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S.Koreans Join Ceremony For Digital Library Opening In Pyongyang

Thursday, March 29th, 2007

Yonhap
3/29/2007

A group of 143 South Koreans made a four-day visit to North Korea starting from March 22 to celebrate the opening of a North Korean digital library built with South Korean technology, a local foundation that has a leading role in the project said.

During their stay in Pyongyang, Rep. Im Jong-seok of the ruling Uri Party and other delegates attended the opening ceremony of the digital library at the North’s top school, Kimilsung University, on March 23 and toured the city’s landmarks.

The library’s computer network was built with aid from South Korea’s Hanyang University, the Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library and the Korean Foundation for South-North Economic and Cultural Cooperation, a private foundation for the promotion of such inter-Korean cooperation.

Kimilsung University is the first North Korean school to introduce the South’s advanced digital library system.

Jo Chol, vice president of the North’s university, said he hopes to see an exchange of teaching staff between the universities of the two Koreas, saying the exchange in academic fields will promote the improvement of inter-Korean relations.

Posted in Art, Communications, Computing/IT, International Aid, Korean Foundation for South-North Economic and Cultural, Library | Comments Closed

Yongchun Explosion…Chinese Merchants First to Inform

Wednesday, March 14th, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
3/14/2007

It is a well known fact that goods made in China are sweeping across North Korea with Chinese merchants taking the role of distributor.

However, Chinese merchants are not only exporting goods into North Korea but are also importing goods made in North Korea such as seafood, medicinal herbs, coal and minerals back to China.

Particularly, dried shellfish sells very well in China. As more and more Chinese merchants buy dried shellfish from North Korean markets, they play a critical role in the lives of North Korean citizens as sellers who are then able to raise the price due to demand. Every year, from April~Sept, people from the North-South Pyongan, Haean collect shellfish along the shore. 10kg of rice can be bought with 1kg of shellfish meat. Consequently, citizens of other regions also come to the beaches to collect shellfish.

If Chinese merchants did not import any goods and North Korea’s finest goods were not exported to China, the cost of goods at Jangmadang would increase exponentially. This is how close the relationship between the lives of North Korean citizens and Chinese merchants have become interconnected.

Significance of information runners

Though Chinese merchants are currently contributing to market stability, it does not necessarily mean that their existence will continue to be positive to North Korean authorities.

The people first to inform news of the Yongchun explosion in April 2004 to the outside world were Chinese merchants.

At the time, after confirming the lives their family members in North Korea, Chinese merchants who heard the explosion in Dandong gathered information about the explosion details from relatives in Shinuiju and Yongchun over mobile phones. Undoubtedly, news spread instinctively. The economic development zone, Dandong, which is at the mouth of the Yalu River is merely 10km from Yongchun.

Due to this incident, Kim Jong Il banned the use of mobile phones in North Korea. Chinese merchants have played a great role in the outflow of inside North Korean issues, a problem feared by North Korean authorities that contributes to the inflow of foreign information.

Recently, Chinese merchants have been charging a 20% fee involved in remitting dollars to defectors wanting to send money to family in North Korea. For example, if a defector wishes to send $1,000 to family in North Korea, a merchant will extract $200 and transfer the remaining $800 to the family.

As long as Chinese merchants have a specific identification card, they are free to travel between the North Korean-Chinese border and hence many defectors prefer to use Chinese merchants as the intermediary. Thanks to these merchants, many people can convey money and letters to family within North Korea.

In these respects, Chinese merchants are not only selling goods but are acting as information runners transporting news of the outside world into North Korean society.

As more and more North Koreans rely on markets as a means of living and trade between China and North Korea, the North Korean market will only continue to expand. We will have to wait and see whether or not Chinese merchants will have a healing or poisonous affect on the Kim Jong Il regime from here on in.

Posted in Agriculture, Banking, Black markets, Cell phones, China, Coal, Communications, Finance, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Indigenous medicine, International trade | Comments Closed

Chinese Merchants in North Korea – Cure or Poison to Kim Jong Il?

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
3/7/2007

90% daily goods made in China, 50% circulated by Chinese merchants

While some prospect that North Korea may be an affiliated market of China’s 4 provinces in the Northeast, the real focus is on the merchants who actually control North Korea’s markets. Recently, North Korean citizens have been asserting that markets would immobilize if Chinese merchants were to disappear.

