Yonhap
12/21/2006
The South Korean government may resume its humanitarian assistance to North Korea in the near future as part of efforts to mend soured ties with the communist nation, the country’s point man on North Korea said Thursday.
“The government has a principle to resume the North-South dialogue at the earliest date possible,” Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung told reporters.
Joong Ang Daily
12/19/2006
Despite United Nations sanctions aimed at preventing the North Korean government from buying luxury goods for its ruling class, government sources here said a North Korean trading company is still busy providing Kim Jong-il loyalists with their perquisites.
Tian Ming Trading Company, in the center of this former Portuguese enclave now with the same China-affiliated status as Hong Kong, says its main business line is carpets, and little more. Three office workers said there were no North Koreans at the company and that it has never traded with North Korea. The company’s president was out of town on business, they said.
But a source with close ties to the trading economy here said that Park Su-dok, a 53-year-old North Korean, is in Macao and obtained a visa as an employee of the company.
Another source said, “Tian Ming is a joint venture by North Korean and Hong Kong investors, and its main business is buying luxury goods from Hong Kong for shipment to North Korea.” He added that Tian Ming’s president, a Hong Kong resident, is buying luxury watches, gold products and expensive liquor at North Korea’s request, using a Hong Kong branch office for the purpose.
Other Macao government officials said 18 North Korean firms were registered in Macao as of late November, and 115 North Koreans carry Macao visas as employees. Twenty have become Macao citizens, they added.
Since Washington threatened to impose sanctions on Banco Delta Asia here, allegedly for helping North Korea launder cash from its alleged dubious business lines, some of those companies have shut down. Ten are still in limited operation, however, these government sources said.
Separately, a South Korean banker in Hong Kong told the Joong-Ang Ilbo that a North Korean businessman had visited him in an attempt to sell gold bars through one of the South Korean bank branches in Hong Kong.
The banker reportedly spurned the overture, although the transaction would not have violated any South Korean laws or regulations on North-South dealings. He said he simply did not want to get involved in such a deal given the international attention being paid to commercial dealings with North Korea. The banker suggested that the offer may have been a sign of the foreign currency problems North Korea is facing because of the UN sanctions and U.S. pressure on financial dealings with North Korea.
Banco Delta Asia has said that between 2003 and 2005, it had sold 9.2 tons of gold bars that it had purchased from the North, where gold production is estimated to be about 25 tons per year, mostly for export.
Wall Street Journal
12/18/2006
Gordon Fairlcough, p.A1
Close-Out Sale: North Korea’s Elite Shop While They Can
A North Korean businesswoman with heavy makeup and a bouffant hairdo studied herself in a mirror as she modeled fur-lined leather coats at a small store in [Dandong, China] this frigid northeast border city.
During a three-day excursion late last month, the woman also tried on shoes and looked at large-screen television sets before buying furniture and fresh fruit and heading home to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital city.
The United Nations has called for a crackdown on luxury-goods shipments to North Korea as a way of pressuring the country to drop its atomic-weapons programs, which came under new fire after an October nuclear test.
If anything, the uncertainty about the flow of fancy goods appears to have whetted the appetites of some privileged North Koreans — whose impoverished country cultivates a Spartan socialist image.
In Dandong, North Koreans, many wearing lapel pins with a picture of North Korea’s founding dictator, Kim Il Sung, stroll through hotels and department stores. Signs are often written in Korean, with storekeepers advertising computers, karaoke machines and the erectile-dysfunction drugs Viagra and Cialis.
A few North Koreans have bought new cars at a Toyota dealership near the Dandong customs checkpoint, according to a salesman. One man paid about $50,000 in cash for a luxury sedan.
Gold is also gaining a following. Wang Xiaoju, a saleswoman at the jewelry counter at Xin Yi Bai Department Store, says North Korean women come in nearly every day, mostly to buy gold chains and other gold jewelry.
Women from the North also are frequent visitors to a riverfront spa, favoring milk baths and massages, according to staff there. A saleswoman at the Xin Yi Bai L’Oreal counter says North Koreans are regular customers. Among the big sellers: body sculpting cream for women who want to look thinner.
In the first 10 months of this year, Chinese exports of fur coats and fake furs to North Korea soared more than sevenfold from the year-earlier period, according to Chinese Customs figures. Exports of televisions and other consumer electronics were up 77%, while perfumes and cosmetics were up 10%.
Some North Koreans are even buying real estate in Dandong. One high-rise building, where three bedroom apartments go for nearly $100,000 each, has sweeping views of a decrepit North Korean village with crumbling cinder-block houses across the border. A North Korean buyer recently purchased one of the units with cash, according to the building’s sales agent.
“Life is quite comfortable” for senior party members, military officers and traders, who have prospered despite widespread shortages of food, fuel and medicine in North Korea, says Pak Yong Ho, a former high-ranking North Korean official who defected to South Korea two years ago.
