The English language PDF is here.
Translation courtesy of Lee Kyungmin, currently working at Hanns-Seidel-Foundation Korea.
Archive for the ‘International Governments’ Category
Recommendations of President Park´s transition team related to unification
Sunday, June 16th, 2013UN food body approves $200 mn food aid to N. Korea
Saturday, June 8th, 2013According to Agence France-Presse:
The UN food body on Saturday said it had approved $200 million of food aid for North Korea, targeting the country’s most vulnerable people who remain dependent on external assistance.
The World Food Programme (WFP) executive board has this week approved a new two-year operation for North Korea starting on July 1, WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said.
“It will target about 2.4 million people – almost all children, and pregnant and nursing women – with about 207,000 [206,800] metric tons of food assistance at a cost of US$200 million,” he said in an email to AFP.
The WFP will continue to focus on the nutritional needs of young children and their mothers through food which will be manufactured in the North using ingredients imported by the food body, he said.
“WFP remains very concerned about the long-term intellectual and physical development of young children in particular who are malnourished due to a diet lacking in key proteins, fats and micronutrients,” added Prior.
In March, UN resident coordinator in North Korea Desiree Jongsma said timely imports from the WFP had contributed to avoiding a crisis this year but two thirds of the nation’s 24 million population were still chronically food insecure.
Nearly 28 percent of children under five in the North suffer from chronic malnutrition and four percent are acutely malnourished, according to a UN national nutrition survey last year.
Overall production for the main 2012 harvest and early season crops this year was expected to reach 5.8 million tonnes, up 10 percent on 2011-2012, UN agencies said in November.
But the poverty-stricken country is still struggling to eradicate malnutrition and provide its people with vital protein, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and WFP said.
North Korea suffered regular chronic food shortages under the Kim dynasty, with the situation exacerbated by floods, droughts and mismanagement. During a famine in the mid to late-1990s, hundreds of thousands died.
International food aid, especially that from South Korea and the United States, has been drastically cut over the past several years amid tensions over the communist state’s nuclear and missile programmes.
The US last provided food aid to North Korea from late 2008 to March 2009. Some 170,000 tonnes out of an expected 500,000 tonnes was delivered, until Pyongyang expelled US workers monitoring the distribution.
Here is the official announcement.
Quarterly bulletin for WFP’s operation Nutrition Support to Women and Children in DPR Korea (Q1, 2013)
DPRK National Nutrition Survey (October 2012)
Read the full story here:
UN food body approves $200 mn food aid to N. Korea
Agence France-Presse
2013-6-8
Saving the cranes: Hope flies in North Korea
Friday, June 7th, 2013According to the Chicago Tribune:
Hall Healy, chairman of the Wisconsin-based International Crane Foundation, has been engaged for years in the effort to protect the migratory cranes in North Korea and restore their habitats. Since 2008, the group has been raising money and coordinating efforts to help a farming community on the Anbyon Plain, roughly 60 miles north of the DMZ.
Through helping the Anbyon farmers, Healy said they are also helping the cranes. When there’s more food for the farmers, there’s also more rice left over in the fields for the cranes, Healy said. The birds also benefit from a pond that was recently built and stocked with fish.
“You have to work with the people,” Healy said. “And if the people have needs, and they always do, you have to help them first.”
Founded in 1973, the International Crane Foundation works in countries around the world to protect the 15 species of cranes in existence.
The North Korea project — which focuses on the red-crowned and white-naped cranes — has special meaning for Healy, who’s been closely involved since its inception. He’s traveled to the DMZ more than a dozen times, and to the Anbyon Plain twice — most recently in November 2011. He plans to return in the fall.
Anbyon was targeted as a priority area, out of concern that a large wetlands area south of the DMZ, near Seoul, could be developed soon, Healy said. If that development occurs, Anbyon would give cranes a reliable haven.
Over the past five years, the foundation has raised about $200,000, including in-kind services, for machinery, fertilizer, training and building supplies, Healy said. Partnering with other groups — including the State Academy of Sciences in Pyongyang, North Korea, the Anbyon farming cooperative, BirdLife International and the Germany-based Hanns Seidel Foundation — it has turned that relatively small amount of money into significant results, Healy said.
So far, it’s worked out well for the farmers. The primary crop in Anbyon is rice, Healy said, but the farmers are also now planting fruit trees and raising livestock. Organic fertilizer, new machinery and sustainable farming techniques have improved the crop yield and the health of the soil, he said.
