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North Korean State Party’s CC meeting: of fired officials and coronavirus efforts

Monday, March 2nd, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

On Saturday February 29th, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Korean Worker’s Party held a so-called “enlarged” meeting. According to the KCNA report, the meeting dealt primarily with purges of corrupt officials, and coronavirus measures:

At the enlarged meeting acts alien to the party, abuse of power, practices of privileges, indulgence in bureaucracy, corruption and irregularities revealed among senior officials of the Party Central Committee and officials of the Party cadre training institution were harshly criticized and their gravity and consequences were sharply analyzed.

The Supreme Leader clarified the analysis of the issues by the Party Central Committee and its stand on them, and dealt strong blows at the acts alien to the party and unpopular and anti-socialist acts brought up for discussion at the meeting. He called on all the Party officials and organizations to draw a serious lesson from the recent incident, to make steady efforts to revolutionarize themselves and their units and bring about a new turn in the Party work.

The Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee dismissed Ri Man Gon and Pak Thae Dok from the posts of vice-chairmen of the Party Central Committee.

The meeting adopted a decision to disband the party committee of the Party cadre training base which was involved in the practices of corruption and irregularities, and to impose relevant penalty.

It’s not clear precisely what “strong blows at the acts alien to the party and unpopular and anti-socialist acts”, but presumably it refers to corruption. Corruption is one of the most common acts for WPK-officials to get purged (or fired) over, and the formulations indicate that this is indeed what happened here. Some have suggested it may have had to do with shoddy work in the country’s coronavirus measures, but even reading carefully between the lines, I can’t see enough evidence to back that up. “[A]cts alien to the Party” [비당적 적행위],  I would argue, is a clear statement about specific acts particularly alien to the Party’s values. Shoddy handling of specific policy implementation related to the virus does not fall naturally into that category. Moreover, the antivirus measures were praised at the very same meeting. North Korean politics is full of contrasts and mixed messages, but this would be a stretch too far.

The problem with these methods, of course, is that they do nothing to address the long-term issue of corruption. The WPK (and the North Korean state for that matter) lacks institutions for accountability and independent oversight. There is no proper justice system in any reasonable sense of the term. So scare campaigns and setting examples, like the CC meeting in question did, really is the only avenue available. These measures might have some positive impacts in the short run – we don’t know – but in the long run, they make little difference. Kim Jong-un has ostensibly made anti-corruption a priority, but so far, campaigns and sporadic crackdowns are the only visible results. Corruption is obviously bad for the economy, but if it helps people get around draconian laws (as is the case in North Korea) to do business, it might be a net positive for the economy.

The meeting also dealt with North Korea’s efforts to contain the coronavirus. There’s a lot to say about the text, I’ve highlighted (in bold) the part relating to economic affairs:

Discussed at the meeting were issues of taking nationwide top-class anti-epidemic steps in a more thorough-going way and strictly putting them into practice in order to cope with the viral epidemic spreading rapidly around the world.

In case the infectious disease spreading beyond control finds its way into our country, it will entail serious consequences, the Supreme Leader said, noting that the strong measures taken by our Party and the government from the beginning have been the surest and highly reliable, preemptive and decisive preventive measures as this viral infection spreads so rapidly, its incubation period is uncertain and its contagion route is also scientifically uncertain.

An urgent task at present is to supplement and complement the law on the state emergency anti-epidemic and to readjust state crisis control regulations in an orderly way, the Supreme Leader said, emphasizing that the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, the Cabinet and other related institutions must further strengthen the state anti-epidemic force immediately and push ahead with the work for supplementing and complementing anti-epidemic means, system and laws based on the experiences gained through the on-going enforcement of preemptive and powerful anti-epidemic measures to cope with infectious disease.

The enlarged meeting also discussed measures to deter the influx and spread of the infectious disease in a scientific, preemptive and lockdown way.

No special cases must be allowed within the state anti-epidemic system, the Supreme Leader said, stressing the need to set up a strict discipline by which all the fields and units of the country unconditionally obey to the command and control of the Central Headquarters for the emergency anti-epidemic work and thoroughly execute instructions from it, and to further tighten the system of reporting to the Party and legal surveillance.