North Korea’s Communist Party has long had overseas agents in Macau, Switzerland and elsewhere dedicated to maintaining supplies of luxuries for top military and government personnel, according to former North Korean officials. Their jobs, in the wake of the U.N. sanctions, could get much harder.
The U.N. so far has let individual countries decide which high-end products to block. Washington has barred U.S. companies from selling everything from iPods to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. But that move was largely symbolic, as there is very little direct trade between the U.S. and North Korea.
Japan, which has for decades been a source of luxuries for the North Korean ruling class, has banned exports of 24 fancy products from caviar and gems to watches and art.
But the key to whether the sanctions will work is in the hands of China, North Korea’s largest trading partner.
A steel-girder bridge here spans the Yalu River, connecting Dandong to the city of Sinuiju in North Korea. That has helped Dandong, whose name means “Red East,” become a popular shopping destination for North Koreans with money. It is unclear how much that will change because of the sanctions.
So far, China hasn’t disclosed what specific kinds of high-end exports — TVs or luxury automobiles, for instance — it will block. A Chinese foreign-ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, has said the list “should not be allowed to impact normal trade transactions” between the socialist neighbors.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whose own taste for expensive French cognac and other imported luxuries is well known, uses money and goods liberally in an effort to buy the loyalty of the elite, according to U.S. and South Korean officials. Some of these officials say that depriving the ruling class of its creature comforts could alienate them from Mr. Kim, long known as “Dear Leader.”
But many North Korea watchers and North Korean defectors doubt that the elite would revolt against Mr. Kim’s government, because their fates are so closely tied to his now. “Under this regime, the privileged have had a very good life,” says Kim Dok Hong, the second-highest North Korean official to defect. “If the regime collapses, the people they’ve mistreated will be looking for revenge.”
At the peak of the famine that killed more than a million North Koreans in the mid-1990s, Mr. Pak, the former government official, says his parents weren’t short of food. Their home had three refrigerators regularly replenished with imported provisions by the Communist Party. Mr. Pak uses a pseudonym to protect family members still in the North from government retribution.
“The elites have had more freedom to do their own business” since economic overhauls in 2002, says Yang Chang Seok, a senior official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which oversees relations with the North. “People have earned a lot of money from trading.”
These days in Pyongyang, members of the ruling class are ferried around in imported cars and live in well-appointed — and well-guarded — apartment complexes. Their children race around city parks on in-line skates and play American computer games.
Says Mr. Pak: “If you can afford to pay, there’s nothing you can’t get.”
Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal
Melanie Kirkpatrick
12/18/2006
This being The Wall Street Journal, we went straight to the bottom line. How much, we asked our visitor at a recent editorial board meeting, does it cost to free one North Korean refugee hiding in China?
The Rev. Phillip Buck pauses a moment before replying, apparently making the yuan-to-dollar conversions on the abacus in his mind. “If I do it myself,” he says, “the cost is $800 per person. If I hire a broker to do it, it’s $1,500.”
Pastor Buck is a rescuer. It’s a job title that applies to a courageous few–mostly Americans and South Koreans and predominantly Christians–who operate the underground railroad that ferries North Korean refugees out of China to South Korea, and now, thanks to 2004 legislation, to the U.S. Mr. Buck, an American from Seattle, says he has rescued more than 100 refugees and helped support another 1,000 who are still on the run. For this “crime”–China’s policy is to hunt down and repatriate North Koreans–he spent 15 months in a Chinese prison. He was released in August.
The plight of the tens of thousands of North Korean refugees in China is a humanitarian crisis that has received scant world attention. It won’t be on the agenda of the six-party talks, which are scheduled to restart today in Beijing. But the experience of Pastor Buck and other rescuers is worth noting as negotiators sit down with Kim Jong Il’s emissaries. North Korea won’t change, they believe, so long as Kim remains in power. Follow that logic, and regime change is the proper goal.
The refugees, Pastor Buck argues, are the key to regime change in North Korea and, by inference, the key to halting the North’s nuclear and missile programs. Help one man or woman escape, he says, and that person will get word to his family back home about the freedom that awaits them on the outside. Others will follow, and the regime will implode. This is what happened in 1989, when Hungary refused to turn back East Germans fleeing to the West, thereby hastening the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Pastor Buck was born in North Korea in 1941 and fled with his brothers to the South during the Korean War. He emigrated to the U.S. in the ’80s, becoming a citizen in 1992. When famine hit North Korea in the late ’90s, and millions died, he raised relief funds in Korean churches in the U.S. “I helped send 150 tons of flour and rice to the North,” he says, “and 70 tons of fertilizer . . . This was a time when government rations had stopped and people were living off grass.”
But on visits to the North, he soon realized that the government was stealing the food intended for starving citizens. “I changed my mind” about the efficacy of aid, he says, and in 1998 he joined the effort to help people escape. “If you see someone who is drowning in the river, wouldn’t you reach out and help that person?” he asks. “That’s what was in my heart.”
