North Korean Economy Watch

Aidan Foster-Carter writes in the Financial Times about some poor decision-making coming out of Pyongyang:

Great Leader? Pyongyang’s fawning hagiography not only grates, but is singularly unearned. Even by its own dim lights, North Korea’s decision-making is going from bad to worse.

Last year saw two spectacular own goals. Missile and nuclear tests were a weird way to greet a new US president ready to reach out to old foes. The predictable outcome was condemnation by the United Nations Security Council, plus sanctions on arms exports that are biting.

Domestic policy is just as disastrous. December’s currency “reform” beggars belief. Did Kim Jong-il really fail to grasp that redenomination would not cure inflation, but worsen it? Or that brazenly stealing people’s savings – beyond a paltry minimum, citizens only got 10 per cent of their money back – would finally goad his long-suffering subjects into rioting? Forced to retreat, officials even apologised. One scapegoat was sacked – and possibly shot.

By his own admission, Mr Kim does not do economics. In a speech in 1996, when famine was starting to bite, the Dear Leader whined defensively that his late father, Kim Il-sung, had told him “not to get involved in economic work, but just concentrate on the military and the party”.

That awful advice explains much. Incredibly, North Korea was once richer than the South. In today’s world, this is the contest that counts. “It’s the economy, stupid” is no mere slogan, but a law of social science.

Having taken an early lead, Kim senior threw it all away. He built the world’s fourth largest army, crippling an economy that he refused to reform, viewing liberalisation as betrayal. His own personality cult was and is a literally monumental weight of unproductive spending.

Used to milking Moscow and Beijing, in the 1970s North Korea borrowed from western banks – and promptly defaulted. That was not smart; it has had to pay cash up front ever since.

Pyongyang also resorts to less orthodox financing. In 1976 the Nordic nations expelled a dozen North Korean diplomats for trafficking cigarettes and booze. In December a Swedish court jailed two for smuggling cigarettes. More than 100 busts worldwide over 30 years, of everything from ivory and heroin to “supernotes” (fake $100 bills), leave scant doubt that this is policy.

Yet morality aside, it is stupid policy. Pariahs stay poor. North Korea could earn far more by going straight. The Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), where South Korean businesses employ Northern workers to make a range of goods, shows that co-operation can work. Yet Pyongyang keeps harassing it, imposing arbitrary border restrictions and demanding absurd wage hikes.

Now it threatens to seize $370m (€275m, £247m) of South Korean assets at Mount Kumgang, a tourist zone idle since a southern tourist was shot dead in 2008 and the north refused a proper investigation. Even before that, Pyongyang’s greed in extorting inflated fees from Hyundai ensured that no other chaebol has ventured north. Contrast how China has gained from Taiwanese investment.

In this catalogue of crassness, the nadir came in 1991 when the dying Soviet Union abruptly pulled the plug on its clients. All suffered, but most adapted. Cuba went for tourism; Vietnam tried cautious reform; Mongolia sold minerals. Only North Korea, bizarrely, did nothing – except watch its old system crumble. Gross domestic product plunged by half, and hunger killed up to a million. Now famine again stalks the land. The state cannot provide, yet still it seeks to suppress markets.

All this is as puzzling as it is terrible. China and Vietnam show how Asian communist states can morph towards capitalism and thrive. Kim Jong-il may fear the fate of the Soviet Union if he follows suit. True, his regime has survived – even if many of its people have not. Yet the path he is on is patently a dead end. Mr Kim’s own ill-health, and a belated bid to install his unknown third son as dauphin, only heighten uncertainty. Militant mendicancy over the nuclear issue – demanding to be paid for every tiny step towards a distant disarmament, then backsliding and trying the same trick again – will no longer wash. North Korea has run out of road; the game is finally up.

What now? A soft landing, with Mr Kim embracing peace abroad and reform at home, remains the best outcome. But if he obdurately resists change, we need a plan B. The US and South Korea have contingency plans for the north’s collapse. So does China, separately. Tacit co-ordination is urgent, lest future chaos be compounded by a clash of rival powers – as in the 1890s. Koreans have a rueful proverb: when whales fight, the shrimp’s back is broken.

But Beijing will not let it come to that. China is quietly moving into North Korea, buying up mines and ports. Some in Seoul cry colonialism, but it was they who created this vacuum by short-sightedly ditching the past decade’s “sunshine” policy of patient outreach. President Lee Myung-bak may have gained the Group of 20 chairmanship, but he has lost North Korea.