Lately, Chinese merchants are nestling themselves with their newly found fortune in North Korea, undeniably to the envy of North Korean citizens.

In a recent telephone conversation with the DailyNK, Kim Chang Yeol (pseudonym) a resident of Shinuiju said “Most of the tiled houses in Shinuiju are owned by Chinese merchants in Shinuiju are upper class and the rich.” Unlike Pyongyang, tiled houses in Shinuiju are greater in value than apartments. In particular, the homes owned by Chinese merchants are luxurious and impressing.

Kim said “At the moment, 90% of daily goods that are traded at Shinuiju markets are made in China.” What Kim means by 90% of goods is basically everything excluding agricultural produce and medicinal herbs. Apparently, about half of the (90% of) supplies are circulated by Chinese merchants.

Kim affirmed that the market system could be shaken if supplies were not provided by the Chinese merchants. Hence, Chinese merchants have elevated themselves in North Korea’s integrated market system, to the extent that the market could break down without their existence.

In addition to this, Chinese merchants are playing a vital role in conveying information about the external world into North Korea. Even in 2004, it was Chinese merchants to first telephone China through mobile phones relaying the news about the Yongcheon explosion. As a result, rumors say that the movement of Chinese merchants can either be a “cure” to the economic crisis in which the North Korean government seems unable to fix, or “poison,” as more and more foreign information flows into the country.

How many Chinese merchants are there in North Korea?

A report by China’s Liaoning-Chosun Newspaper in 2001 sourcing data from North Korea, states that immediately after WWII, approximately 80,000 overseas Chinese were residing in the Korean Peninsula. Then following the Korean War and the formation of a Chinese government, the majority of people, approximately 60,000 Chinese, returned home. In 1958, statistics show that 3,778 families of overseas Chinese were living in North Korea, totalling 14,351 people.

These Chinese engaged in business related to farming, home made handicrafts and restaurant business, and in the late 50’s, lost all this due to the implementation of economic planning and dictatorial regime. Since then, the majority of merchants continued to return to China until the early 80’s.

In 2001, Liaoning-Chosun Newspaper confirmed that approximately 6,000 Chinese were living in North Korea. Of this figure, more than half were residing in Pyongyang, approx. 300 families living in North Pyongan and approx. 300 families residing throughout Jagang and northern districts of South Hamkyung.

At present, there are 4 middle and high schools for children (11~17 years) of Chinese merchants, located in Pyongyang, Chongjin, Shinuiju and Kanggae. In addition to these schools, there are a number of elementary schools (for children aged 7~11 years) located sporadically throughout each province.

Wang Ok Kyung (pseudonym) a resident of Shinuiju attended Chongjin Middle School for children of overseas Chinese in 1981~86. Wang said “At the time, there were about 40 students in each year. Now there is only about 5~6 students.” Nowadays, many Chinese children complete their elementary studies in North Korea, but the general trend is to send the children to China for middle school. She said “In order to enter a Chinese university, students must have completed their middle school studies in China and must be fluent in Chinese. He/she can also go to private institutes in China.”

Fortunes made through trade between North Korea-China during the food crisis

Even until the early 80’s there were no such thing as a wealthy North Korean-Chinese merchant. They were no different to North Korean citizens.

However, in the 80’s, many people began importing and selling goods such as socks, handkerchiefs, hand mirrors and cards from China, literally through their sacks. As the 90’s approached North Korean-Chinese merchants began to experience great wealth, the time where North Korea-China trade fundamentally kickstarted.

Today, Son Kwang Mi (pseudonym, 52) falls under the top 10 wealthiest Chinese merchants in Dandong, characterizing an unique rags to riches story. In the past, Sun lived in Chongjin and was one of the first figures to trade with China in the 80’s.

In the beginning, Son was so poor that she had to sell her watch received as a wedding gift in order to buy goods to sell.

Fortunately, Son found her money smuggling gold. In North Korea, gold is considered a public good or simply put Kim Jong Il’s personal inheritance, so private trade of gold is strictly regulated. Nonetheless, there are still some laborers who export gold secretly and a great number of people still collect gold through dubious ways. In particular, after the 80’s as North Korea began to experience economic decline, more and more people sold gold secretly.

Hence, a small number of Chinese merchants infiltrated the market of secretly trading gold with China. Chinese smugglers were able to take advantage of North Koreans by greatly raise their market margins, as the supply of gold and North Koreans wanting to sell their gold was high yet the demand in North Korea low.

