According to Bloomberg:
The agency bought $2.12 million of wheat from Glencore Grain BV for delivery to North Korea, the Rome-based WFP wrote in notifications on its website today.
Read the full story here:
WFP Buys Sugar For Syria And Wheat From Glencore For North Korea
Bloomberg
Rudy Ruitenberg
2012-5-25
According to the BBC:
China has launched a drive against illegal immigration in a north-eastern region bordering North Korea.
The campaign in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin province mainly focuses on North Koreans fleeing poverty and persecution at home.
China is known to routinely repatriate North Koreans who often slip across the border undetected.
Human rights groups say many face punishment when they return.
“Foreigners who illegally enter, work and overstay are hidden troubles, and they might pose potential threats to social stability,” Li Yongxue, a police official from Yanbian, was quoted by state-run China Daily newspaper as saying.
The police say they want to stamp out criminal activities to maintain order. They add that those without proper documents will be sent back.
Many of these illegal immigrants have relatives in China, some come to work, while others use China as a staging post before moving to other countries, according to the BBC’s Michael Bristow.
A police officer from the province told the BBC that it was a sensitive year in China, with officials stressing the need for stability ahead of a leadership change this year.
Read the full story here:
China targets illegal immigration at North Korea border
BBC
2012-5-25
According to the Hankyoreh:
South Korean businesses have suffered losses of up to ten trillion won (US$8.3 billion) from the cutbacks in inter-Korean economic cooperation under the Lee Myung-bak administration, figures show.
The losses taken by South Korean firms are fives times the 1.8 trillion won (US$1.7 billion) North Korea’s estimated losses. The results show an unintended effect of Seoul’s May 24 sanctions, which were meant to punish North Korea economically for the shooting death of a tourist at the Mt. Kumkang resort, the sinking of the Cheonan warship, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island. North Korea has offset these losses with increased cooperation with China.
Read more below…
The Joongang Ilbo reports some recent statistics from, the Kaesong Industrial Zone and some trade statistics between the two Koreas and China.
Inter-Korean and China trade (Joongang Ilbo):
Exactly two years ago, on May 24, 2010, in the aftermath of the deadly sinking of the Cheonan warship, the Lee Myung-bak administration imposed sanctions against North Korea that forbade all inter-Korean trade and South Korean investments in the North.
[…]
Statistics from the Korea International Trade Association show that the volume of inter-Korea trade in 2011 dropped by 10.4 percent, falling to about $1.7 billion from $1.9 billion in 2010. The Kaesong Industrial Complex, which was exempted from the sanctions, accounted for most of the inter-Korean trade.
In contrast, the volume of trade between North Korea and China surged by 62.4 percent in 2011, from $3.4 billion in 2010 to $5.6 billion.
“After stopping trade with South Korea, factories in Pyongyang and Nampo cities turned to Chinese companies and now work for them,” a South Korean businessman said on condition of anonymity. “It took so much time and money for us to teach North Korean employees and now Chinese companies enjoy the fruits of our labor.”
The North Korean government responded to the South Korean sanctions:
As talks between the two authorities have been halted, North Korea has unilaterally decided to raise taxes on income and management of the complex.
In fact, the North Korean regime earns significant money from the complex. South Korean firms pay the North Korean government an average of $126.4 per month for each North Korean worker. The government then distributes 5,000 won of North Korean currency and some food coupons to each employee per month. This wage is desirable compared to other worker payments in the North.
Analysts calculate that the regime is holding at least $50 million from the $77.8 million of the North Korean employees’ annual income.
At current black market rates, there are appx 4,450 DPRK won to for US$1.
The article notes, however, that the Kaesong Industrial Zone continues to grow:
Located only three kilometers away from the Military Demarcation Line, the inter-Korean complex has 123 South Korean companies and about 51,000 North Korean employees.
…
Currently, the South Korean government is implementing a scheme to build more roads and infrastructure for South Koreans crossing the border to commute to the complex (see here and here).
“Although Kim Yong-chol, former head of the policy planning office of the North’s powerful National Defense Commission, who has exerted a huge influence on operating the Kaesong complex, repeatedly threatened to shut down the complex since the May 24 sanctions, he’s recently been more cooperative, saying ‘Let’s make it better,’” a high-ranking government source told the JoongAng Ilbo.
Unlike the frosty inter-Korean relations, the sales performance of the joint industrial complex is positive. For the past three years, 55 South Korean firms additionally moved into the complex and the annual output value surpassed $400 million in 2011, jumping from $180 million in 2007.