Nor will Mr Kim nuzzle docile under China’s wing, though his son might. As ever, North Korea will take others’ money and do its own thing. In early 2010 new fake “super-yuan” of high quality, very hard to detect, started appearing in China. They wouldn’t, would they?

Read the full article here:
Hermit economics hobbles Pyongyang
Financial Times
Aidan Foster-Carter
3/30/2010 

According to Voice of America:

Peking University Professor Zhu Feng, one of the forum participants, issued a frank warning to the North not to expect any large handouts from China.

“Bailing out North Korea’s economy [is] easy.  We have the capability.  We have no intention,” said Zhu.

Three decades after opening its economy and encouraging market activity, Beijing is one of the three largest economies in the world.  In November, Pyongyang enacted what economists say is the mirror opposite of the Chinese reforms; clamping down on markets, and extinguishing the savings of small traders with a surprise currency revaluation.

Reports from North Korea indicate the measures strangled economic activity and sparked hyperinflation in prices for basic foods.

Zhu says Pyongyang needs to adjust its course, and unless it does, China will not help.

“Offering North Korea sizable aid, and keeping it [afloat], without any change to their very bizarre policy, is detrimental to the China national interest,” said Zhu.

Soon after North Korea invaded the South in 1950, China sent hundreds of thousands of troops to aid the North.  In the past, the two countries have said their relationship was as close as “lips and teeth.”  Zhu says times have changed.

“The Korean War is over.  Beijing changed tremendously.  Our relation also altered almost completely,” he said.

Zhu says China will continue to engage with the North on humanitarian issues to prevent mass starvation.  However, he says Beijing’s North Korea policy is not centered on preserving Kim Jong Il’s rule.

“China is now ready for any form of very substantive change in North Korea – including collapse,” he said.

It is not clear if the Chinese government backs Zhu’s comments. But such blunt language from China about North Korea is unusual. Beijing has been Pyongyang’s biggest economic supporter for nearly 20 years, and, regional security experts say, it wants to avoid an economic collapse in North Korea that would send hundreds of thousands of refugees across the border.

Read the full story here:
Chinese Continued Financial Support of N. Korea Questioned
Voice of America
Kurt Achin
3/31/2010

According to the Daily NK:

In recent days there has been a sudden decrease in both food prices and the North Korean won-dollar exchange rate, so people are looking at the activities of middlemen wholesalers, the lynchpin of the North Korean market economy, in more detail.

These wholesalers, who had been watching the market situation and waiting for the new currency to stabilize, are now making their move. The markets reopened in February, and restrictions on foreign-currency use have been eased. Rice prices, which had skyrocketed to more than 1,300 won per kilogram in late February, have reportedly fallen back below 600 won as the food which these wholesalers were hoarding entered circulation.

Meanwhile, the North Korean authorities’ plan, to take back control of the economy, came to nothing as they faced a hyperinflationary spiral. Currently, the economy seems to have simply returned to the pre-redenomination period, with markets providing most of the needs of the people, and wholesalers providing products for the market.

Until the early 1990’s, commercial distribution in North Korea was managed by executive fiat. The Ministry of Commerce of the Cabinet commanded the supply chain across the whole country via the works of the National Planning Commission. There was a central wholesale center, a commercial management center and a district wholesale center in each province, and a commerce management center in each district. The state maintained a pyramid control system beneath which each district managed its own commercial spaces.

According to size, these were classified into stores and booths, and into “general” and “special” according to the items sold.

However, after the famine of the 1990’s, state distribution ceased and North Korea’s national commercial network lost its capacity to function. From then on, North Korean people started obtaining their food and basic necessities through private distribution networks, and the jangmadang was spontaneously born.

This private distribution network soon came to include a small quantity of consumer products, so called “August 3 products,” produced in small industrial enterprises and circulated in the jangmadang, and foreign, mostly Chinese, products imported with the profits of trade.

Then, after the July 1st Economic Management Reform Measure of 2002, provincial factories that produced consumer goods started bartering between themselves. During this process, the distribution system expanded and the number and scale of the wholesalers expanded with it.

A cornucopia of items, from welding rods to belts, cotton yarn to copper wire, bearings and the nuts and bolts needed in factories and enterprises were traded through these wholesalers. A paper mill which needed 10kg of welding rods, for instance, could barter 20 notebooks for them. In order to exchange soap for 10kg of welding rods, 10 bars of soap were required. In the case of soju, a traditional liquor in both Koreas, two or three liters was needed.