On the crane side, it’s still a work in progress. Last winter, cranes circled but did not land in Anbyon. But they landed the two years previous, Healy said, and better results are expected this year.
Wildlife conservation that directly benefits people is becoming a more popular approach, said Jeff Walk, an ornithologist and director of science for the Nature Conservancy in Illinois. And cranes are an excellent focus, he said, because people are naturally drawn to them.
“It’s a good thing. You need that hook with people,” Walk said. “We call them ‘an umbrella species.’ You work to protect them and a whole other community benefits, too.”
Compared with working in other countries, Healy said communication with the North Korean farmers has been limited and indirect. Through the United Nations mission in New York, the International Crane Foundation communicates with the State Academy of Sciences in Pyongyang, instead of directly with the farming cooperative.
Healy worked previously as president of the DMZ Forum, a New York-based group focused on ecological preservation in the DMZ.
Seung-ho Lee, current president of the DMZ Forum, said conservation work in North Korea is inherently “a trust-building process” with people who have been largely cut off from the Western world. The Anbyon project is effective because it yields results without ideology or politics, he said.
“It’s a very useful approach,” Lee said. “To give them a sense of volunteerism and work, but to also give them a real product.”
Previous post on the International Crane Foundation here.
Read the full story here:
Saving the cranes: Hope flies in North Korea
Chicago Tribune
Gregory Trotter
2013-6-7
Legal issues for operating or doing business in the DPRK: Implications for NGOs, universities, and business
Thursday, June 6th, 2013Thursday, June 27, 2013
Where The University Club of Washington, DC
1135 16th Street NW
8:30 AM-1:30 PM
To see the full agenda, click here
Register here (by c.o.b. on June 21)
We are pleased to invite you to participate in an off-the-record symposium, hosted by the National Committee on North Korea and the Export Control and Sanctions Committee of the American Bar Association, on legal compliance issues for U.S. non-governmental organizations, universities, and businesses operating in North Korea or with North Korean citizens.
This half-day symposium will feature panels on U.S. export control and sanctions laws and regulations pertaining to transactions with North Korea; the implications of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for organizations operating in North Korea; and North Korea’s legal system.
Adam Szubin, the Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Department of Treasury, will give the keynote address. Speakers will include James Min on North Korean laws; Susan Kramer and Parvin Huda of the U.S. Department of Commerce; George Kleinfeld from Clifford Chance on OFAC regulations; John H. Wood of Hughes, Hubbard and Reed on the FCPA; and Yuri A. Koshkin, Trident Group and Chris Ferguson, The Risk Advisory Group, will discuss due diligence.
This off-the-record symposium will cover many practical legal aspects of North Korean law, US export control and sanctions as well as anti-bribery laws as they pertain to operating in North Korea or with North Koreans. However, it is informational in nature and is not intended to provide you with specific legal advice, which should be sought independently.
China building new railway lines to DPRK border
Thursday, June 6th, 2013According to the Wall Street Journal:
On a vast construction site outside this northeastern Chinese city, engineers are working around the clock on a project that could transform the economic—and geopolitical—dynamics of the region: a 223-mile, high-speed rail link to the North Korean border.
The $6.3 billion project is one of three planned high-speed railways designed to bring North Korea closer into China’s economic orbit, even as Beijing supports sanctions aimed at Pyongyang. China is also sinking millions of dollars into new highways and bridges in the area, and the first cross-border power cable.
China’s vision for closer economic integration with North Korea runs counter to a U.S. strategy aimed at piling pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear-weapons program and refrain from further threats.
Growth of N. Korean trade slows in 2012
Wednesday, May 29th, 2013According to Yonhap:
The growth of North Korea’s exports and overall trade volume slowed down significantly last year, apparently due to international sanctions condemning its nuclear test and other provocations, Seoul’s trade promotion agency said Wednesday.
According to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, better known as KOTRA, North Korea’s overall trade reached US$6.81 billion in 2012, growing 7.1 percent from a year earlier and reaching a record high since 1990 when such data began to be compiled.
The growth, however, marked a sharp slowdown from a 51.3 percent on-year hike in 2011.
“Such a significant slowdown of growth last year appears to have been caused by the fact that North Korea has only a limited number of export products and that sanctions by the international community continued,” KOTRA said in a press release.
The North’s overall exports gained 3.3 percent on-year to $2.88 billion with imports surging 10.2 percent to $3.93 billion.