Pastor Buck is nothing if not determined. In 2002, while in a Southeast Asian country with a group of refugees he had guided there, his apartment in Yanji city, in northeast China, was raided. Nineteen refugees were captured and a copy of his passport was confiscated. With his identity now compromised, Mr. Buck returned to the U.S. and underwent legal proceedings to change his name. John Yoon, the name he was born with, was dead; Phillip Buck was born.
The new Pastor Buck returned to China, where, on May 25, 2005, he was arrested and eventually convicted of the crime of helping illegal immigrants. Thanks to the intervention of the U.S. government, he was deported before he could be sentenced.
Another American, Steve Kim, was not so lucky. Mr. Kim, a furniture importer from Huntington, N.Y., has been in prison in China since September 2003, sentenced to five years for smuggling aliens. Mr. Kim, who, like Mr. Buck, is of Korean ancestry and is a Christian, became aware of the plight of the refugees during business trips to China. He funded two safe houses and paid for refugees’ passage on the underground railroad. Beijing refuses to grant him parole, saying foreigners are not eligible. His wife and three children will pass their fourth Christmas without him.
Mr. Buck, meanwhile, will celebrate Christmas at home in Seattle, along with four refugees, now settled in South Korea, whom he has invited to spend the holiday with him and his family. These refugees–two men and two women–have harrowing personal tales of starvation, death and repression in the North and desperate lives on the run in China.
One young man, who asks that his name not be used for fear of retribution on family members still at home, spent time in the North Korean gulag, after being captured in China and repatriated. He was tortured, he says–rolling up his trousers at a recent press conference in Washington, D.C. to display the scars on his legs.
One morning at roll call, he recounts, one of his cellmates, a man who had been badly beaten during the night, was too sick to get out of bed. The guards ordered the prisoners to carry the injured man into the woods and bury him. “I keep thinking, maybe he would still be alive if we hadn’t buried him,” the escapee says. The name of the dead man was Kim Young Jin. The name of the prison is Chong Jin. Says the man who escaped: “I am very glad to be here, and tell the people in America how life in North Korea really is.”
Pastor Buck spent last Christmas in jail. “My cellmates were criminals,” he says, “12 in all, murderers and rapists.” His diary entry for Dec. 24, 2005, notes that he distributed the chocolates his children had sent him as Christmas gifts to his cellmates. And this year? “I am so excited that I can celebrate this Christmas with lots of joy,” his diary entry for last Thursday reads.
His final words are for the refugees. “I pray, let the Christmas spirit be with those North Korean refugees still in China. Let them be safe too.”
Joong Ang Daily
12/15/2006
North Korean women down Japan for gold
North Korea retained the Asian Games women’s soccer title early yesterday with a 4-2 penalty kick shootout win over Japan.
The defending champions, Asia’s highest-ranked team, enjoyed the better chances throughout the match and held their nerve at the end with goalkeeper Jon Myong-hui saving two Japan kicks.
North Korea scored all of its penalty kick chances as Ri Kum-suk, Ri Un-gyong, Ho Sun-hui and Jong Pok-sim all found the net.
Despite the victory North Korean coach Kim Kwang-min said his club should have gotten it done in regulation.
“Although we are similar physically we are better players,” said Kim. “I told them to be aggressive from the start and we should have won in 90 minutes. I am not overly satisfied with the performance.”
The first half of the game saw both teams cancel each other out, but North Korea almost broke through in the first half.
It took a flying save from Japan ese goalkeeper Miho Fukumoto to deny North Korea’s top scorer, Ri Kum-suk, from finding the net with a sharp, downward header.
At the one-hour mark, Song Jong-sun turned smartly and unleashed a fierce left-footed shot which just sailed past Fukumoto’s left hand.
Kim Kyong-haw then teed up Ho Sun Hui, who shot straight at Fukumoto.
Eriko Arakawa then set up Japan’s best chance of the game in the 72nd minute when she turned inside two defenders, drew the goalkeeper out and released the ball into the path of Shinobu Ohno, who was unable to steer the ball home.
Ri Kum-suk then squandered a late chance to settle the tie in normal time, heading just inches wide at the far post.
Fukumoto twice rescued Japan in extra-time, once even having to keep out a misdirected header from teammate Kozue Ando.
Ohno then gave the North Koreans a major scare when she had the ball in the back of the net with a volley finish five minutes from the end of the first period of extra time.
But it was controversially ruled out for offsides and the match went to the penalty shootout.
Daily NK
Yang Jung A
12/13/2006
On the 12th, the Mainichi Newspaper reported that N. Korea sent a group of middle-aged men cheerleading squad to the Asian Game held in Doha, Qatar. In 2002 N. Korea sent a group of young women cheerleading squad to Busan Asian Game.
When N. Korea won the soccer game 2 to 1 over Japan held in the past 7, hundreds of the N. Korean cheerleading squad were so excited that after the game they entered into the stadium and tossed their players shoulder-high.