Last year’s volume is 30 times that of the $14.91 million in 2005, when the complex made its first yearly outputs. The total output value since 2005 has accumulated to $1.5 billion.
[…]
Currently, roughly 160,000 people are living in Kaesong city and approximately one out of three are working in the complex
The article also reports on additional DPRK-China projects that are not necessarily a result of higher barriers to commerce between the two Koreas (dredging, mining, labor mobility, and SEZs):
“A Chinese firm based in Yanji is now implementing a 60-kilometer-long (37-mile) dredging project in the Tumen river bed,” a government-affiliated research official said.
“It’s not simple dredging work, but a plan to mine the iron ore buried nearby.”
“In the river bed, about 30 percent of the sand contains iron ore,” the official said.
The regime also exports their labor forces to their closest ally.
“Most of the local people left for South Korea to get a decent job and the average wage for a Chinese worker is increasing,” a Chinese factory manager in Yanji said. “So we are planning to hire North Korean workers instead.”
Pyongyang and Beijing are also focusing on developing the two special economic zones, Rason and Hwanggumpyong in northeastern North Korea.
When Chen Deming, the Minister of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce of China, and South Korean Trade Minister Park Tae-ho had a bilateral meeting on May 2 to start negotiations on the Korea-China free trade deal, they included a provision stating the two countries will allow preferential tariffs on goods produced in designated zones.
“Hwanggumpyong is like a Kaesong Industrial Complex to China,” a South Korean authority said. “The Hwanggumpyong zone has the same function as Kaesong, composed of China’s capital and technology and North Korea’s land and labor forces.”
In the Rason Economic Zone, China has finished construction paving the 53-kilometer-long road connecting the Rason zone and a local tax office in Wonjong-ri, a North Korean village close to China.
The Chinese government also arranged a harbor near the Rason area, constructing a pier that can accept a three million-ton ship and building a bus route between an express bus terminal in China and the zone.
“If China uses the Rason harbor, they can save $10 per metric ton,” Jo Bong-hyeon, a senior official at the Industrial Bank of Korea, said. “It’s really good business for China, enough to invest money on building infrastructure in the zone.”
Read the full story here:
Kaesong complex running well despite sanctions
JoongAng Ilbo
2012-05-23
According to the Daily NK:
The popularity of South Korean culture is so high in North Korea that dramas aired on one day in the South are being made into DVDs in northeastern China the next and, by the third day, are cropping up on the fringes of North Korean markets. The North Korean people are then watching these dramas over and over again, sharing them with close friends and swapping them for others with trusted confidantes. In the process, the fashions worn by the stars of these dramas become objects of considerable envy.
It is thus inevitable that South Korean clothes would be popular among the North Korean people more generally. As a Yangkang Province source told the Daily NK recently, “Even households that are not doing that well are going out in South Korean clothes, while the demand for Chinese goods is more limited.”
In particular, the source went on, “Since the start of this year, there have been noticeably more people selling South Korean clothes in the markets, because that is what people want to buy.” Prices reflect this, the source said; for example, South Korean t-shirts sell for nearly double the price of the Chinese equivalent.
Despite the fact that selling South Korean products is deemed treasonous by the North Korean authorities, the practice continues. People refer to the illicit clothes in creative ways to avoid official censure; for instance, ‘Clothes with no label’ or ‘Clothes from the house below’. And indeed the clothes do not have labels, because they are removed in order to get through customs on the Sino-North Korean border.
According to the source, “People believe that Chinese clothes are not good enough, to the extent that they need some additional needlework before they can even be worn. South Korean clothes are the opposite; good design and good quality. Even without the label, people know whether they are seeing a South Korean or Chinese item.”
This phenomenal demand for South Korean clothes first started when North Korean defectors began to send South Korean clothes through smugglers to family. One such defector recently received orders from her family back in North Korea, namely “send as many South Korean clothes as you can because I can sell them all in the market.”
“She used to tell me not to send anything that might get her in trouble,” the source recalled. “Nothing tight-fitting, bright colored, revealing or with English letters on. But that is not the case anymore.”
