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EU Rejects Inter-Korean Industrial Zone

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

Korea Times
7/19/2007

The European Union shunned South Korea’s request to include goods made in an inter-Korean industrial park in North Korea in a potential free trade agreement between the two sides, Seoul’s chief negotiator said.

South Korea launched free trade talks with the 27-country economic bloc in Seoul in May, only a month after it successfully concluded similar trade talks with the United States. A second round of South Korea-EU free trade talks began in Brussels on Monday.

“The EU side told us that it’s difficult for trade negotiators to deal with the Gaeseong issue because it’s complex legally and politically,” Deputy Trade Minister Kim Han-soo told reporters on the third day of the five-day negotiations this week, referring to the South Korean-built industrial complex in the North Korean border city of Gaeseong.

But the EU left open the possibility of a compromise, depending on the progress both sides will make in upcoming meetings, Kim said.

Before the second round began, Kim had expressed optimism over the Gaeseong issue.

“The Gaeseong issue is one of our top priorities. So we will keep pushing the EU to accept our request,” he said.

South Korea considers the industrial park, located just north of the world’s most heavily fortified border, to be a model for inter-Korean economic cooperation. About 15,000 North Korean workers are employed by 23 South Korean companies, producing garments, kitchenware and a number of other goods.

The industrial park is one of the prominent symbols of inter-Korean reconciliation efforts following a landmark summit in 2000 between then South Korean president Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

The Gaeseong matter was one of thorniest issues during the 10 months of tough negotiations between South Korea and the U.S., but the two sides made an artful compromise, allowing them to discuss the issue later, depending on progress in international efforts to dismantle the North’s nuclear weapons program.

Kim and his European counterpart, Ignacio Garcia Bercero, director of bilateral trade relations at the European Commission, are leading the negotiations to move a deal forward between South Korea and the EU.

This week’s talks were centered on the pace of tariff reductions on automobiles. The EU asked South Korea to phase out its 8 percent tariff on auto imports within three years, instead of the seven years suggested by Seoul. according to a South Korean delegate who asked not to be named.

Other potential sticking points in the negotiations are South Korea’s protective pharmaceuticals and cosmetics markets. In addition, the EU wants better access to South Korea’s services market, particularly for law firms and hospitals, Kim said earlier.

Some progress has been reported, as the EU agreed to soften its anti-dumping rules for South Korean goods.

“So far, talks have been underway at a pace that we expected,” Kim told reporters. However, he admitted this week’s negotiations were aimed at clarifying each side’s positions, rather than bargaining.

No discussion was held on the agriculture sector. South Korea initially offered to exclude some 250 agricultural products such as rice, pork and chicken.

Officials at the EU delegation were unavailable for comment.

The EU is the second-largest trading partner of South Korea, with US$79 billion in bilateral trade in 2006. Unofficial studies suggest a deal would boost the figure by as much as 40 percent.

A third round of talks was scheduled for September in Brussels.

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Posted in EU, International trade, Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013) | Comments Closed

NK Shuts Down 4 More Nuclear Facilities: ElBaradei

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

Korea Times
7/18/2007

North Korea has ceased operations of four more nuclear facilities after closing Saturday its key nuclear reactor that produces weapons-grade plutonium, the chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said Wednesday.

“We have verified all the five nuclear facilities have been shut down,” Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted as saying in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, by the Associated Press.

He said some of the facilities have been sealed by IAEA inspectors who are currently staying in the North to verify the shutdown and disablement of the North’s nuclear facilities.

His remark comes as a new round of six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear disarmament is set to resume in Beijing Wednesday afternoon.

The talks involving the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia are supposed to deal with disablement of the North Korea’s nuclear facilities and the North’s declaration of all of its nuclear programs under the second phase of a February agreement.

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Posted in Energy, IAEA, Nuclear | Comments Closed

North Korean Studies Unpopular

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Korea Times
Kang Shin-who
7/17/2007

More and more universities are removing departments of North Korean studies. Since Dongguk University was the first Korean university to establish a major in North Korean studies in 1994, five other universities followed: Kwandong University in 1996, Myongji University and Korea University in 1997, Chosun University in 1998 and Sun Moon University in 1998.