The cheerleading squad was construction workers who were out in Doha to make foreign currency funds. The newspaper also reported that while N. Korea has screwed most of salaries of its workers recently dispatched in Czech and Poland, it has seemed to actively export their workers to the Middle-East areas.
In the South-North soccer game held in the past 9, around one thousand of the North Korean people cheered up their players, who finally lost the game and shouted ‘take heart of grace’ following the instruction of a cheerleader.
Mr. Gong, South Korean businessman doing equipment business in Doha said that, “Two teams of North Korean workers were dispatched into one workplace. One team is consisted of two hundreds workers” and “their contract duration is 2 or 3 years and they are diligent”.
You could see the North Korean people who have stiff looks go shopping in a big supermarket in weekends.
A Pyongyang man cheering up his team in the South-North soccer game said that, “the workplaces are divided into a few areas so that I do not know how many people are in here. I am really happy to be here to meet people working at other workplaces”.
In the meanwhile, other men responded that, “I make Kimchi by myself. I have no problem for my living”. After the first half of the game, many people bought a few bottles of juice and snacks in a stand. The newspaper added, however, nobody granted an interview to reporters about their salaries.
Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
12/13/2006
Last Thursday in Seoul, the influential opposition daily newspaper Chosun Ilbo published a government document that outlined the plans for South Korean aid to be shipped to North Korea in the next financial year. In spite of the nuclear test in October and a series of missile launches last summer, the amount sent to Pyongyang this year was record-breaking – nearly US$800 million. If the document is to be believed, the target for the next year is set at an even higher level of 1 trillion won (about $910 million).
This generosity might appear strange, since technically both Koreas are still at war. However, it has long been an open secret that this is not the war the South wants to win, at least any time soon. The Seoul politicians do not want to provoke Pyongyang into dangerous confrontation, and they would be unhappy to deal with the consequences of a sudden collapse of Kim Jong-il’s dictatorship. Now South Korea wants a slow transformation of the North, and is ready to shower it with aid and unilateral concessions.
Many optimists in Seoul believe this generosity will persuade Pyongyang leaders to launch Chinese-style reforms. However, so far no significant reforms have happened. On the contrary, news emanating from the North since late 2004 seems to indicate that the government is now working hard to turn the clock back, to revive the system that existed until the early 1990s and then collapsed under the manifold pressures of famine and social disruption.
Signs of this ongoing backlash are many. There were attempts to revive the travel-permission system that forbids all North Koreans to leave their native counties without police permission. Occasional crackdowns have taken place at the markets. There were some attempts to re-establish control over the porous border with China.
Finally, in October 2005 it was stated that North Korea would revive the Public Distribution System, under which all major food items were distributed by state. Private trade in grain was prohibited, so nowadays the only legitimate way to buy grain, by far the most important source of calories in North Koreans’ diet, is by presenting food coupons in a state-run shop. It is open to question to what extent this ban is enforced. So far, reports from northern provinces seem to indicate that private dealing in grain still takes place, but on a smaller scale.
From early this month people in northern provinces are allowed to trade at the markets only as long as an aspiring vendor can produce a certificate that states that he or she is not a primary breadwinner of the household but a dependant, normally eligible to some 250 grams of daily grain ration (the breadwinners are given 534 grams daily). It is again assumed that all able-bodied males should attend a “proper” job, that is, to be employees of the government sector and show up for work regularly.
In the past few years the economic situation in North Korea was improving – largely because of large infusions of foreign aid. If so, why are the North Korean leaders so bent on re-Stalinizing their country, instead of emulating the Chinese reform policy that has been so tremendously successful? After all, the Mercedes-riding Chinese bureaucrats of our days are much better off than their predecessors used to be 30 years ago, and the affluence of common Chinese in 2006 probably has no parallels in the nation’s long history.
The Chinese success story is well known to Kim Jong-il and his close entourage, but Pyongyang leaders choose not to emulate China. This is not because they are narrow-minded or paranoid. The Chinese-style transformation might indeed be too risky for them, since the Pyongyang ruling elite has to deal with a challenge unlike anything their Chinese peers ever faced – the existence of “another Korea”, the free and prosperous South.
The Chinese commoners realize that they have not much choice but to be patient and feel thankful for a steady improvement of living standards under the Communist Party dictatorship. In North Korea the situation is different. If North Koreans learn about the actual size of the gap in living standards between them and their cousins in the South, and if they become less certain that any act of defiance will be punished swiftly and brutally, what will prevent them from emulating East Germans and rebelling against the government and demanding immediate unification?
Of course, it is possible that North Korean leaders will somehow manage to stay on top, but the risks are too high, and Pyongyang’s elite do not want to gamble. If reforms undermine stability and produce a revolution, the current North Korean leaders will lose everything. Hence their best bet is to keep the situation under control and avoid all change.
Until the early 2000s the major constraint in their policy was the exceptional weakness of their own economy. For all practical purposes, North Korea’s industry collapsed in 1990-95, and its Soviet-style collective agriculture produces merely 65-80% of the food necessary to keep the population alive. Since the state had no resources to pay for surveillance and control, officials were happy to accept bribes and overlook numerous irregularities.