He instructed the Cabinet and the Central Emergency Anti-epidemic Headquarters to seal off all the channels and space through which the infectious disease may find its way, and strengthen check-up, test and quarantine under the work system and order already in place.

The meeting also stressed the issue of tightening economic organization and anti-epidemic work under the prevailing situation and conditions so as to accomplish this year’s goals without fail and to thoroughly ensure the life and security of the people.

It is important for the Party organizations at all levels to have clear understanding of the intention of the Party Central Committee and put it into practice, the Supreme Leader said, urging the need for the Party to provide an impetus so that the Cabinet and the economic institutions at all levels could provide proper economic operation and command under the present situation.

The anti-epidemic measures being taken by us is a crucial state affair for the defence of the people and a heavy responsibility of the Party Central Committee, not just the prevention of the disease, the Supreme Leader said, underlining the need for all to thoroughly carry out the decisions and instructions of the Party Central Committee and direct all-out efforts to the security of the country and the life and safety of the people.

The question is, of course, what this means in practice. There is no doubt that the economy is suffering, and not just in terms of sheer growth numbers or the like. Much of North Korea’s imports from China are blocked due to the border closure, and even smuggling is facing heavy clampdowns. Internal travel and movement of goods is heavily restricted. There is, it seems to me, fairly little that the state can really do to balance this all in terms of economic measures, but of course, the state must tell the population that it is doing things and taking action.

(Source: Korean Central News Agency, “Enlarged Meeting of Political Bureau of C.C., WPK Held,” 29/2/2020.)

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North Korea strengthens internal travel restrictions to keep the coronavirus in check

Friday, February 28th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Daily NK  has reported on the travel restrictions inside the county before, as this blog has covered here and here. This recent report goes into greater detail:

“The No. 2 departments in local Ministry of People’s Security [MPS] offices are placing further restrictions on the issuing of travel documents, and the authorities are cracking down on vans shuttling people around for money,” a Kangwon Province-based source told Daily NK today.

“No. 10 sentry posts [managed by the Ministry of State Security, or MSS] are cracking down on buses and other vehicles moving people. Even local police stations have setup temporary checkpoints to conduct crack downs on vehicles transporting people,” the source added.

It seems like we’re not talking about a blanket ban on travel across provincial borders per se. Rather, the state is banning and heavily restricting certain forms of transportation, especially unauthorized kinds (which otherwise are often  tacitly tolerated, not least through institutionalized bribery). This, too, impacts market trade since the transportation sector is crucial to shuttling goods around the country.

The authorities are thoroughly preventing any vehicles or people from transiting from the border region to the interior of the country and the other way around, sources told Daily NK.

Sources said that anyone who has entered the country from abroad but doesn’t have a document certifying they have been tested for the coronavirus are restricted from travelling. Merchants without proper travel documentation are also reportedly being targeted by the authorities. Even work units involved in construction projects are being restricted from moving around, sources said.

[…]

No. 2 departments in local MPS offices are restricting the issuance of travel documents to everyone unless they are on government orders, Daily NK sources further reported.

Even factory officials who need to travel to other places of the country to collect raw materials have been told to wait until “later” (after the COVID-19 crisis passes over), sources said.

The authorities are also carefully checking container trucks and the baggage compartments of buses for people hitching a ride in these hidden spaces, they added.

There are gaps, however, in the lock down on travel that the authorities are trying to implement.

“Some vehicles, including taxis, are cleverly selecting routes to avoid checkpoints,” the Kangwon Province-based source said.

“People are wearing masks just to avoid getting stopped by the authorities,” he added.

The border regions are of course especially targeted. The state knows it cannot fully close the border shut and thus needs internal controls to be forceful. The mention of certification of testing is interesting and implies that there are ways individuals can take action to test themselves. Perhaps it refers to the medical test teams reportedly dispatched to the border to China.