However, three of the five universities no longer offer the major. Chosun University abolished the department a year after its establishment because it could not guarantee jobs for graduates. Sun Moon University will change the department to North Asian studies from next year.

Also, Kwandong University, which is located in Gangwon Province, gave up the studies last year because the school has failed to meet the admission quota over the last few years.

Although students can major in North Korean studies at Dongguk University, the school will recruit only 20 new students for the next academic year, 20 less than the previous year.

Experts say that severe competition on landing jobs has caused many universities to give up North Korean studies. Many of the major hopefuls expect that they could easily get a job at the Ministry of Unification or research institutes for North Korea, but they have not taken advantage of their major. According to a survey by the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training, only 20 percent of students majoring in North Korean studies said that they are positive about their future, but 40 percent of them said their studies have no future.

While undergraduate schools have seen a decrease in the number of North Korean major students, more graduate schools have opened the studies. Sogang University set up the program at its graduate school in 1990, Kyungnam University in 1997 and Ewha Womans University last year.

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Foreign Sales of Drugs Decline, North Korean Citizens Surface as Consumers

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
7/17/2007

Only six, seven years ago, drugs inside North Korea secretly circulated among a portion of the upper-level officials and the specially affluent class, such as Chinese emigrants. Opium or heroine, produced in North Korea, were sold abroad to make foreign currency.

North Korea produces and exports drugs at the national level. Events where North Korean vessels and diplomats, through drug transport or charges of sales, are prosecuted by third-party countries is common. South Korean government, in the midst of North Korea’s breakdown in foreign currency supply in 1998, has deduced at one point that foreign-currency earners through illicit drug sales and illegal activities had amassed 100 million dollars.

From year 1970, North Korea’s drug sales, which secretly began on a small-scale, by the decree of Chairperson Kim Jong Il, rose in reality as a national enterprise and began official productions. In the August of same year, Chairperson Kim named the opium seed cultivation work as “White Bellflower Business.”

Further, he bestowed the appellation, “White Bellflower Hero,” to the person who sold over 1 million dollars of drugs, and ordered, “For the acquisition of foreign currency, export opium on a large scale (information reported by the National Intelligence Service, Lee Jong Chan former Chair at the inspection of National Intelligence Service on November 6, 1998).” As for North Korea’s drug production factories, the Nanam Pharmaceutical Factory in Chongjin and Hamheung’s Heungnam Pharmaceutical Factory are well-known.

Drugs, which are costly to average civilians preoccupied with making a living, were considered as a portion of the special class’ acts of aberration. The North Korean government, besides the foreign-currency earners, strictly inspected acts of drug circulations, so one could not even dream about this as a means of making money.

After the collapse of national provisions, drug sales also increase.

However, the food shortage brought a huge change to North Korea’s drug production and circulation. When the planned-economy system, where the nation was in charge of the provisions, broke down, the citizens started doing sales for survival. In North Korea where means of making money are not abundant, the place where one can smell money is at the market.

The revitalization of the jangmadang (black market) and general markets gave citizens in the cities a certain of opportunity to make a living. Further, they learned the mentality that money is best for survival. The custom began to spread where the citizens went through thick and thin if it meant working at a money-making job. Drugs infiltrated this opening.

Drugs that are most highly circulated in North Korea are philopon and heroine. The center of philipon productions is in Hamheung, South Hamkyung.

Hamheung is considered as a chemical industry synthesis base within North Korea where companies related to the chemistry branch can be abundantly found.

The representative place is the 2.8 Vinyl Chemical Complexes. Besides this, there are Hamheung Chemical Industry College (in its 5th year), the Heungnam Fertilizer Factory, and the Heungnam Pharmaceutical Factory, which are the providers of North Korea’s top chemical researchers.

The reason why Hamheung became the main place of philopon production

The raw materials for the vinyl complex are limestones of the Ounpo Mine in Hongwon-gun and the raw materials of the Heungnam Fertilizer Factory are ramrods of Huhcheon-gun and emulsified steel of the Manduk Mine.

For this reason, many chemistry-related researchers and workers are residing in Hamheung. The problem is that after the food provisions were cut off, they turned their eyes to Philopon production when making a living became difficult.