Still, the North’s trade relations with its communist ally China strengthened with the countries’ bilateral trade reaching $6.01 billion, accounting for 88.3 percent of the North’s overall trade in 2012.
Trade with China has also slowed. According to Yonhap:
North Korea’s imports from China for this year registered its first drop in three years due apparently to China’s tightened grip on transactions with its ally under United Nations sanctions, Beijing’s customs data showed Wednesday.
The North brought in US$1.01 billion worth of Chinese goods during the January-April period, down 8.68 percent from a year earlier, according to China’s online customs data analyzed by Yonhap News Agency.
It was the first annual drop for the four-month period since 2010 when Customs-info, the online customs data provider, started to provide related information.
The North’s imports from China stood at $525.8 million for the same four-month period in 2010. It had posted two successive annual increases to reach $1.1 billion in 2012 before registering a fall this year, according to the data.
The on-year reduction this year can be attributable to China’s increased efforts to strictly apply punitive U. N. sanctions adopted to punish the North for its long-range rocket launch, believed to have been a test of its ballistic missile technology, and its third nuclear test, which occurred on Feb. 12.
Taking a step back from its previous stance to keep neutral about its ally, China joined punitive international moves by tightening its customs and immigration inspections toward the North.
The data, however, showed that the North’s exports to China grew 6 percent on-year to $842.8 million during the January-April period.
Read the full stories here:
Growth of N. Korean trade slows in 2012
Yonhap
2013-5-29
N. Korea’s imports from China drop amid tensions
Yonhap
2013-5-29
DPRK in default on ROK food loans
Friday, May 24th, 2013UPDATE 2 (2013-5-24): South Korea has again requested that the DPRK repay past food loans. According to Yonhap:
South Korea again called on North Korea Friday to repay millions of dollars in loans provided in the form of food since 2000, the Unification Ministry said.
The impoverished North missed the June 7, 2012 deadline to repay South Korea US$5.83 million in the first installment of the $724 million food loan extended to the North in rice and corn. The latest call is the South’s fifth demand made on the North to repay its debt.
Seoul’s state-run Export-Import Bank (Eximbank) sent a message on Thursday to Pyongyang’s Foreign Trade Bank, calling for the repayment, Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said in a briefing.
The South Korean bank also sent another message the same day, notifying the North of its forthcoming June 7th deadline to repay the second installment of $5.78 million, the spokesman said.
“North Korea should faithfully abide by what they previously agreed to with the South,” Kim said, calling for the repayment of food loans.
Amid a conciliatory mode under the liberal-minded late President Kim Dae-jung, Seoul started to provide food loans to the famine-ridden country, providing a total of 2.4 million tons of rice and 200,000 tons of corn from 2000-2007.
Under the deal, the North is required to pay back a total of $875.32 million by 2037.
Read the full story here:
S. Korea again asks North to repay food loans
Yonhap
2013-5-24
UPDATE 1 (2012-7-15): South Korea claims the DPRK missed a deadline for explaining how it intended to repay South Korean “loans”. According to Yonhap:
North Korea missed the deadline Sunday for notifying South Korea of how it will repay millions of dollars in loans provided in the form of food in 2000, resulting in Seoul having the right to declare Pyongyang has defaulted on its debt, an official said.
South Korea sent the North a message on June 15 that the communist nation was supposed to have paid back US$5.83 million in the first installment of a 2000 food loan worth $88.36 million by June 7. The North was required to respond to the message in 30 days.
That deadline passed on Sunday with the North remaining silent, giving South Korea the right to declare the North has defaulted on the debt, according to a government official in Seoul.
But South Korea is unlikely to go ahead with the declaration any time soon as it would have little effect on the North. The communist nation remains largely outside of the international financial system and the prospect of national default is unlikely to force it to repay its debt.
Officials said they are considering sending Pyongyang a message again calling for debt repayment.
Widespread views are that it won’t be easy for the North, which is still struggling with food shortages, to pay back its debt, but officials said the country could repay the debt in kind as it did before. In 2007 and 2008, the North repaid some debt with $2.4 million worth of zinc ores.
After the two Koreas held their first-ever summit in 2000, South Korea provided the North with a total of US$720 million in loans of rice and corn until 2007. Including interest accrued on the loans, the North is required to repay some US$875 million by 2037.
Such aid has been cut off after the South’s President Lee Myung-bak took office with a pledge to link any assistance to the North to progress in international efforts to end Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programs.
The Daily NK also covered the story.
