspect that much of what they see during inspections is staged. Even among the old-hands who have been in the country for years, many say they have never made a Korean friend.

This is largely because North Korea is gripped by a siege mentality – and not without justification. The country has been in a state of hot and cold war with the US since 1950. Outsiders are seen as potential spies or sources of ideological impurity.

There is good reason for the government to fear charity. Every smile or hand-out from a foreign aid worker undermines the state’s xenophobic propaganda and philosophy of “juche” self-sufficiency.

The WFP’s mission in North Korea is the only one where aid monitors do not have unrestricted access to the entire country. But the UN organisation has gradually widened its focus, pushing back the boundaries where it operates, expanding its presence to 42 foreign and 70 domestic staff, and meeting regularly with thousands of local officials who might otherwise never come into contact with a foreigner. Its monitoring ambitions remain the same as when the RAC was named: random access to all parts of the country.

This is the aspect of aid work that North Korea fears the most. Although the food and drugs are humanitarian, their side-effect is political. As most of the customers in the RAC will testify, one of the biggest changes since the aid operation began is in attitudes. Ten years ago, most North Koreans would turn their backs on a foreigner. Now they are almost as likely to smile.

That, more than anything, may be why the RAC could soon be losing most of its customers. The government has ordered all humanitarian work to end by the end of the year. Negotiations are still under way regarding what that will mean, but one resident’s estimate is that as many as 80 of the 120 aid officials in Pyongyang will have to pack their bags and leave by December 31.

The mood in the RAC has never been more gloomy. Out will go most of the young blood. Those who remain are likely to be diplomats, a sharply reduced corps of aid workers, five English teachers and a handful of businessmen.

“It’ll be like going back to 1994,” commented one regular at the bar.

“The jokes these days are black ones about all the second-hand fridges and cars that will flood into Pyongyang’s markets at the end of the year,” said another.

It is still possible that as one door closes others will open. North Korea welcomes economic development in the form of investors and technical support for infrastructure projects. The government wants to boost the tourist industry. A new railway is about to open across the demilitarized zone that will increase the flow of visitors from South Korea. The growing influence of Beijing is bringing in more people and goods from China. Progress in six-nation nuclear talks could also mean more atomic energy agency inspectors and diplomats from Japan and the US.

But ready or not, North Korea wants its independence back. It wants its future foreign guests to be visiting town on short-term visas, not moving in for years on end and setting up their own social club. For North Koreans and expats, there will be plenty of other bars, but at the RAC, it is time to drink up. The government may soon be calling last orders.

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