They can produce high-quality philopon, if they just have a good laboratory and raw materials. In particular, outside demand for Philopon was explosive in early 2000, when there were no huge restraints in the North Korea-Japanese trade and when the North Korea-Chinese trade became active.

Hamheung citizen Choi Myung Gil (pseudonym) said, “In the initial stage, if the businessmen provided raw materials and funds to researchers, they made high-quality Philipon and kept half of the profit. Do poor researchers have any money? They made them because businessmen received orders from China and Japan and sold them. Also, there was nothing to fear because bribes kept the mouths of the National Security Agency and the Social Safety Agency shut. There is nothing one cannot do with money, so what kind of a researcher would crush such a money-making scheme?”

Mr. Choi said, “The cost of production of philopon is no more than 3,000 dollars per kilogram in North Korea. If one sells this, he or she can receive 6,000 dollars on the spot. Manufactured Philopon can be handed over to middlemen or if it directly enters Shinuiju and is given to dealers, it can bring in from 9,000 to 10,000 dollars.”

He said, “My friend, who worked as a researcher in the Hamheung Branch Laboratory, also lived poorly, but became wealthy overnight by making philopon. I also am benefitting from him. There are many people who have become wealthy in Hamheung by making philopon.”

Ultimately, when the North Korea-Chinese traders bring the raw materials from China, the Hamheung chemical researchers make the philopon and the merchants take these to China for sale. In this process, the Chinese crime syndicate have also intervened.

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Posted in Black markets, China, Civil society, Economic reform, Heung Nam Pharmaceutical Company, International trade, Nanam Pharmaceutical Factory, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

Chinese Government Demands Abolition of North Korean Drug

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

Daily NK
Kim Min Se
7/17/2007

Researcher Raphael Pearl at the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) maintained that recently, the Chinese crime syndicate has interfered in North Korean drug manufacturing and deals. Through the steady appearance of the up and coming wealthy class who have amassed a lot of money through sales, a significant amount of drugs began to be circulated in China.

North Korea-Chinese businessman Kim Myung Guk (pseudonym), who is in charge of North Korean mineral exports, frequently enters Hamheung to get minerals (uranium concentrate). Presently, Mr. Kim is in Dandong, China to meet Chinese businessmen.

Mr. Kim said, “The philopon from Hamheung is the best. In Pyongyang, Shinuiju, and Chongjin, Hamheung-made philipons are the most trusted. So I frequently receive requests to deal Hamheung philopon from other businessmen.”

Mr. Kim said, “It got to the point that the Chinese government requested inspection of the Hamheung factory, so the North Korean authorities carried out partial abolition. Nowadays, there is hardly anyone among the North Korean businessmen who do not know about the fact that Hamheung is the center of drug production.”

The Chinese government, when North Korean drugs started coming in on a mass-scale, pointed out the Heungnam Pharmaceutical Factory in Hamheung as a drug production factory in North Korea and demanded the abolition of the factory.

With exports to the outside closing, the great enterprise sold in North Korea

Currently in Shinuiju, philopon made in Hamheung is being sold for 9,000 to 10,000 dollars per kilogram. Drug dealers bring these into China and resell them at three times the higher price to Chinese drug dealers.

However, foreign sales of North Korean drugs is significantly decreasing as a whole.

In recent years, PSI and other international surveillance network have been strengthened regarding North Korea’s illegal actions, so drug exports have remarkably decreased. Further, North Korea-Japan relations have become worsened, so it seems to have exerted an influence on control of North Korean drug sales.

In Dandong, Chinese-North Korean businessman Kim Jong Man (pseudonym), who does trade with North Korea, said, “North Korea, before it ceased trade with Japan due to bad relations, sold a lot to Japan. It is a well-known fact that they were sold at high prices to Japanese yakuza via regular traders.”

However, with the worsening of relations, most avenues for drug sales have been closed. Also, the Chinese government, while proclaiming an all-out war with drugs recently, have significantly intensified control and inspections.

The Chinese government has shown a strong intention to control by broadcasting live via China’s CCTV the trial process of drug criminals through recent unconventional circumstances.