Son said “Of the Chinese merchants in North Korea, 60% earned a great fortune at that time through illicit trade.”

She says that there were two opportunities for overseas Chinese to make a great fortune. The first was in 1985~89 through illicit trade of gold and the second, during North Korea’s mass food crisis in 1995~98.

“During the mass famine, everything in North Korea was in shortage and so Chinese merchants began to provide the daily necessities of life. At the time, if you brought large amounts of goods such as fabric and sugar, you could make a profit of 1 million Yuan (US$137,000),” she said.

Son was fortunate enough not to miss these two opportunities which led her to great wealth and allowed her to possess a fortune of 50 million Yuan (US$6.31 million).

Chinese merchants can relatively enter and exit China freely. Also, with the ability to speak Chinese fluently and the possibility of staying in the homes of many relatives in China, the occupation possesses ideal conditions.

Posted in 1990s Famine, Black markets, Cell phones, China, Communications, Economic reform, Education, Foreign direct investment, Gold, International trade, Labor conditions/wages, Light Industry, Manufacturing, Real estate | Comments Closed

North Koreans make rare visit to Oregon

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

Associated Press (Hat tip DPRK Studies)
3/3/2007

Three North Koreans ended a rare and discrete visit to Oregon this week after visiting Oregon State university scientists, orcharists in the Hood River area, the Nike campus, Gov. Ted Kulongoski and attending a Trail Blazers basketball game.

Because of sensitive six-way talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, Mercy Corps, which hosted the visit, declined to release the officials’ names.

Portland-based Mercy Corps is among a handful of humanitarian agencies running programs involving North Korea, which has no diplomatic relations with the United States.

Over 12 years, Mercy Corps has supplied fish and fruit trees for farm projects in North Korea, which has chronic food shortages.

The North Koreans, representing Mercy Corps’ main partner organization, the Korean American Private Exchange Society, arrived Tuesday and were to leave Saturday.

Mercy Corps President Nancy Lindborg said the three visited OSU, which has made scientists available to advise on the agricultural projects. On the way back they met with Kulongoski. They visited orchards in the Hood River area Friday.

At Nike headquarters near Beaverton, they met with managers who gave a presentation on e-commerce, an Internet activity with undetermined relevance in a socialist nation with limited Web penetration.

“I don’t have a specific point of view to share on their visit and the possible opportunities North Korea may present,” said Bob Applegate, a Nike spokesman.

The visit was perhaps the 10th in a series of low-profile North Korean delegations here over the years, Lindborg said. In North Korea, she said, “Oregon is very well-known.”

At the Rose Garden on Thursday the visitors watched the Trail Blazers dismantle Charlotte.

“They’re fans,” said Lindborg, who also attended the game. “Two of them actually play basketball.”

Posted in Communications, Education, Foreign direct investment, International trade, Internet, Korean American Private Exchange Society, Mercy Corps | Comments Closed

Efforts Redoubled to Build Economic Power

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

KCNA
2/8/2007

Redoubled efforts are being made to build a socialist economic power in the DPRK. The people are turning out in the grand march for perfecting the looks of a great, prosperous and powerful nation, full of confidence in sure victory and optimism.

The DPRK has consolidated the foundation for building an economic power over the last years.

The Workers’ Party of Korea has developed in depth President Kim Il Sung’s idea on economy as required by the developing revolution and thus provided unswerving guidelines for building an economic power.

While implementing the revolutionary economic policies of the WPK such as the line on economic construction in the Songun era with main emphasis on the development of the munitions industry and the policy of putting the national economy on a modern footing and IT, the Korean people have been firmly convinced that they will certainly build an economic power in this land when they work as indicated by the Party.

The army-people unity has developed as the oneness of army and people in terms of ideology and fighting spirit in the Songun era. It constitutes a powerful impetus to the construction of the economic power.

The Kanggye spirit, torchlight of Songgang and the Thaechon stamina have been created while the whole society following the revolutionary soldier spirit. The efforts have brought about a great change in the overall socialist construction.

Through the heroic endeavors, the people replete with faith in the future of prosperity have put industrial establishments, once stopped, on normalization of production and erected many monumental edifices including the Thaechon Youth Power Station No. 4.