However, in recent years the situation changed. Pyongyang is receiving sufficient aid from South Korea and China, two countries that are most afraid of a North Korean collapse. The nuclear program also probably makes North Korean leaders more confident about their ability to resist foreign pressure and, if necessary, to squeeze more aid from foes and friends (well, strictly speaking, they do not have friends now).
With this aid and new sense of relative security, the North Korean regime can prevent mass famine and restart some essential parts of the old system, with the food-distribution system being its cornerstone. This is a step toward an ideal of Kim Jong-il and his people, to a system where all able-bodied Koreans go to a state-managed job and spend the entire day there, being constantly watched and indoctrinated by a small army of propagandists, police informers, party officials, security officers and the like.
No unauthorized contacts with the dangerous outside world would be permitted, and no unauthorized social or commercial activity would happen under such system. Neither Kim nor his close associates are fools; they know perfectly well that such a system is not efficient, but they also know that only under such system can their privileges and security be guaranteed.
This is a sad paradox: aid that is often presented as a potential incentive for market-oriented reforms is actually the major reason North Korean leaders are now able to contemplate re-Stalinization of their country.
However, it remains to be seen whether they will succeed, since the North Korean society has changed much in the 12 years since the death of Kim Il-sung. New social forces have emerged, and the general mood has changed as well.
When in the mid-1990s the food rations stopped coming, previously forbidden or strictly controlled private trade became the only survival strategy available for a majority of North Koreans. The society experienced a sudden and explosive growth of grassroots capitalist economy, which by the late 1990s nearly replaced the “regular” Stalinist economy – at least, outside Pyongyang.
Apart from trade in a strict sense, North Korea’s “new entrepreneurs” are engaged in running small workshops, inns and canteens, as well as in providing all kinds of services. Another important part of the “second economy” is food production from individual plots, hitherto nearly absent from North Korea (from the late 1950s, farmers were allowed only tiny plots, not exceeding 100 square meters, sufficient only to grow some spices).
In many cases, the new business penetrates the official bureaucracy. While officials are not normally allowed to run their own business operations, some do, and as the line between the private and state businesses is becoming murky, the supposedly state-run companies make deals with private traders, borrow money on the black market and so on.
As one would expect, a new merchant class has emerged as a result of these changes. Nowadays an exceptionally successful North Korean entrepreneur would operate with capital reaching $100,000 (a fortune in a country where the average monthly salary is merely few dollars). Such mini-tycoons are very few and far between, but incomes measured in $100 a month are earned by many more merchants, and nearly all North Korean families earn at least a part of their income through the “second economy”.
These changes have produced a major psychological shift. The old assumptions about society are dead. After many decades of existence under the patronizing control of a Stalinist state, North Koreans discovered that one can live without going to an office to get next month’s food coupons. They also learned a lot more about the outside world. Smuggled South Korean videotapes are important, if dangerous, merchandise in the North Korean markets.
Contacts with China are necessary for a successful business, and these contacts bring not only goods for sale but also rumors about overseas life. And, of course, the vendors are the first people within living memory who became successful outside the official system. One of these former merchants recently told me: “Those who once attempted to trade, came to like it. Until now, [North Koreans] knew that only cadres could live well, while others should be content with eating grass gruel, but now merchants live better than cadres, and they feel proud of themselves.”
It seems that in recent months we have seen the very first signs of the social activity displayed by this new social group. Early last month, a large group of outraged merchants gathered in front of the local office in the city of Hoiryong, demanding to talk to the representatives of the authorities.
The Hoiryong riot was strictly non-political. A few months ago the local officials collected payments from the market vendors, promising to use the money for refurbishing the old market. However, the market was suddenly closed instead of being refurbished (perhaps as part of the ongoing crackdown on private commercial activities). The outraged vendors gathered near the market and demanded a refund.
The crowd was soon dispersed, and more active participants of the protest were arrested. Had a similar incident happened elsewhere, it would probably not have warranted more than a short newspaper report, but in North Korea this was an event of tremendous significance, the first time in decades that North Koreans openly and loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with a decision of the authorities.
In March 2005, a soccer riot in Pyongyang demonstrated that North Koreans are quite capable of breaking the law, but during that event the popular wrath was provoked by a foreigner, a Syrian referee, and could be construed as an outpouring of nationalistic sentiments (the soccer fans soon began to fight police, however). This time, in Hoiryong, a large group of North Koreans clearly challenged the state bureaucracy. Perhaps nothing like it has happened since the 1950s.
However, the growing power and social independence of the merchants is not the major problem the North Korean neo-Stalinists have to face. They deal with a society that has changed much, not least because of the penetration of modern technology, which facilitates the spread of information. The key role is played by the Chinese border, which is almost uncontrolled and has become an area of widespread smuggling.