Provincial factories also traded their production in order to earn the necessary funds to purchase needed materials and run the factories. This was done with the approval of the state through the five percent of booths in the markets allocated to factories after the July 1st Measure. Also, it was possible because the authorities permitted the by-products of regular production to be used for handicraft production, and factory workers to sell 30 percent of production in the market.

Under the changes, the wholesalers were classified into larger ones, called “vehicle traders,” smaller ones called “runners,” and retailers representing booth merchants. They shouldered the burden of providing North Koreans all over the country with their basic necessities.

These middle men wholesalers, known colloquially as “big hands,” get their stocks through trade with foreign currency-earning enterprises. They sell the products to “runners” or directly to stores. Big hands are mostly overseas Chinese, Korean Japanese and the families of those working in foreign currency-earning businesses.

Members of the Party administrative apparatus are another kind of middle wholesaler. It is impossible for them to officially run a business in the markets, so they earn money through middle wholesale after work. They make a huge amount of profit by buying products from factory enterprises at the state price and selling them at the market price. They also sell products accumulated through bribery.

“Runners” who obtain products from the wholesalers travel the different regions of North Korea and sell them to booth retailers. Making a profit through market price differences between regions, they sell those products to retailers at a price 30 percent to 40 percent higher than the price they paid.

One defector, who ran a “runner” business between Chongjin in North Hamkyung and Sinuiju in North Pyongan, bought fabric from traders in Chongjin and sold it in Pyongsung in South Pyongan. With the money earned in Pyongsung, he bought products and sold them in Sinuiju. He went along this same Sinuiju-Pyungsung-Chungjin route back and forth. He was like an 18th century Korean peddler.

Talking of his experiences, he said, “When travelling by train, I could usually make a 30 to 40 percent profit. But there wasn’t much left after paying the necessary bribes.”

When he bought fabric in Chongjin, he paid about 500 to 550 won (in old currency) per meter. When he sold that fabric to retailers in Pyongsung market, they paid him about 800 won per meter. He made about 300 won per meter, but he spent half the money on bribes paid to gatekeepers; for documents, to army troops in charge of trains, and to train inspectors during the process of issuing travel certificates or riding the train. He also had to pay for his board and lodgings, so the final profit he made was less than 100 won per meter, he explained.

Runners like that, going between North Pyongan and North Hamkyung, usually distribute things like fabric for shoes that traders bring across the border or in through Rasun. A runner usually carries between 150 and 200 kilograms of products. When travelling on the train, one person can only carry one or two backpacks-full, because anyone carrying too much baggage will be the target of inspection and have to pay bigger bribes.

Products transported by runners are sold to retailers in the markets. Retailers sell those products at a price 20 to 30 percent higher than the original price. Therefore, the fabric Kim conveyed was sold to the final consumers at approximately 1,000 won per meter.

It seems that the figures North Korean authorities wanted to eradicate via the redenomination were these middle wholesalers, the big hands. For primary producers, paying them with adequate rations and money alone could have wrestled back state control. Retailers, meanwhile, could be controlled by locking up the markets. However, the persistent viability and energy of the middle wholesalers was uncontrollable. This is primarily because low and middle-ranking authorities are working in total collusion with them.

Now, middle wholesalers who survived the carpet bombing of the North Korean authorities, such as the 100:1 currency exchange rate, the exchange limit of 100,000 won and the restriction on usage of foreign currency, are getting ready again. The second round between the North Korean authorities and middle wholesalers with the market as its stage is about to begin. It will be interesting to see how those middle wholesalers who have grown strong will react to the actions of the North Korean authorities.

Wholesalers at Forefront of Market Battle
Daily NK
Yoo Gwan Hee
3/27/2010

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 10-03-22-1
3/22/2010

Foreign currency swaps and illegal trade are again prevalent in North Korea, despite recent currency reforms and bans on money exchanges.

Following last November’s currency reform, there has been a significant crackdown on the use of foreign currency and cross-border trade by individuals. However, reports indicate that North Korean traders continue to conduct business with outside entities, despite new regulations requiring them to remit profits through the Korean ‘Kwangson’ Bank. There has been a crack-down on unauthorized transactions, but it appears to have been ineffective.

The Korean Central Bank and Chinese People’s Bank established the Kwangson Bank in 2004 in Dandung as part of the North’s efforts to earn foreign capital. Even today, North Korean authorities rely on the Kwangson Bank to handle trade accounts, but most North Korean traders despise using the bank, and conduct most of their transactions privately, avoiding authorities. This is because the bank has a reputation for seizing the profits of private traders. The official decision to funnel foreign funds through the Kwangson Bank was part of the effort to crack down on smuggling, and was in conjunction with other currency reform efforts.