An importance has been attached to science. A large army of intellectuals are paving the shortcut to the construction of an economic power with an extraordinary revolutionary enthusiasm.

A solid material and technical foundation for the construction of an economic power has been laid in the country.

All the sectors of the national economy have pushed ahead with the work of perfecting production structures, renovating technique and putting them on a modern footing, with the result that the number of such model factories in technical renovation and modernization as the Pyongyang 326 Electric Wire Factory is increasing as the days go by.

Production bases such as foodstuff factory, chicken farm, catfish farm, beer factory and cosmetic factory, which are directly contributing to the improvement of the people’s living standard, have mushroomed in different parts of the country.

The DPRK, with all the conditions for leaping higher and faster, will demonstrate the might of an economic power in the near future.

Posted in Cell phones, Computing/IT, Email, Internet, Songun, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

U.S. budgets money to pressure North in 2008

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Joong Ang Daily
Kang Chan-ho
2/7/2007

Budget allocations by the Bush administration show that the United States plans to continue to pressure North Korea about human rights violations and illicit financial transactions, despite the ongoing North Korean nuclear talks.

In its fiscal plan for the year 2008 released Monday, the U.S. State Department said $20 million had been set aside to support refugees in the East Asian region, including North Korean defectors, while $2 million had been earmarked to support activities promoting democracy in North Korea.

In addition, $668 million will be set aside for radio propaganda broadcasts: The Voice of America and Radio Free Asia will increase their combined broadcast hours targeted to the North by up to 10 hours each day. The State Department is focusing its broadcasts on North Korea, the Middle East, Somalia and Cuba.

In addition, the Treasury Department has budgeted $385,000 to hire two more officials to deal with illicit North Korean financial activities and act in an advisory role to bring more pressure on the communist country.

The budget plan by the State Department also outlined a timeline for the ongoing nuclear negotiations. It projects that should the nuclear talks be concluded, the actual process of dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons should start by early 2008. The plan states that negotiations to dismantle the North’s mid- to long-range missiles would begin next year as well.

Meanwhile, with nations involved in the six-party talks getting ready to convene in Beijing on Thursday to resume nuclear negotiations, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday that without sincere measures taken by Pyongyang regarding Japanese abductees, Tokyo will not come up with the energy aid measures needed to compensate the North.

Officials involved in the nuclear talks have said they intended to take some initial steps toward implementing an international accord reached in September 2005. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported earlier that Pyongyang was looking to get 500,000 tons of heavy fuel per year in exchange for agreeing to stop operations at its Yongbyon nuclear reactor and allowing inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency back into the country.

Posted in Finance, Fiscal & monetary policy, Radio, USA | Comments Closed

Weird but Wired

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

the Economist
2/1/2007

Online dating in Pyongyang? Surely not

KIM JONG IL, North Korea’s dictator, has interests in modern technology beyond his dabbling in nuclear weaponry. In 2000 he famously asked Madeleine Albright, then America’s secretary of state, for her e-mail address. Mr Kim believes there are three kinds of fool in the 21st century: smokers, the tone-deaf and the computer-illiterate.

One of his young compatriots is certainly no fool. “Officially, our computers are mainly for educational and scientific purposes,” he says, before claiming: “Chatting on our web, I also met my girlfriend.”

Internet dating is only one of the surprises about the internet in North Korea, a country almost as cut off from the virtual world as it is from the real one. At one of the rare free markets open to foreigners, brand-new computers from China are sold to the local nouveaux riches complete with Windows software. Elsewhere, second-hand ones are available far more cheaply. In most schools, computer courses are now compulsory.

In the heart of the capital, Pyongyang, visitors are supposed to be able to surf freely through the 30m official texts stored at the Grand People’s Study House, the local version of the Library of Congress. The country’s first cyber café opened in 2002 and was soon followed by others, even in the countryside. Some are packed with children playing computer games.

But the world wide web is still largely absent. Web pages of the official news agency, KCNA, said to be produced by the agency’s bureau in Japan, divulge little more than the daily “on the spot guidance” bestowed by Kim Jong Il. No one in Pyongyang has forgotten that glasnost and perestroika—openness and transparency—killed the Soviet Union.