Small radio sets are widely smuggled from China, so much so that a defector recently said: “In North Korea, nowadays every official has a radio set in his house.” This is new, since until the early 1990s all North Korean radios were fixed so that they could receive only official broadcasts. Theoretically, radio sets with free tuning are still banned, but this is not enforced. These radios sets are used to listen to foreign broadcasts, especially from South Korea.
Videocassette recorders are common as well. No statistics are available, but it seems that nearly half of all households in the borderland area and a smaller but significant number of households in Pyongyang have a VCR that is used to watch foreign movies. Defectors reported that in mid-October, just after the nuclear test, all North Koreans were required to sign a written pledge about non-participation in “non-socialist activity”. It was explained during the meetings that this activity includes listening to foreign radio and watching foreign videotapes.
Thus it seems that only a few people still believe in the official myth of South Korean destitution. Perhaps most people in the North do not realize how great the difference between their lives and those of their South Korean brethren is. Perhaps, for most of them, being affluent merely means the ability to eat rice daily. Discussions with recent defectors also create an impression that most North Koreans still believe that the major source of their problems is the suffocating “US imperialist blockade”. Still, the old propaganda about the destitute and starving South is not readily swallowed anymore.
Another obstacle on the way to a Stalinist revival is a serious breakdown of morale among officialdom. The low-level officials whose job is to enforce stricter regulations do not feel much enthusiasm about the new orders. Back in the 1940s and 1950s when Stalinism was first established in North Korea under Soviet tutelage, a large part of the population sincerely believed that it was the way to the future.
Nowadays, the situation is different. The low-level bureaucrats are skeptical. They are well aware of the capitalism-driven Chinese prosperity, and they have some vague ideas about South Korea’s economic success. And they are unconvinced by government promises that, as they know, never materialize. Unlike the elite, the mid-level officials have little reason to be afraid of the regime’s collapse. And, last but not least, they have become very corrupt in recent years, hence their law-enforcement zeal diminishes once they see an opportunity to earn extra money for looking other way.
At the same time, the new measures might find support from the large segments of population who did not succeed in the new economy and long for the stability of Kim Il-sung’s era. Recently, a former trader told me: “Elderly or unlucky people still miss the times of socialism, but younger people do business very well, believe that things are better now than they used to be and worry that the situation might turn back to the old days.”
We should not overestimate the scope of this generalization. After all, it is based on the observations of a market trader who obviously spent much time with her colleagues, the winners of the new social reality. Among less fortunate North Koreans, there will be some people who perhaps would not mind sitting through a couple of hours of indoctrination daily, if in exchange they would receive their precious 534 grams of barley-rice mixture (and an additional 250 grams per every dependant).
Early this month it was also reported that low-level officials had received new orders requiring them to tighten up residence control, normally executed through so-called “people’s groups”. Each such group consists of 30-50 families living in the same block or same apartment building and is headed by an official whose task is to watch everything in the neighborhood.
The new instructions, obtained by the Good Friends, a well-informed non-governmental organization dealing with North Korea, specify the deviations that are of particular importance: “secretly watching or copying illegal videotapes, using cars for trade, renting out houses or cooking food for sale, making liquors at home”. All these are “anti-socialist activities which must be watched carefully and exterminated”. The struggle to return to Kim Il-sung’s brand of socialism continues.
Still, North Korean authorities are fighting an uphill battle. In a sense they are lucky, since many foreign forces, including their traditional enemy, South Korea, do not really want their system to collapse and thus avoid anything that might promote a revolution. However, the regime is too anachronistic and too inefficient economically, so a great danger for its survival is created by the very existence of the prosperous world just outside its increasingly porous borders.
In the long run, all attempts to maintain a Stalinist society in the 21st century must be doomed. However, the North Korean leaders are fighting to buy time, to enjoy a few additional years of luxurious life (or plain security) for themselves. How long they will succeed remains to be seen.
Dr Andrei Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has published books and articles on Korea and North Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at Kookmin University, Seoul.
Northeast Asia can be considered the last major economic frontier on the Asian continent. The region has enormous economic potential, but this potential can only be realised through dynamic cooperation and sharing of resources.
Recognising Northeast Asia’s considerable potential and geopolitical significance, UNDP in 1991 agreed to support the initiative of the countries in the region to establish an institutional mechanism for regional dialogue and further cooperation. For the past twelve years, the Tumen River Area Development Programme has facilitated economic cooperation among the five member countries: China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Mongolia, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and the Russian Federation. The member countries are equally represented in the Consultative Commission for the Development of the Tumen River Economic Development Area and Northeast Asia, which meets annually at Vice Ministerial level.
The main objectives of the Tumen Programme are to:
The first phase of the Tumen Programme involved extensive planning and background studies. An interim phase focused on investment promotion and development initiatives designed to build momentum for the region as a growth triangle. The second phase built on the institutional framework for regional cooperation created by the multilateral agreements concluded in 1995. The third – and current – phase continues to address factors fundamental to regional economic cooperation and is designed to ensure the sustainability of this regional cooperation framework.