Economic reform attempts included crackdowns on illegal activity for a short time, but black market currency trade and smuggling has again become commonplace. Reform efforts were aimed at reducing unregulated and illegal trade by requiring transactions to be carried out through a government bank, but the costs associated with such a transaction further encouraged black market activity.

It also appears that currency exchange, banned as part of last year’s currency reform, is now again being allowed in order to ease rising prices and other detrimental side effects of the measures.

In North Korea, not only traders, but also average citizens are earning foreign capital through smuggling and other means. The latest reversal of policy to again allow currency exchange is seen as an attempt by authorities to sooth rising discontent within the masses.

In November of last year, North Korea implemented currency reforms and issued new notes, devaluing the currency by 100:1 and banning private holdings of foreign currency. This led North Koreans to lose faith in the value of their currency and sparked a drive on foreign monies. Now, the government appears to be implementing measures to underscore the value of the Won and to stave off inflation. Foreign visitors are allowed to again spend foreign currency and it appears that other restrictions are slowly being lifted.

According to the Daily NK:

Yun Gi Jeong, the 82-year old former Finance Director of the old Administration Council (now known as the Cabinet), has apparently been charged with resolving the crisis in the chaotic people’s economy.

Her elevation may represent an attempt to steady the ship following the disastrous currency redenomination and rumored execution of former economic boss Park Nam Ki.

The chair of a people’s unit in a neighborhood of Shinuiju told The Daily NK on Tuesday, “Prices have been fluctuating since the redenomination, but now a notice has been handed down from the Cabinet saying that they will be stabilized by April 1. It says the Cabinet will deal with this confusion in the people’s economy.”

He said that Yun Gi Jeong, who resigned her office in the Administration Council some years ago, had been brought back to the Cabinet to bring order to the chaos.

“Upon her return to the Cabinet,” the source added, “the rice price started dropping. It was over 1,500 won early March, but has now settled at around the 600 won level.”

According to his explanation, the North’s authorities intend to try and cap rising prices by April 1. The authorities released official price ceilings on February 4th; rice was 240 won and corn 130 won per kilogram, but these rapidly proved unrealistic.

Another source from North Hamkyung Province told the Daily NK yesterday, “When the rumor that they would restart distribution as normal came out, rice prices dropped drastically. As the news of Yun Gi Jeong came out, rice prices and exchange rates also went down. However, people still feel frustration at the fluctuating exchange rate.”

Yun Gi Jeong was born in Seoul in 1928 and served as the Finance Director of the Administration Council for almost 20 years from April, 1980. After her resignation in 1999 she became the President of the National Economic Institute, and is now an honorary professor at Kim Il Sung University, a member of the Party Central Committee and a delegate to the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly.

One defector who was a high official in North Korea explained to The Daily NK today, “Yun Gi Jeong is a person who Kim Il Sung was in favor of. After he died, she stepped back from the economic field.”

He added, “She tends to stick to her principles and is known to be a workaholic. Kim Jong Il presumably asked her to solve the economic problems because she is an old hand in the economic field.”

Read the full article here:
Old Guard Returns to the Economic Fold
Daily NK
Jung Kwon Ho
3/24/2010

This week there have been several reports about conditions worsening following the DPRK’s currency reform.  Here are links to some of those stories:

New Signs of Unrest in North Korea?
Peterson Institute
Conversation with Marcus Noland (audio)
March 22, 2010

Resistance against N. Korean regime taking root, survey suggests
Washington Post
Blaine Harden
March 24, 2010

Political Attitudes under Repression: Evidence from North Korean Refugees
Stephan Haggard, Marcus Noland
East West Center Working Paper
No. 21, March 2010

North Koreans fear another famine amid economic crisis
Los Angeles Times
Barbara Demick
3/23/2010

North Koreans fear the country is on the verge of a new famine
Times of London
Jane Macartney
3/20/2010

According to the AFP, the US is ready to provide food assistance but the North Koreans banned assistance a year ago:

The United States would consider resuming food aid to North Korea if Pyongyang moves to lift a year-old refusal of humanitarian assistance, the State Department said Tuesday.

“There are profound needs for the North Korean population, and to the extent that North Korea wants to accept aid from the international community, including the United States, we will be willing to consider that,” department spokesman Philip Crowley said at a daily briefing.