“There are a lot of ‘storm troopers’ in Kangwon Province who hail from all over the country, which means there’s a lot of people moving around,” the Kangwon Province-based source said. “The authorities can’t completely shutdown the province from the outside because the shock troops need to move supplies into the area for construction projects, but they are setting up multiple check points to block as much traffic as they can.”

The state still needs to continue running its daily affairs, and it’s unclear to what extent construction projects and other things that may be hampered by internal controls have been put on hold. This must be a bureaucratic nightmare to coordinate and often, one hand of the state doesn’t know what the other is doing.

Article source: Kang Mi Jin, “N. Korea further strengthens restrictions on domestic travel,” Daily NK, 27 February 2020, accessed 28 February, 2020.

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Posted in Black markets, China, Coronavirus, Economic reform, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Health care, International trade, Transportation | Comments Closed

North Korea and the coronavirus: why internal controls may be working

Tuesday, February 25th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

At this point, it seems unlikely that not a single case of the coronavirus would have reached North Korea, despite government media claims. The border to China is quite porous even when controls are tight, and the provinces bordering North Korea had seen, as of last week, some 200 cases. The government has ordered schools shut for one month starting five days ago, on February 20th. Unsurprisingly, it has taken special care to protect Pyongyang from the virus, and face mask distribution goes first to the one percent.

The economic effects of all this are very troubling. As this blog has previously noted, markets and society overall seem to be taking the border closure much more seriously than sanctions, and have reacted with much more anxiety than when new rounds of sanctions measures have been levied by the international community in the past. Prices have climbed quite drastically, as we shall look at in some detail in this post. They have risen by much more in Hyesan than in the rest of the country, which tells us something interesting about the government’s internal controls. That differences in market prices are increasing could be a sign that internal controls on travel across provincial boundaries are being enforced quite effectively. When traders cannot as effectively move their goods to where demand is the highest, prices will increase. One also has to bear in mind that Hyesan is very dependent on trade with China to begin with, and we should therefore expect prices there to increase disproportionately.

(My apologies for the awkward look of the graphs — please click for full size!)

In normal times too, prices tend to be higher in Hyesan than in other cities. But usually not by that much. Notice what happens around  January, though: prices skyrocket all over the country but they do so by much more in Hyesan.

This is particularly evident when we look at price differences. Normally, prices are between 5–10 percent higher in Hyesan than in both Pyongyang and Sinuiju. Since the border closure, however, they have gone beyond 20 percent over both cities, according to price observations from the past few weeks. 
Again, the border closure to China may be a central part of the explanation. But rice itself isn’t typically a good that North Korea relies so much on Chinese imports for. We don’t know the precise proportions, but likely, most rice consumed in North Korea in an ordinary year is grown within the country. A likely conclusion is, therefore, that the closure of provincial borders within North Korea is being enforced with some efficiency, making it much more difficult for market traders to transport goods such as rice between different markets in the country. This adds to the already stark economic difficulties from the closure of the border to China. Many other prices have risen drastically as well: gas prices in Hyesan are now 46 percent higher than in late December of last year, and 38 percent higher in the country as a whole. The government has attempted, reportedly with some success, to institute price controls on the markets, but as the story goes with such state attempts in general, they are unlikely to last as black markets arise to respond to shortages.

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How the coronavirus may impact the North Korean economy (Updated 18/2/2020)

Thursday, February 13th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Yesterday (February 12th), North Korea announced it is prolonging its self-imposed isolation to protect the country from the coronavirus. KCNA:

The spread of the epidemic comes to be a serious problem with the possibility of international disaster.

In this regard, the Non-Permanent Central Public Health Guidance Committee of the DPRK discussed the issue of prolonging the isolation period and strictly enforcing it in order to completely cut off the inroads of Covid-2019 and ensure the life of the people and safety of the state, and submitted it to the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly

The Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK examined, approved and decided the proposal of the Non-Permanent Central Public Health Guidance Committee according to the law on prevention of epidemics.

According to the decision urgently adopted at the SPA Presidium, the isolation period in the territory of the DPRK shall be prolonged to 30 days for the time being.

All the institutions and fields of the state and foreigners staying in the DPRK should obey it unconditionally.