Why the Focus on the Tumen Region?
The Tumen Region has great potential as a major entrepot for international trade because of the strategic location of the Tumen transport corridor, the strong complementarities of the Tumen River Area, vast natural and human resources, and the area’s accessibility to the resources and markets of Northeast Asia.
Northeast China and Mongolia are landlocked and therefore have a strong interest in access to ports in DPRK and the Russian Far East. Overseas shippers also have a stake in the Tumen transport corridor, for it offers a much shorter route to affluent and new markets, and facilitates transit trade to a number of destinations.
The local governments in the Tumen Region have been steadfast supporters of the Tumen Programme since its inception. It appears that central governments in Northeast Asia are now re-emphasising the value of the Tumen Region, particularly its strategic transport corridor. Northeast Asian governments are rapidly improving the Tumen Region’s infrastructure network and transport services. They are also working to create legal and institutional mechanisms conducive to cross-border trade and transport. The Tumen Programme is actively facilitating the creation of an enabling environment through “soft” infrastructure and human capacity building.
Why is Regional Cooperation so Important?
Regional cooperation is a vital part of the development process and a building block for effective participation in world trade and capital markets. For the Tumen Region, which partly consists of small and remote areas of large countries, economic cooperation is an effective way to avoid marginalisation. Cross-border cooperation also helps resolve environmental issues and facilitates the adoption of international environmental standards. Most importantly, enhanced economic cooperation in Northeast Asia helps improve political relations and stability, in turn vital elements for investment and economic growth.
It is worth recalling how remote and closed the Tumen Region was just a dozen years ago, to appreciate the full significance of its role as a frontier for economic cooperation in Northeast Asia. Much has been achieved during the Tumen Programme’s existence, particularly in terms of opening borders and increasing interaction in a region that was, until recently, tense and largely closed. A new trade and transport corridor has been created, which will – in time – evolve into an economic corridor with a significant impact on poverty reduction and improved living standards in the region.
The Future of the Tumen Programme
The prevailing political and economic climate in the region has altered dramatically since the start of the Tumen Programme in 1991. The Soviet Union has dissolved, China and ROK have established diplomatic relations and a major trading partnership, and there has been a degree of rapprochement between DPRK and ROK. The transition to stronger economic systems in the countries that relied on the Soviet Comecon trading system has reinforced the logic of economic cooperation in the Tumen Region. The increased participation of DPRK, Mongolia and the Russian Far East, combined with the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy, will help the Northeast Asian economy grow.
Dynamic cooperation has found increasing expression in Northeast Asia, and relations in the region continue to improve, helped by stronger economic links. Despite major improvements in the geopolitical circumstances of the region, however, much remains to be done. The Tumen Programme is the only initiative that brings the member countries together on a sub-regional basis, and its existing institutional structure and multilateral agreements should be utilised to maximum effect to help Northeast Asia achieve peace and prosperity.
Daily NK
12/8/2006
Yang Jung A
While golf equipment was amongst the list of banned luxury goods the U.S. government announced recently, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on the 6th that golf is a symbol of luxurious pleasure that only the elite in North Korea can experience.
Citing from a Pyongyang report by an Agence France-Presse correspondent, RFA revealed “The main golf course in North Korea is “Pyongyang Golf Course” with about 100 members, which in reality are all officials of Chosun Workers’ Party” and “Annual membership paid by the member amounts to $10,000.”
The correspondent said “This is a figure the average North Korean citizen could not even dream as an expense” and “The golf course in North Korea is a symbol of luxurious pleasure only experienced by authority officials or the elite.”
In the vicinity of Lake Taesung in Yongkang-gun, Nampo 38km from Pyongyang is “Pyongyang Golf Course,” equipped with a complete 18 hole course and ample enough to host an international golf tournament. The course was established in ’87 in celebration of Kim Il Song’s 75th birthday, sponsored by the Jochongnyeon, the pro-North Korean residents’ league in Japan.
Although it is said that a golf course exists within the grounds of Kim Il Sung’s Mountain Myohang villa and Ryongsung resort, the only golf course open to the public is ‘Pyongyang Golf Course.’ Mountain Myohang golf course is located in a valley 1.5km from Hyangsan Hotel, whereas Ryongsung golf course is situated 20 min by car from Pyongyang.
There are also mini courses, such as Yangkakdo golf course and Pyongyang golf practice range, Nampo Wawoodo golf course (9 holes). With investments by South Korean business, more golf courses are being constructed in areas such as Mt. Geumgang.
However, these golf courses are mainly accommodated to foreigners and excluding the elitist class, common people in possession of foreign currency such as Korean born Japanese or foreigners with blood-relatives are also using the courses.
Golf is one of Kim Jong Il’s favorite pastimes. In a book written by Fujimoto Kenji, once Kim Jong Il’s personal cook, Fujimoto wrote of his times at a golf course with Kim Jong Il at his villa.