Mr. Kim said, “Due to the circumstances, the significant decrease in North Korean drugs going into China, compared to a year or two ago, can be felt.” Such an atmosphere is collectively acknowledged by other businessmen.

Inevitably, since routes for foreign sales have been closed, drug sales are increasing inside North Korea recently.

If such a trend continues, the day when North Korea will become one of the handfuls in the world known for its drug production and consumption does not seem too far off.

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Posted in Black markets, China, Drug smuggling, Illicit activities, International trade | Comments Closed

N. Korea Shutters Nuclear Facility

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

Washington Post Foreign Service
Edward Cody
7/15/2007; Page A01

Move Follows Delivery of Oil; U.N. Team to Verify Shutdown

After four years of off-and-on negotiations, North Korea said it began closing down its main nuclear reactor Saturday, shortly after receiving a first boatload of fuel oil aid.

The closure, if confirmed by U.N. inspectors, would mark the first concrete step in a carefully orchestrated denuclearization schedule that was agreed on in February, with the ultimate goal of dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in exchange for fuel and other economic aid, and increased diplomatic recognition.

More broadly, it constituted the first on-the-ground accomplishment of six-nation negotiations that have been grinding away with little progress since 2003 under Chinese sponsorship. The talks — including North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, the United States and China — are likely to resume next week in Beijing to emphasize the parties’ resolve to carry out the rest of the February agreement and eventually create a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.

“We welcome this development and look forward to the verification and monitoring of this shutdown by the International Atomic Energy Agency team,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, referring to a 10-member team of U.N. inspectors who flew into North Korea earlier Saturday.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, warned reporters in Japan, where he was visiting in anticipation of the new talks, that moving forward into further denuclearization would probably prove as difficult as the previous four years of discussions. Given the track record, which includes several North Korean walkouts and long standoffs, some Asian and U.S. analysts have questioned whether North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Il, has genuinely made the strategic decision to give up nuclear weapons after so many years devoted to developing them.

The next steps, as outlined in the accord, would be for North Korea to permanently disable the reactor, a plutonium facility at Yongbyon, 60 miles northeast of Pyongyang, the capital, and to reveal the full extent of the nuclear weapons, nuclear processing plants and stored nuclear material it has accumulated. That would include an accounting of any uranium enrichment efforts, which North Korea denies it has undertaken but which the Bush administration says have been part of the country’s nuclear research.

Uranium aside, U.S. intelligence estimates have said North Korea has extracted enough plutonium from the Yongbyon facility to build as many as a dozen bombs, although it is not known how many weapons the reclusive Stalinist nation’s military has put together. Last October, while the talks were again stalled, North Korea announced it had conducted its first underground nuclear test and henceforth should be considered a nuclear-armed state.

Kim’s government has based much of its power on the military, and possession of nuclear weapons has been described in North Korean propaganda as a matter of national pride. But the thought of nuclear weapons in the hands of Kim and his aides has unsettled his Asian neighbors, including China. As a result, they have persisted in the six-party negotiations despite repeated delays and abrupt changes of position by North Korean diplomats.

North Korea’s decision to go ahead with the Yongbyon closure, for instance, came only after nearly two years of wrangling over about $25 million in North Korean accounts blocked in a Macau bank.

The funds were frozen because of U.S. Treasury Department allegations in September 2005 that they were tainted by money laundering and counterfeiting. After months of insisting the Treasury accusations were a law enforcement matter separate from the nuclear talks, the Bush administration switched positions and promised to get the money liberated, leading to February’s milestone agreement. But several months more passed while Hill struggled to find a banking system that would handle the allegedly tainted money. Ultimately, the funds were transferred out of Macau via the Federal Reserve Bank of New York into the Russian banking system and, from there, transferred into North Korean accounts in a Russian trading bank near the border with North Korea

Diplomats from the six nations have suggested that, should they be successful, the North Korean nuclear negotiations could eventually evolve into a permanent forum for East Asian security cooperation, bringing North Korea into a closer relationship with its neighbors. But as Hill did in Japan on Saturday, they acknowledge they have a long road ahead before anything like that is possible.