The KCNA website doesn’t allow for direct links, but the above was published on February 12th at their website. The country’s quarantine seems to amount to a near-total shutdown of cross-border traffic. So far, North Korea has not confirmed any deaths from the virus, but sources from inside the country have claimed that at least a handful of people have died from the virus. It seems highly doubtful that these sources could know for sure that the coronavirus, and not regular pneumonia, was the cause.

The government’s measures are rather stern, but a border shutdown is perhaps the most reasonable measure the government can take since it doesn’t have the resources to properly monitor the situation inside the country. KCNA also reported on February 12th that the local Red Cross “organized training courses for Red Cross volunteers and sent them to relevant areas.” A press statement (not on their website) from the Red Cross confirms this and says that the “Red Cross has also sent volunteers on bikes to these remote areas to share coronavirus awareness messages.” (Updated Feb 15 2020 with link to the press statement.)

How is all this impacting the North Korean economy? We don’t know for sure, but here are some possibilities:

The markets appear to be under a great deal of pressure. The border trade shutdown isn’t exactly total, as items such as fuel is likely still coming through pipelines. Certainly, some other goods are getting through as well, we just don’t know how much. But most consumer goods are kept out, and the authorities are even cracking down heavily on smuggling that it usually turns a blind eye to, resulting in drastic price rises over the past few weeks. According to some reports, perhaps exaggerated, economic activity is at a virtual standstill along the border. Prices have not reacted this strongly to any sanctions-related measures throughout “maximum pressure”, or really any international event that I can recall. All this points to the border closure measures being seriously and strictly enforced. The ban on tourism is also a significant blow to the economy. Tourism from China has been growing steadily as a source of income for the past few years and it’s a particularly crucial revenue stream of foreign currency at a time when many others have dried up in the wake of sanctions.

In addition to the international border crossing, the government has also banned travel between regions inside North Korea, to prevent the virus from potentially spreading through the country. One has to assume that this ban is at least as strictly enforced as the one on the Chinese border. If so, internal market trade may well be  severely hampered, as traders can no longer easily move goods between regions. This would obviously be a big problem, particularly for agricultural goods but also for the manufacturing sector. The North Korean market economy, which a majority of North Koreans are in some way dependent upon for their consumption, needs a well-functioning transportation network to operate with even a minimum level of efficiency. It is no coincidence that transportation as a sector has gone ahead of many others in North Korea’s marketization process. The government has now reportedly instituted price controls. These are unlikely to be respected perhaps even in the short run, and certainly will not be in the longer run. More traders will sell on the black markets, which will grow perhaps beyond any scope they’ve been since the early 2000s when the state began incorporating the markets into the official system.

One North Korean source quoted by Radio Free Asia puts the government’s dilemma regarding the virus and the economy brutally but clearly:

According to the third source, the poor are angry that the rich care about their health, but don’t seem to care if they have eaten.

“They say they might die from a disease, but they could also die from starvation because they are unable to make enough money to support themselves for a day,” said the third source, adding that the working class say there is no difference between the two because they are dead either way.

At the end of the day, there will come a time when keeping the border shut and domestic travel and transportation paralyzed just won’t be worth it or even possible, at least without massive humanitarian aid coming in to compensate. Something will have to give eventually, and when it does, the real challenge of virus containment may truly begin.

Update 18/2/2020:

Reuters reports that North Korea seems to be planning to hold the Arirang mass games by August, counting on the virus crisis to have eased by the summer:

The Mass Games are due to return on August 15, which is celebrated as Liberation Day on the anniversary of Japan’s defeat at the end of World War Two, Young Pioneer Tours, which runs tours to the North, said in a statement.

Despite the name, the Mass Games are large performances involving tens of thousands of dancers, gymnasts, martial artists and singers acting out familiar propaganda themes.

Another firm, Koryo Tours, quoted sources in North Korea as saying the games were expected to be held over major holidays, perhaps starting on August 15 and including October 10, the 75th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Worker’s Party of Korea.