ORIGINAL POST (2012-6-8): According to Yonhap:
North Korea has not shown any signs of repaying the loans South Korea extended in food grains since 2000 although the initial day of the scheduled repayment passed as of Thursday. The South Korean government provided North Korea grain loans worth US$725 million for seven years until 2007, including 2.4 million tons of rice and 200,000 tons of corn. The total principal and interest North Korea should repay for the next 20 years is estimated at $875.32 million.
North Korea was scheduled to pay South Korea $5.83 million by Thursday for the loans extended to it in 2000. Korea Eximbank, which is in charge of trade finance with the North, notified its counterpart the Chosun Trade Bank of North Korea of the repayment obligation Monday but North Korea had not responded of Friday.
The former South Korean governments led by President Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun provided an estimated 1 trillion won (US$850 million) to North Korea from 2000 to 2007 under the sunshine policy. South Korea provided an additional 1.37 trillion won to North Korea to finance the construction of a light water reactor in order to suspend North Korea’s nuclear development. All the loans to the North were taxpayer’s money.
…
North Korea should show sincerity in the repayment of these loans for the sake of its future. If it fails to do so, the North will encounter substantial difficulties in accessing further loans from the international community. North Korea also has failed to repay loans it borrowed from the old Soviet Union. Russia reportedly had to reduce 90 percent of the Norths loans, worth $11 billion.
If North Korea has difficulties repaying its debts to South Korea in cash, it should sincerely discuss alternative measures to repay the loans with the South Korean government.
The South Korean government should positively consider measures to get the money back in kind, such as in mineral resources. North Korea should understand that if it fails to show the minimum sincerity on the repayment of its debts, it will experience much more difficulty in attracting economic assistance from the outside world.
The Choson Ilbo reports this additional information:
In 2007 and 2008, South Korea also gave the North $80 million worth of raw materials to produce textiles, shoes and soap. At the time, North Korea repaid 3 percent of the loan with $2.4 million worth of zinc ingots. Repayments of the remaining $77.6 million become due after a five-year grace period, so North Korea must start repaying $8.6 million a year every year for 10 years starting in 2014.
Seoul also loaned Pyongyang W585.2 billion (US$1=W1,172) from the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund so it could re-connect railways and roads with the South that were severed in the 1950-53 Korean War. And it provided W149.4 billion worth of equipment to the North. The North must repay that loan in 20 years with a 10-year grace period at an annual interest of 1 percent.
It also seems unlikely that South Korea will be able to recoup W1.37 trillion plus around W900 billion in interest it provided North Korea through an abortive project by the Korean Energy Development Organization to build a light-water reactor.
The loans amount to a total of around W3.5 trillion, which the South will probably have to write off.
The Daily NK also reported on this story.
Read the full story here:
North Korea should show sincerity in repaying South Korea loans
Yonhap
2012-6-8
N.Korea Misses 1st Loan Repayment Deadline
Choson Ilbo
2012-6-8
UNFPA provides medical aid to DPRK
Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013According to Yonhap:
A United Nations organization supporting child birth has provided US$500,000 worth of medical aid to North Korean mothers and children, a report said Wednesday.
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shipped drugs and medical equipment for mothers with newborn babies in the North last month, the report by the Washington-based Radio Free Asia said.
The goods were sent to about 300 health facilities in the country and the UNFPA tapped into the U.N.’s Central Emergency Response Fund in order to provide the assistance, it said.
With a budget of $10 million, the UNFPA has been leading a five-year project to help pregnant North Korean women and conduct a census in the communist country since 2011.
Maternal death in the North reached 77 in 2008, up 40 percent from 54 recorded in the 1990s, according to the UNFPA. The rate refers to the number of women dying from child birth-related complications per 100,000 live births.
Read the full story here:
UNFPA provides US$500,000 in medical aid to N. Korean mothers
Yonhap
2013-5-22
DPRK frees Chinese fishing boat
Tuesday, May 21st, 2013UPDATE 1 (2013-5-27): According to the Global Times (PR China):
Chinese agencies operating in Dandong, Northeast China’s Liaoning Province have been implicated in the seizures of Chinese fishing boats for ransom by armed North Koreans.
The Beijing Times quoted Zhang Dechang, whose boat was seized by North Koreans in May last year, as saying that he was given a cellphone number registered in Dandong and was demanded to pay a ransom to the cellphone owner. However, Zhang failed to reach the cellphone owner, and the number later was canceled.