In June 2008, Washington agreed to send 500,000 tonnes of food aid to North Korea, including 400,000 tonnes through the UN’s World Food Program and the remainder through other non-governmental agencies.

In March last year, however, the hermit nation began refusing US food aid, without offering a reason.

“If we (provide humanitarian assistance) in the future, just as we’ve done that in the past, our efforts will be to make sure that the aid actually goes to the North Korean people who need it most and is not diverted to other groups such as the military,” Crowley said.

According to Yonhap:

North Korea has informed South Korea of its plan to look into all of the real estate owned by South Koreans inside the scenic mountain resort along its east coast, the South’s government confirmed Thursday, as Pyongyang apparently grows impatient with Seoul’s refusal to allow its citizens to travel there.

In a recently faxed message to the South Korean government, the North’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee, a state agency in charge of cross-border exchanges, said, “South Korean figures who possess real estate in the Mount Kumgang district should come to Mount Kumgang by March 25,” according to the Unification Ministry, which deals with inter-Korean affairs.

The North went on to say, “All assets of those who do not meet the deadline will be confiscated and they won’t be able to visit Mount Kumgang again.”

An inter-Korean tourism program to the mountain, once a cash cow for the impoverished North, has been suspended since the summer of 2008, when a female South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier while traveling there. A luxury hotel, a golf course, and other facilities built by the South Korean conglomerate Hyundai there have since remained idle. A similar joint tour business to the ancient city of Kaesong, just north of the two Koreas’ border, has been also halted.

North Korea, feeling the pinch of U.N. sanctions imposed for its missile and nuclear tests, has called for the South to immediately resume the tours.

In its statement issued March 4, the North Korean committee said, “We would open the door to the tour of the Kaesong area from March and that of Mount Kumgang from April.”

It said it may revoke all accords and contracts on the business unless the South stops blocking the resumption of the joint ventures.

South Korea has urged the North to first fully guarantee the safety of South Korean tourists. Related working-level talks between the two sides last month failed to yield a deal due to differences over details on a security guarantee.

The Unification Ministry expressed regret over the North’s latest threat.

“North Korea’s measure violates agreements between South and North Korean authorities, as well as between their tourism business operators,” the ministry said in a press release. “It also goes against international practice.”

It stressed the North should abide by accords with the South, and all pending issues should be resolved through dialogue.

“As the tours to Mount Kumgang and Kaesong are issues directly related with our people’s safety, there is no change in the government’s existing position that it will resume them only after the matters are settled,” it added.

Meanwhile, the head of the South Korean operator of the tours offered to resign to take responsibility for snowballing losses from the suspended businesses.

Cho Gun-shik, president of Hyundai Asan Corp., expressed his intent to step down in a statement emailed to all staff earlier Thursday, company officials said.

The Choson Ilbo has more:

In the message, North Korea said, “From March 25, North Korean authorities and experts will conduct a survey of all South Korean assets in the presence of South Korean officials concerned,” including Hyundai Asan staffers, who have assets in the area. “All South Koreans with real estate in the Mt. Kumgang area must report to the mountain by March 25,” it added.

According to the ministry, Hyundai Asan signed a lease with the North for a plot of land in Mt. Kumgang until 2052. South Korean firms have invested a total of W359.2 billion (US$1=W1,134), including W226.3 billion from Asan, in a hotel, a hot spring spa, a golf course, and a sushi restaurant there. The South Korean government owns a meeting hall for separated families opened in 2008 that cost more than W60 billion to build.

Nonetheless the threat is likely to fall on deaf ears. A South Korean security official said, “The North apparently wants South Korean firms that are in danger of losing their assets in the North to put pressure on the government, but the government won’t back down.”

A South Korean businessman operating in the Mt. Kumgang region said, “The North is threatening to seize our firms’ real estate there while talking about attracting large amounts of foreign investment. What South Korean or foreign business will make new investments in the North under these circumstances?”

Read the full stories here:
N. Korea threatens to seize S. Korean assets at Mount Kumgang
Yonhap
3/18/2010

N.Korea Ramps Up Threats Over Mt. Kumgang Tours
Choson Ilbo
3/19/2010

According to Yonahp:

North Korea executed a former top finance official last week, holding him responsible for the country’s currency reform fiasco that has caused massive inflation, worsened food shortages and dented leader Kim Jong-il’s efforts to transfer power to a son, sources said Thursday.