▲ South Korea seizing the ‘hanbok’ market
The preference for South Korean clothes not only refers to daily wear, it also extends to North Korea’s traditional ‘hanbok’. Cha Kwang Ok, a woman of 40 who recently defected said, “Last year I went to my cousin’s house in Pyongyang and saw people in the city wearing hanbok, but they looked different to the ones they usually wear in Chosun. I thought to myself at the time, ‘Pyongyang’s economy has really developed’; they were the South Korean style hanbok.”
North Korea’s traditional hanbok jacket has a narrow ‘dongjeong’ (thin white cloth-covered paper collar) and is of a single color. It features embroidered flowers, and there are only two different styles. In contrast, South Korean hanbok, as worn by queens in the many, many historical dramas produced by South Korean broadcasters, have a wider dongjeong and are of multiple colors.
Han Yong Kwon, age 46 and originally from Pyongyang, defected to South Korea in 2011. In her estimation, “Even as late as 2010 I could not see women wearing South Korean-style hanbok in Pyongyang, so seeing them appearing now in the so-called ‘Capital of the Revolution’ is evidence that the ‘Korean Wave’ is spreading rapidly in North Korea.”
Additional evidence for the same can even be found in the Chosun Art Film Studio-published 2012 calendar, wherein there is a picture of a model wearing the same hanbok as South Korean actress Lee Young Ae wore in the 2003 drama ‘The Great Jang Geum’, showing that even North Korean state entities no longer seem to regard the colorful hanbok as particularly South Korean.
Read the full story here:
South Korea Seizing Clothing Market
Daily NK
Kang Mi Jin
2012-5-21
By Michael Rank
Independent British energy company Aminex PLC has withdrawn from North Korea, citing ‘”the volatile and unpredictable politics of the area”, just two years after signing a deal covering a 50,000 sq km area off the country’s east coast.
Aminex said it was “in the best interests of shareholders for the Company to withdraw from the Korean exploration programme and not participate in seismic acquisition. This decision will allow Aminex to focus on growing its African portfolio.”
The company first signed an agreement for co-operation in oil and gas with the North Korean government in 2004, but this failed to make progress. In 2010 it introduced a new foreign partner, Singapore-based Chosun Energy Pte Ltd, which provided finance for the initial stages and a regional base in Singapore. Aminex said at the time that “despite challenging international politics,” it had “succeeded in maintaining strong relations with the Korean authorities”, resulting in the production sharing contract signed in May 2010.
But industry sources said Stuard Detmer, who was made Aminex CEO last September, was less enthusiastic about North Korea than his predecessor Brian Hall, who remains executive chairman, and this had contributed to the company’s decision to pull out of the DPRK.
Aminex’s main focus is now on Tanzania, where in February it made the first gas discovery in the onshore Ruvuma basin, having also disposed of an oilfield in Texas.
Aminex said in 2010 that the agreement “involves reprocessing and reinterpretation of old seismic data plus acquisition of new marine seismic data during an initial period. Licence holder] Korex believes that the East Sea has great potential for significant discoveries of oil and gas, while recognising the political challenges in the region and the need to ensure that any international sanctions are strictly observed.”
See previous posts about Aminex here.
According to the AP (via Washington Post):
Myanmar’s president has confirmed that his country bought weapons from North Korea during the past 20 years and assured his South Korean counterpart that it will no longer do so.
In a meeting with visiting South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Myanmar President Thein Sein said his country never had nuclear cooperation with North Korea but did have deals for conventional weapons, Lee’s presidential Blue House said in an announcement Tuesday.
Thein Sein told Lee that Myanmar will no longer buy weapons from North Korea, honoring a U.N. ban, South Korean presidential official Kim Tae-hyo told reporters traveling with Lee, according to Blue House officials in Seoul.
Lee is on an official visit to Myanmar, the first by a South Korean president since North Korean commandos staged a bloody 1983 attack on visiting South Korean dignitaries.
Myanmar cut off diplomatic relations with North Korea after the attack, but restored them in 2007 as it sought allies in the face of international sanctions over its human rights record and failure to install a democratic government. Myanmar also began buying weapons from North Korea, and was suspected of obtaining nuclear weapons technology as well.
Myanmar is taking steps to emerge from international isolation after decades of military rule ended last year. Those changes were highlighted Tuesday when Lee met opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was held for years under house arrest but is now a member of Parliament.
Suu Kyi said after the 45-minute meeting that South Korea and Myanmar have much in common in having had to “take the hard road to democratic leadership.”
Lee, speaking through an interpreter, said he and Suu Kyi had agreed that “democracy, human rights and freedom must never be sacrificed because of development.”