Saturday’s announcement, while widely applauded, essentially returned the East Asian landscape to what it was in 2002, when operations had been suspended at the Yongbyon reactor under an earlier deal put together in 1994 under the Clinton administration.

U.S. diplomats said in 2002 that North Korean representatives acknowledged a secret uranium enrichment program — something North Korea has steadfastly denied since then — and the Bush administration stopped the oil shipments that were part of the 1994 deal. In return, North Korea expelled U.N. weapons inspectors, quit the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted operations at Yongbyon.

The North Korean government had made no formal announcement by early Sunday. But a diplomat at the North Korean U.N. mission, Kim Myon Gil, told the Associated Press that the reactor was shut down Saturday and its closure would soon be verified by the U.N. inspectors. The State Department said in Washington that it got official word from North Korea shortly after a South Korean ship pulled into Sonbong, a port in northeast North Korea, with a cargo of 6,200 tons of heavy fuel oil to power generators in the rickety North Korean electricity grid.”

The delivery represented a down payment on a scheduled 50,000 tons of fuel oil aid in return for shutting down the reactor. In all, the February accord promised North Korea up to 1 million tons of oil and other economic aid as it takes further denuclearization steps over the months ahead.

The accord also held out the prospect of improved relations with the United States, which has long been a goal of North Korea. In signing the accord, for instance, the Bush administration undertook to review whether it could remove North Korea from the list of countries said to sponsor terrorism and to engage in diplomatic discussions aimed at dissipating the hostility that remains more than half a century after the Korean War.

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Posted in Energy, IAEA, International Aid, Nuclear | Comments Closed

Oil Is Shipped to North Korea Under Nuclear Shutdown Pact

Friday, July 13th, 2007

NY Times
CHOE SANG-HUN
7/13/2007

A South Korean ship loaded with 6,200 tons of heavy fuel oil left for North Korea on Thursday under an agreement intended to end the North’s nuclear program.

The United Nations’ chief nuclear inspector said the North was expected to begin shutting down its main nuclear facilities early next week, after four and a half years of operation, during which time enough plutonium was thought to have been produced to make several atomic bombs.

The ship is expected to arrive at Sonbong, a port in northeastern North Korea, on Saturday, the same day a team of inspectors from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency is scheduled to arrive in the North to monitor and verify the shutdown.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the atomic agency, told reporters in Seoul that shutting down five nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, 62 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital, would not be difficult and should be completed “within maybe a month or so.” His agency and North Korea have already agreed on the procedures.

The shutdown would be significant because it would halt the North’s only declared program for producing fuel that can be used in nuclear weapons. The five facilities to be frozen in Yongbyon, including the country’s sole operating nuclear reactor and a radiochemical laboratory, can yield more than 13 pounds of plutonium a year, enough for one atomic bomb, according to experts.

But the steps to be taken after the initial freeze of the nuclear program remain “very much open questions,” Dr. ElBaradei said. Those include whether North Korea will provide the agency with a complete inventory of its nuclear materials, and when it might return to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

“It’s going to be a very long process,” he said. “It’s going to be a complicated process. How smoothly the rest of the operation will go very much depends on how progress will be made in six-party talks.”

Chief envoys to the six-nation nuclear talks will meet in Beijing next Wednesday and Thursday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. The envoys, gathering for the first talks since March, were expected to discuss moves beyond the reactor shutdown.

North Korea agreed to shut down its Yongbyon facilities in a February agreement with the United States, South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. The deal called for shipping 50,000 tons of fuel oil to North Korea, and South Korea volunteered.

It plans to complete shipping the oil by early August, starting with the installment on Thursday.

North Korea indicated last week that it would undertake the long-delayed shutdown after the first shipment arrived.

When United Nations inspectors return to Yongbyon, they will face the same problems they had faced there before they were expelled in late 2002. They will put in seals, install cameras and leave monitors to ensure that the facilities remain shut. But they will not be allowed to collect samples or access North Korean data, much less travel around the country, to determine how much nuclear material North Korea has produced in Yongbyon or elsewhere.