Pak Nam-gi, who was reportedly sacked in January as chief of the planning and finance department of the ruling Workers’ Party, was executed at a shooting range in Pyongyang, multiple sources familiar with information on North Korea told Yonhap News Agency.

“All the blame has been poured on Pak after the currency reform failure exacerbated public sentiment and had a bad effect” on leader Kim Jong-il’s plan to hand power over to his third son Kim Jong-un, one source told Yonhap on condition of anonymity.

Pak, a 77-year-old technocrat, was charged with “deliberately ruining the national economy” as a “son of a big landowner,” the sources said.

Mike wrote a few notes about Mr. Pak in February.

Read the full Yonhap story here:
N. Korean technocrat executed for bungled currency reform: sources
Yonhap
3/18/2010

According to the Daily Telegraph (UK):

Kim Jong-il, the Supreme Leader of North Korea, has a $4 billion (£2.6 billion) “emergency fund” hidden in secret accounts in European banks that he will use to continue his lavish way of life if he is forced to flee the country.

South Korean intelligence officials told The Daily Telegraph that much of the money was held in Swiss banks until authorities there began to tighten regulations on money laundering.

Mr Kim’s operatives then withdrew the money – in cash, in order not to leave a paper trail – and transferred it to banks in Luxembourg.

The money is the profits from impoverished North Korea selling its nuclear and missile technology, dealing in narcotics, insurance fraud, the use of forced labour in its vast gulag system, and the counterfeiting of foreign currency.

“I believe this is the most extensive money-laundering operation in the history of organised crime, yet the final destination of the funds has not been given the proper attention it deserves,” said Ken Kato, the director of Human Rights in Asia.

“Somewhere in the world, there are bankers who are earning a large sum of money by concealing and managing Kim Jong-il’s secret funds, and at the same time, almost nine million people in North Korea are suffering from food shortages,” he said. “I believe the secret bank accounts are now in Luxembourg, or have recently been transferred from Luxembourg to other tax havens.”

A spokesman for the Luxembourg government said that it was obliged to investigate all transactions involving Stalinist North Korea.

“The problem is that they do not have ‘North Korea’ written all over them,” he added. “They try to hide and they try to erase as many links as possible.”

…

Read the full article below:
Kim Jong-il keeps $4bn ’emergency fund’ in European banks
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Oliver Arlow
3/14/2010

According to the Joong Ang Daily:

North Korea has unilaterally raised rental fees for offices of foreign embassies and international agencies by 20 percent this year, at the same time that it tightens its grip on communications at the establishments, sources said.

A source privy to North Korean affairs said last week that the North Korean Foreign Ministry sent notices to the foreign offices last October and the increase took effect at the beginning of this year. The source also said commodity prices in markets specifically set up for foreigners have soared.

“Following the currency reform last November, the North may have wanted to earn some foreign currency by raising the rents and commodity prices,” the source said. “As far as I know, diplomats and their families are angry that the North has violated diplomatic protocols.”

Pyongyang has diplomatic offices for 25 nations, plus the office for World Food Program among other the United Nations agencies. Most rent out space in buildings owned by North Korea.

Pyongyang-based diplomats have also been asked to celebrate North Korean holidays by purchasing flowers or writing congratulatory messages.

“On Kim Jong-il’s 68th birthday last month, the North asked the diplomats to buy wreaths, made up of ‘the Kim Jong-il flowers,’ and write messages praying for Kim’s health under the ambassador’s name,” one source explained. The source did not know if the diplomats complied.

North Korea is also cracking down on the flow of information within foreign missions and agencies. The North rejected a request by a UN agency to use the Internet to send documents to UN headquarters. When diplomats make international phone calls, North Korean interpreters are there to listen in on the conversation, sources said.

“The North may want to block any details on Kim Jong-il’s health, disruption after the currency reform or other domestic affairs from reaching the outside world,” a South Korean government official said.

One Western diplomat, asking for anonymity, recently complained to a South Korean government official that diplomats in Pyongyang can’t talk to each other freely for fear of others listening in, and that they only vent their frustration when they’re out of North Korea.

In addition to making money from the foreign embassies in Pyongyang, the DPRK earns revenue from its embassies abroad.  See here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Most Pyongyang embassies (aside from Russia and China) are located in Munsudong (satellite image here). Recent photos of Pyongyang’s diplomatic quater here.

This is a fascinating topic.  What are the rental rates now?  How are they determined?  If anyone has an idea, please let me know.

Read the stories below:
Diplomats in North face price hike
Joong Ang Daily
Lee Young-jong
3/15/2010