He said he had praised Thein Sein’s contribution to democratization when he met the Myanmar president on Monday.
He also said he told Thein Sein that he hoped his government “will refrain from any activities” with North Korea that could be considered in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. He described this as a formal request.
A U.N. resolution bars countries from obtaining all but small arms and light weapons from North Korea.
Lee on Tuesday made a brief visit to the site of the 1983 bombing, Martyr’s Mausoleum, a monument to Suu Kyi’s father, Myanmar independence hero Gen. Aung San. The attack left 21 dead, 17 of them South Korean, but failed to kill its target, then-President Chun Doo-hwan, who arrived late and was not harmed.
A statement from Lee’s office said he also agreed to expand South Korean financial assistance to Myanmar.
It said South Korea agreed to help Myanmar develop human resources, build a think tank and invite Myanmar students to South Korea in an effort to share its successful experience in economic development.
Previous posts involving Myanmar here. Recent highlights include the M/V Light Saga and articles by Bertil Linter.
Read the full story here:
South Korea says Myanmar has promised to stop buying arms from North Korea
AP via Washington Post
2012-5-15
According to Yonhap:
North Korea’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-nam visited a foodstuff factory in Singapore on Saturday after talks with the city-state’s parliamentary leader, the North’s official news agency reported.
Kim, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and his party were briefed on the constant development of the typical foodstuff factory, the (North) Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a brief dispatch from Singapore.
Kim and his party also watched a video on the management of the factory before looking around the production processes, it said, adding they also toured Hi-P International Pte Ltd., a manufacturer of electronic products, and a tourist islet.
On Friday, the No. 2 leader of the communist state held talks with Michael Palmer, speaker of the parliament of Singapore, according to the KCNA. The North Korean official will also visit Indonesia for talks with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the agency reported last week.
Read the full story here:
N. Korea’s No. 2 leader tours food factory in Singapore
Yonhap
2012-5-13
By Michael Rank
The Chinese embassy in Pyongyang has posted photos of the latest batch of Chinese students who have come to study in North Korea. There are sixty students in total, but the report gives no details of what they are studying or at which universities.
They are casually and colourfully dressed, as if on an American campus in fact, for the group photos which were taken at Sunan Airport and at the Chinese embassy when they attended a briefing by the consular section on “current conditions in Korea, consular protection and assistance and life as a student in Korea”.
The students pledged to “study hard, take advantage of good conditions for [learning] the language, make the most of their studies abroad to obtain the best results and to contribute their utmost for Sino-Korean friendship and cooperation,” according to a caption.
The students arrived in Pyongyang on May 4 and attended the embassy reception on May 6. The website says these students are state-sponsored, implying that there may also be Chinese students in North Korea who pay their own way or are sent by local authorities.
Little is known about Chinese students in North Korea, but earlier this year Sino-NK posted a translation of a fascinating article with some surprisingly frank quotes from an earlier group of Chinese students in the DPRK.
At least one former Chinese student in Pyongyang has risen high in the Communist hierarchy. Zhang Dejiang, 65, a vice premier who oversees industrial and energy policy, in March replaced the disgraced Bo Xilai as Party chief in the southwestern city of Chongqing after the biggest scandal in China in living memory involving the death of a British businessman and alleged large-scale corruption.
From 1978 to 1980 Zhang studied economics at Kim Il Sung University, where he was secretary of the Communist Party branch committee of Chinese students studying there.
According to Yonhap:
A U.N. food agency has estimated that North Korea will secure 2 million tons of rice in 2012, up about 18 percent from last year, a news report said Wednesday.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that the North produced 1.6 million tons of rice last fall and is expected to import 300,000 tons of rice and receive 100,000 tons of outside assistance, Washington-based Radio Free Asia reported, citing the FAO’s food outlook.
The Rome-based U.N. agency also estimated that North Korea’s per capita rice consumption is expected to increase to 72.3 kilograms between last year’s fall and summer of this year, up from 64 kilograms in the same period last year, the RFA said.
In February, the FAO said more than 3 million vulnerable people are estimated to face a food deficit as chronic food insecurity continues throughout North Korea.
The North has relied on international handouts since the late 1990s when it suffered a massive famine that was estimated to have killed 2 million people.
Marcus Noland has a piece here on global food prices.
Read the full story here:
U.N. estimates N. Korea to secure 2 million tons of rice this year
Yonhap
2012-5-9