The five-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon began operating in the mid-1980s. When suspicions about North Korea’s nuclear activities emerged in the early 1990s, a key dispute was how much plutonium had been produced at Yongbyon until then — 90 grams, about 3 ounces, as North Korea reported to the I.A.E.A., or up to 10 kilograms, about 22 pounds, as the agency suspected.

The dispute has never been resolved, although North Korea agreed to suspend operations at Yongbyon in an agreement with the United States in 1994. The accord collapsed in late 2002, when North Korea expelled the United Nations inspectors and restarted the Yongbyon operation.

North Korea has since claimed to have taken spent fuel unloaded from the reactor and reprocessed it into plutonium. Last October, it conducted its first nuclear test.

“It remains an unanswered question: how much plutonium has North Korea so far produced?” said Lee Un-chul, a nuclear scientist at Seoul National University. “North Korea won’t easily give up its operational data.”

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Posted in Energy, Foreign aid statistics, International trade, Oil, Rason Economic and Trade Zone (Rajin-Sonbong), South Korea | Comments Closed

North Korea Sells Fishery Licenses in Chulsan’s Coastal Sea to China

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

Daily NK
Yang Jung A
7/9/2007

A North Korean insider source said on the 5th that the North Korean government sold the fishery licenses of coastal waters at Chulsan, North Pyongan during the crab catching season between May and July for a moderate price.

Chinese marine traders who bought the fishery licenses from North Korea are large marine companies based on Donggang in Lianoning.

The ship-owners and fishermen of North Korea, due to a huge decline in fishes with the Chinese ships’ competitive entry into Chulsan’s offshore waters after receiving the North Korean government’s fishery licenses, are supposed to be going through a hard time.

The source said, “Recently, with the exclusion of the neighboring sea off the coast of Chulsan near the People’s Army’s marine head where the fish farms are located, the fishery licenses to the offshore of the Chulsan-Donggang (China) have been sold to Chinese businessmen. Tens of Chinese fishermen have bought the rights.”

The source said, “The organization in charge who has issued the fishery licenses is not the marine products association, but the No. 64 naval squadron in charge of the this region’s seashore boundary.

Donggang in Liaoning in China located in the mouth of Yalu River, is a small-size city across from Bidan Island.

He said, regarding the price of the fishery licenses, “A small boat is 1,000 Yuan (US$133) per day and a large boat which can accumulate over 100 ton is around 7,000 Yuan (US$ 922) in Chinese currency.”

He added, “The rumors say besides the costs of the licenses, a lot of money has been handed over to North Korea in the negotiations process.”

“Due to monopolizing of the Chinese fishing boats, North Korea’s ships anchored at decks of Donggang are barely seen. North Korean businessmen who have smuggled marine products using small-size boats are having a difficult time because they cannot go out to sea where the current is rough and a lot of gas is required.”

North Korea’s fishermen are saying they have no choice but to go out to the far sea, because they cannot go near the oceanic region operated by Chinese ships.

The source also said, “Chinese ships surreptitiously attacking North Korean ships in their permitted region and beating people have been occurring frequently.”

The Korea Martime Institute, in a report which was announced early this year, said, “The C
hinese government is promoting advancement of North Korea’s operations when the complaints of the country’s fishermen climaxed due to the reduction of ships in the Yungeun Sea and the decline in their income.”

On one hand, besides the oceanic operation rights, the situation is that China’s direct investment in North Korea’s resource development, such as the mining rights being handed over to China, is increasing.

China, instead of investing 70 hundred million Yuan at Musan Mine in 2005, is exercising its 50-year mining licenses to take 10bn tons of iron ore annually.

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Unification Ministry Lax in North Korean Aid Monitoring

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

Donga
7/11/2007

When natural hazards like floods occur in North Korea, the South Korean government sends “humanitarian assistance.” But it has turned out that the government failed to monitor whether the emergency relief aid was being used appropriately.

The government spent 221 billion won (229 million dollars) from August last year to June this year to help North Korea repair damage from last July’s flood. But the Ministry of Unification said on July 10 that the after-monitoring of its use has not yet started.

After a massive flood hit North Korea last year, the ministry announced a plan to send relief aid to the North. At that time, the ministry pledged to visit the affected areas from time to time and see whether the sent items are used for the right purposes. The pledge has not yet been delivered.