The local ideology being juche, or self-reliance, the country installed a fibre-optic cable network for domestic use, and launched a nationwide intranet in 2000. Known as Kwangmyong (“bright”), it has a browser, an e-mail programme, news groups and a search engine. Only a few thousand people are allowed direct access to the internet. The rest are “protected” (ie, sealed off) by a local version of China’s “great firewall”, controlled by the Korean Computer Centre. As a CIA report puts it, this system limits “the risks of foreign defection or ideological infection”. On the other hand, North Koreans with access to the outer world are supposed to plunder the web to feed Kwangmyong—a clever way to disseminate technical information to research institutes, factories and schools without losing control.

Yet even today, more and more business cards in Pyongyang carry e-mail addresses, albeit usually collective ones. A west European businessman says he is astonished by the speed with which his North Korean counterparts respond to his e-mails, leading him to wonder if teams of people are using the same name. This is, however, North Korea, and sometimes weeks go by in virtual silence.

In some places, North Korea’s internet economy seems to be overheating. Near the northern border, Chinese cell phones—and the prepaid phone cards needed to use them—are a hot black-market item, despite government efforts to ban them. The new web-enabled phones might soon give free access to the Chinese web which, for all its no-go areas, is a paradise of liberty compared with Kwangmyong. In this region, known for its casinos, online gambling sites are said to be increasingly active.

Last summer the police were reported to have cracked down on several illegal internet cafés which offered something more daring than the average chatting and dating. Despite the signs that North Korea’s web culture is ready to take off, internet-juche remains a reassuring form of control in the hermit regime.

Posted in Black markets, Cell phones, Civil society, Communications, Economic reform, Internet, Korea Computer Center (KCC), Library | Comments Closed

Mobile Phone Detectors, Borders Blocked

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Daily NK
Han Young Jin
1/18/2007

In order to block an “open hole,” North Korean authorities have been installing mobile phone detectors on the northern border to prevent further defectors from leaving the country.

In a phone conversation with family in Hoiryeong, Kim Man Sung (55, pseudonym) a defector residing in Yangchon, Seoul discovered on the 15th “In the neighborhood of Hoiryeong, 6 mobile phone detectors have been installed” and that “if a phone call is received, the detectors activate within a minute and trace your whereabouts.”

In the past, if a person was caught being in contact with South Korea, they would receive punishment from the labor training camps and the matter was over. However, now the National Security Agency are going around saying “if you are caught using a mobile phone, you and all your family will be expelled from your village,” informed Kim. In spite of this, no one knows the make of the detectors set up along the border, nor its performance quality.

For the past 3 years Kim has acted as an intermediary for South Korean families and defectors in search of their relatives on location at the border. He said “Particularly because of intensified border controls, we are experiencing many difficulties.”

He said “Lately, whenever the police (officers from the Safety Agency) board the trains they conduct ‘fastidious inspections’ on city dwellers” and added “The Safety Agency incessantly inspects lodging facilities and motels regulating citizens that may be roaming near the border in attempt to contact their family.” It seems that the ‘fastidious inspections’ are being strictly enforced.

Since mid-December, North Korean authorities have established 5 united forces with the aim of conducting extensive control. These groups, the Party, National Security Agency, Safety Agency, prosecutors and military security will enforce action and punish boarder guards who receive bribes and help defectors.

As inspections tighten, the expenses of defectors secretly crossing to China has also increased. In the region of Hoiryeong, Musan, defecting to China would cost 400~500 yuan per person but now the disbursements have exceeded 1,000 yuan and in Haesan the price has even reached 2,000~3,000 yuan.

Recently, rather than receiving bribes from individual defectors, boarder guards have been reluctant to receive bribes from families. Though there is a possibility that individuals may return it is rare that families return and hence the greater investment lies on individuals. Also, if a defector is caught by Chinese police and repatriated, there is a possibility that the escape route will be discovered. In that case, the border patrol in charge of that region will be punished.

More recently, the National Security Agency has reinforced their efforts to catch defectors in China themselves. Kim informed, that the workers of restaurants and hotels in Yanji and Longjing in China, are all staff from the National Security Agency and that more than 90% of visitors to China are connected with the Safety Agency acting as “spies” with orders to aid the abduction of defectors.

Posted in Cell phones, Communications, Ministry of State Security (MPSS, NSA, SSD) | Comments Closed

No More Free Work for State

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
1/10/2007

An increasing number of North Koreans now depend on markets as international aid to North Korea sharply plummeted after nuclear test, evidence shows.