At the golf course Fujimoto visited with Kim Jong Il, Kim asked Fujimoto ‘Compared to all the other places in the world, what do you think about the golf courses in North Korea?’ That day, when Kim Jong Il visited the golf course was October 6th and categorized a public holiday as a ‘The day Kim Jong Il visited.’
One time, North Korean mass media announced that at Kim Jong Il’s first time round of golf in `94, he scored an “eagle” followed by five “hold in ones,” recording a total score of 34. This only incited laughter from the international community.
If he had made 34 hit shots in a round of 18 holes, based on a game of par 72, this would mean he is 38 under. Even if a golf angel happened to come from the heavens, this would be impossible. While deifying Kim Jong Il and having no knowledge of golfing rules, media officials only made the situation into a laughing comedy.
In response, the New York Times sarcastically commented, that if the reports by North Korean media was true, Kim Jong Il should be selected as the “World’s number one golfer” as even professional golf competitors find it difficult to claim a hole a one in a lifetime.
Yonhap
12/8/2006
A South Korean textbook publisher has donated a second-hand rotary press to North Korea to help the communist state publish school textbooks, Seoul-based UNESCO Korea said Friday.
“North Korea has requested that UNESCO assist with textbook printing presses and paper since 2000, and (South Korea’s) Daehan Printing and Publishing Co. expressed its intention to make the donation,” a UNESCO Korea official said.
The press was used in printing textbooks for South Korea’s elementary and secondary school students until 2000, the official said.
The donation is the second project UNESCO Korea has sought to help North Korean students. In 2002, UNESCO and Daehan Pulp Co. provided the North with 200 tons of paper for middle-school English textbooks there.
Kyodo News is claiming that recently enacted UN restrictions on trade in luxury goods to the DPRK are having little effect on shops in Pyongyang (with the exception of Japanese cigarettes). I suspect there are several reasons for this:
1. Sanctions never completely cut off the supply of goods. Where there is a willing buyer, there will almost always be a willing seller (particularly if the buyers is a well-connected party finctionary). Quantity falls a little, price rises a lot. A few more people get into the smuggling business.
2. Most goods are imported from China. China is not as tough on its “little brother” as the Japanese and US.
3. This will raise the value of North Koreans that have legitimate foreign connections (I dont want to name names but you know who you are! 🙂
4. There are several places in Pyongyang worth checking out to learn more aobut the impact of sanctions in Pyongyang. The DHL office in the Foreign ministry building, the shops on changwang street, and the Ragwan department store near the ice skating rink. Ragwan was set up to sell to Koreans who returned from Japan and have yen to spare.
Story below:
Kyodo News (Hat tip DPRK Studies)
12/8/2006
Impact of sanctions not yet felt in Pyongyang stores
While countries have begun drawing up lists of luxury items they will deny North Korea as part of sanctions in response to the country’s nuclear test, the impact of the measure has yet to be felt in the handful of stores that sell imported goods in Pyongyang.
During a recent visit, shelves at a store inside the Koryo Hotel in central Pyongyang were stocked with French perfume, Russian vodka and Japanese “sake” rice wine, and restaurants in the North Korean capital still offered foreign beer.
Nor were changes visible in exchange rates for Japanese yen, the euro and Chinese yuan, which remained at around the level of previous months in several hotels that cater to non-Korean visitors and tourists.
“I would have thought that there would be a run on foreign goods by expatriates here, but so far there has been no major change,” a diplomat living in Pyongyang said. “The stores visited by the foreign community here still have, for example, chocolate and wine.”
After North Korea carried out its first nuclear test in October, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1718, which condemns the nuclear experiment and denies the nation military hardware, nuclear technology and luxury items.
The idea behind the ban on luxury goods is to pressure North Korea’s elite, not the ordinary public, in a country that faces chronic food shortage.
While the U.N. Security Council resolution detailed the military and nuclear items the U.N. member countries will deny North Korea, it left the decision on luxury goods up to each country.
Japan’s list of 24 items, for example, includes high-quality beef, fatty tuna, caviar, fur products and jewelry. Many other countries have yet to complete their lists.
Another Pyongyang resident, meanwhile, said he has noticed one change — a dramatic rise in the price of Japanese cigarettes.
There has been a three-fold increase in the price over the past few months, said the international aid worker.
While cigarettes are among the luxury items Japan denies North Korea under the U.N. resolution, there could be another reason for the price hike — a Japanese ban on port calls by the ferry Mangyongbong-92 which has been in place since North Korea test-fired missiles in July.
The ferry, the only passenger link between the two countries, has also been used to ship Japanese goods into North Korea.
“The impact of the denial of luxury goods would not be very visible” in the streets of Pyongyang as they target the country’s elite, said Noriyuki Suzuki, a senior analyst at Radiopress, which monitors North Korean media in Tokyo.
But the impact of Japanese sanctions that include a halt in all imports from North Korea “would probably result in a gradual decrease in not just luxury items but all Japanese goods in the country,” he said.