The items that the government sent to Pyongyang via the Korean Red Cross include: 100,000 tons of rice, 100,000 tons of cement, 5,000 tons of iron reinforcing rods, 210 relief machines, 80,000 blankets, 10,000 emergency kits, and medicines.

“While sending the relief aid, Pyongyang conducted the nuclear test, so we had to stop; assistance was resumed this year. Due to this change in schedule, it was difficult for us to monitor the use of the aid. We will continue to negotiate with the North regarding field monitoring and access to their rationing lists,” said one official at the unification ministry.

However, many think that the monitoring, in effect, will be of no use, since the rationing of the relief aid might have already been finished.

After a railway station explosion had occurred in Ryongchon in North Pyongan Province in April 2004, the ministry also sent relief aid such as rice and cement. But the monitoring was done one year after the delivery, drawing criticism from the public.

Some point out that we should strengthen the monitoring of our rice aid, which is provided in return for Pyongyang’s scrapping of its nuclear program.

Seoul and Pyongyang made an agreement to visit three places on the east coast and two places on the west coast to oversee the allocation of aid whenever Seoul sends 100,000 tons of rice. The World Food Program, however, has an office in Pyongyang and monitors whether North Korean officials are making disproportionate allocations to the military.

In the meantime, the government sent 10 billion won (10.87 million dollars) worth of road paving materials to help proceed with the Mt. Baekdu tour project planned by Hyundai Asan and the Korea Tourism Organization. However, its usage has not yet been confirmed.

A total of 16,000 tons of materials were sent to the North in August 2005 and March 2006, but Pyongyang has not responded since July last year. Currently, the project is on hold.

“To push the project forward, we are contacting the North via several channels. But because there has not been any response from the North, we are having difficulties,” said one unification ministry official.

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Posted in Foreign aid statistics, International Aid, International/Korean Red Cross, South Korea | Comments Closed

Some rice will be sent by rails to Pyongyang

Tuesday, July 10th, 2007

Joong Ang Daily
7/10/2007

South Korea will start sending 50,000 tons of rice aid to North Korea by road next week, as part of its promised loan of 400,000 tons of rice, officials said yesterday.

While 350,000 tons of rice will be delivered by sea, 30,000 tons will be delivered via rail in the west of the Korean Peninsula, and another 20,000 tons will be delivered via an east coast rail line, a Unification Ministry official said.

The two Koreas conducted a historic test of the reconnected railways across the border in mid-May.

South Korea resumed shipping rice aid to North Korea in late June after more than a year’s hiatus, as the North took steps toward nuclear dismantlement. The aid, which consists of 250,000 tons of imported rice and 150,000 tons of domestic rice, will be made over the next five months.

“The rice aid to North Korea via the overland route will be made over five weeks starting next Friday,” the official said.

North Korea is supposed to pay back the $152-million rice loan over 20 years after a 10-year grace period at an annual interest rate of 1 percent.

South Korea resumed shipments of fertilizer and other emergency aid to the North in late March, but withheld the loan of 400,000 tons of rice as an inducement for North Korea to start implementing a landmark agreement reached in the six-nation talks in February.

In early June, inter-Korean ministerial talks ended without tangible results after North Korea protested the South’s decision to withhold rice aid until the North took steps toward nuclear dismantlement.

South Korea suspended all food and fertilizer aid to North Korea after the North conducted missile tests in July.

Resumption of aid was stymied due to the North’s nuclear bomb test last October, but the two sides agreed to put inter-Korean projects back on track in early March. The last rice shipment was made in early 2006.

A poor harvest in 2006, disastrous summer flooding and a 75 percent fall in donor assistance from abroad have dealt severe blows to the impoverished North, according to World Food Program officials.

A recent think tank report said North Korea could run short of up to one-third of the food it needs this year if South Korea and other countries withhold aid. Data from the WFP and the Unification Ministry show that the North will need between 5.24 million tons and 6.47 million tons of food this year.

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Posted in Agriculture, Automobiles, Foreign aid statistics, International Aid, Railways, RoK Ministry of Unification, Sea shipping, South Korea, Transportation | Comments Closed

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