The report said Zhang asked the boss of a Chinese agency in Dandong, which represents North Korea in handing out licenses for Chinese fishermen to fish in North Korean waters, for mediation but was turned down. He claimed a Chinese boat took part in the looting of his boat when the North Koreans seized it.
A North Korean patrol ship, which has hijacked several Chinese fishing boats, is said to be a retired Chinese ship and given to the North by a Chinese agency, the report said.
Yu Xuejun, whose boat was hijacked by North Koreans for two weeks this month, earlier told the Global Times that the kidnappers asked him to pay ransom to a bank account of a company in Dandong, but he failed to catch the name of the company.
The Guangzhou-based Nandu Daily quoted an unidentified fishing boat owner as saying that the Chinese agencies in Dandong are related to the company which is collecting the ransom.
There are three major agencies in Dandong representing North Korea. The fishing boats, which obtained licenses from the agencies, fly both Chinese and North Korean flags and can enter certain areas inside North Korean waters.
The Chinese boat owners, whose boats had been hijacked, insisted that their boats were operating in Chinese waters when they were captured.
Sun Caihui, whose boat was seized by North Koreans in May last year and released after the intervention of the Chinese government, told the Global Times Monday that local fishermen have been operating on the western side of 124 degrees east longitude for generations, which has long been regarded as the demarcation line of the sea border between China and North Korea.
“We aren’t going to take the risk of being seized by the North Koreans again,” he said, calling on the government to clarify the sea border with the North so as to address the concerns of fishermen.
However, there is no available official documentation on the sea demarcation between the two countries.
Meanwhile, Sun Chen, a professor from Shanghai Ocean University, said Monday that the Chinese fishery authority should strengthen law enforcement activities to protect the fishermen.
“Currently, we face shortages in personnel, equipment and spending of the fishery management department. The government should attach importance to the building of the law enforcement force,” she said.
ORIGINAL POST (2013-5-21): According to Bloomberg:
North Korea freed a Chinese fishing vessel and its crew after the boat’s owner posted updates on his microblog account saying that he’d been told to pay a 600,000-yuan ($97,800) ransom to win their release.
The ship and its crew, from the northern city of Dalian, were freed today, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing a Chinese consular officer in North Korea. The ship’s owner, Yu Xuejun, said on his Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700) microblog account today that he couldn’t come up with the cash and was “thankful to the Foreign Ministry for its diplomacy.”
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China, which filed a formal complaint over the detention, is asking North Korea to investigate and “make a full explanation to us,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said today. No ransom was paid to secure the crew’s freedom, China National Radio reported today, without citing anyone.
…
“There is no territorial confrontation between China and North Korea,” the editorial said. “It’s more likely the North Korean military police are using the ambiguity of maritime borders to make a quick buck.”
Read the full story here:
North Korea Frees Chinese Fishing Boat After Ransom Report
Bloomberg
2013-5-21
UN WFP report claims DPRK citizens undernourished
Tuesday, May 7th, 2013According to Yonhap:
Eight out of every 10 North Korean families are suffering malnutrition with little access to protein foods, a U.S. media report said Tuesday.
In its survey of 87 North Korean families from January to March, the World Food Program (WFP) found that 80 percent of them were undernourished mainly due to a lack of protein intake, the Washington-based Voice of America (VOA) said.
About 38 percent of those surveyed were not able to eat high-protein foods during the one week before the survey, such as meat, fish, eggs or beans, said the report, monitored in Seoul.
Quoting the WFP report, the VOA said the North Korean families, on average, eat meat 1.3 days a week or beans 1.2 days per week.
The report also said about 14 percent of the 86 hospitalized North Korean children under age 5 whom its aid workers visited during the January-March period were in serious malnutrition conditions.
Meanwhile, AmeriCares, a U.S. non-profit aid group, is about to send 10.5 tons of drugs in humanitarian assistance to the North this week, another U.S. media report said.
The aid package, which includes antibiotics, stomach medicines and dermatology drugs, will be shipped later this week to six hospitals in Pyongyang and other areas, the Washington-based Radio Free Asia reported. The shipment will also include personal hygiene items like toothbrushes and soaps, it said.
The RFA said the latest aid has no political consideration and is solely for humanitarian purposes.
AmeriCares began its aid to the North in 1997 as the first American private group to do so. Last year, it sent US$7 million worth of medicine for flood victims in the impoverished country.
Read the full story here:
Eight out of 10 N. Korean families undernourished: report
Yonhap
2013-5-7