Particularly, a popular “market-friendly” mind is growing as the authorities’ control over the populace is weakening.

J, resident of Hamheung, North Korea, told the Daily NK on Monday via telephone “Though TV and newspapers boast ‘military first policy’ and ‘strong nation’ after the nuke test, people are only interested in money.”

The Daily NK was able to have a telephone interview with J, who was visiting Sinuiju, a Sino-Korean border city in which electromagnetic waves of Chinese cell phones could reach. NK businesspeople often use them for communication.

J said “Hamheung citizens are well aware of the cutoff of international aid. When they were forced into serving in the public industrial labor force, they could not go to work in markets and must then starve. Therefore, they are now asking for some money instead of compensation for the loss in work when they are serving for the public work.

Originally, such work in state-run factory used to be compulsory under the industrial mobilization of workforce policy. This is the first known case of being paid in mobilized labor and evidence of spread in popular market-economy-oriented mind.

“The vulnerable died well before and those who can run are already in China or South Korea. The leftovers are hard ones; they can even plow rock mountains,” J said sarcastically.

“People don’t trust the state anymore. They live on their own.”

J, a middleman, buys TVs, radios or bicycles and sells them back in market. On lucky days, he earns up to fifty thousands NK won (equivalent to 20 US dollars). According to J, as of January 2007, rice price is ranging from 1000 won to 1100 won (less than .5 US dollar) per kilogram.

Posted in Cell phones, Communications, Economic reform, Songun | Comments Closed

Update: Pyongyang ‘Rock for Peace’ Cancelled

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

According to DPRK Studies, Jean Baptiste Kim, Administrator for Voice of Korea and organizer for “rock for peace” has resigned his DPRK related activities and written a resignation letter that pulls no punches. He denounces the regime, but also endorses opening up trade as a means of bringing the most social change:

[L]arge scale of regular free trade at national level will make ordinary people awaken from internal darkness because they will taste the differences from outside world. The regime will be unable to control people when people are massively moving forward to make money for themselves. Do not threat them. It only makes them be cautious and this kind of tension only drive ordinary people fall into the famine and death. Let them trade freely and legally. I dare to say that they will never go back to the past when start to make money. The solution is not GUN but MONEY but do not give them money but allow them make money by themselves.

Full text of the resignation letter is posted on DPRK studies.

Additionally, the Voice of Korea web site is down.

Part 1 from the First Post:
11/14/2006
Joe Mackertich

Billed as “Rock for Peace”, the event is an attempt to promote the values and stability of North Korea. “We are not a mad, isolated country. We are part of an ordinary world, just like yourselves,” organisers told The First Post.

The decision to invite bands to play “western, capitalist” music was designed to change people’s perception of the Hermit Kingdom.

What it will resemble musically is anyone’s guess as no bands have yet been confirmed and anyone who accepts the invitation will have to refrain from mentioning war, sex, violence, drugs, imperialism or “anti-socialism”. Despite these strictures, the organisers hope to attract rock musicians such as Eric Clapton, U2 and – most surprising, given their redneck credentials – Lynyrd Skynyrd.

If the Rock for Peace festival is a success, there is talk of making it a regular occurrence and even staging the next one in the DMZ (demilitarised zone) between North and South Korea, the most heavily guarded border on earth.

Part 2: Voice of Korea
Here is a blurb from their website (bold added by NKEW):

There are few restrictions and conditions on participation but any band will be considered even though you are from USA. The lyrics should not contain admirations on war, sex, violence, murder, drug, rape, non-governmental society, imperialism, colonialism, racism, anti-DPRK, and anti-socialism. The concert will be held from May 01 to May 04, 2007 under the management of Voice of Korea. We currently received requests of 54 bands from 20 countries and participations are increasing every week. ‘ROCK FOR PEACE’ will be the 2007 version of Woodstock rock festival in 1969 but in a different location and with a different goal, We welcome every musician as long as they are purely music based without political intentions. Every band is financially responsible for their own trips to/from and staying in DPRK but we will offer sightseeing in many different places including DMZ, mountains, rivers, monuments, etc,,. Your musical instruments and related equipments, except passengers, will be transported at free of charge. If any band need confirmation letter from us in order to get sponsors, please do not hesitate to ask.

Posted in Chongryun, Civil society, International trade, Music, Radio, Sports | Comments Closed

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