No further details were known, and tickets are always sold on site rather than in advance, said Koryo Tours general manager Simon Cockerell.

“Tourists still can’t enter North Korea but when the virus issue dies down the border will open again,” Cockerell told Reuters. “It’s a reactive policy, so it will depend on what happens in China, basically.”

North Korea revived the Mass Games in 2018 to sell an image of international engagement and peace while raising much-needed foreign currency.

Source: Josh Smith, “North Korea looks to hold ‘Mass Games’ this year despite coronavirus fears: tour companies,” Reuters, 18/2/2020.

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Posted in China, Coronavirus, Disease prevention, Epidemics, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Health care, International trade | Comments Closed

North Korea’s coronavirus border shutdown: “Nobody is to come into contact with Chinese people”

Wednesday, February 5th, 2020

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

North Korean authorities seem to have basically ordered the country’s border to China shut entirely in response to the coronavirus outbreak, though it’s still unclear to what extent these orders are being implemented. Reuters:

“They’re keeping the cargo out and they’re keeping the Chinese out; nobody can go in or out,” said one source with firsthand knowledge of the situation at the China-North Korea border.

Kang Mi-jin, a North Korean defector in Seoul who reports for the Daily NK website, also confirmed that the border appears to have been almost entirely shut down since at least Jan. 30.

“The Ministry of People’s Armed Forces ordered all guard posts to bar smuggling as well,” she said. “People, freight, nothing can come in or go out.”

Pyongyang has reportedly asked Beijing not to repatriate North Korean defectors detained in China, according to one South Korean pastor who works with refugees.

According to the source with knowledge of the situation at the border, North Koreans who work in restaurants and elsewhere in China, violating United Nations sanctions, are in “virtual captivity” in their homes under instructions from authorities back in North Korea.

North Korea is typically adept at implementing public health interventions and acted “swiftly and decisively” to try to stop the disease from entering the country, but sanctions restrictions could make it difficult for them to get medical supplies, said Harvard Medical School’s Kee Park, who has worked on health care projects in North Korea.

“Their actions, very costly in terms of revenue from tourists and trade as well as administratively for quarantining people, reflect their concerns regarding their health system’s capacity to handle an outbreak,” Park said.

The efforts – which appear to have been successful in preventing any cases in North Korea so far – mean North Korea has severed or drastically restricted the economic ties it relies on.

“There could be a huge impact not just on the North’s market economy, but also on the entire economy of the country,” Kang said. “North Korea promotes localization, but even for products – candies, crackers, or clothing – manufactured in the country, the raw materials come from China.”

Upcoming North Korean political holidays, which usually include gifts of sweets and crackers for children, may be more less festive than usual if the country’s supplies of sugar, flour, and other ingredients are scarce, she said.

Source and full article: “Burdened by sanctions, North Korea sees coronavirus threaten economic lifelines,” Josh Smith, Reuters, 4/2/2020.

Daily NK reports similar that the government has, quite incredibly, shut the crucial Sinuiju port for shipments to and from China:

Daily NK sources reported that with the port’s shutdown, maritime transportation of goods near the Sino-North Korean border have completely come to a halt.

“All the harbors at Sinuiju Port, which were open until at least Jan. 24, have been completely shut down as of Jan. 25,” a North Pyongan Province source told Daily NK on Friday.

“Authorities are prohibiting the movement of both personnel and goods to stop the coronavirus from entering the country,” he added.

Daily NK sources explained that ships leaving for sea must normally receive a confirmation document and undergo a series of inspections at port customs, but all the customs offices are currently closed and all the boats are docked.

Sinuiju Port, which sits opposite the Chinese city of Dandong in Liaoning Province, is a hub for smuggling as well as official trade with China.

Government ships charged with clamping down on smuggling on the Yalu River have also halted operations, Daily NK sources reported.

“Since all the boats are docked, all the anti-smuggling boats working along the Yalu River have anchored as well,” one source said. “The military unit overseeing the boats have given orders that ‘nobody is to come into contact with Chinese people.’”

Smuggling along the Yalu River also appears to have largely stopped, according to Daily NK sources.

”The current atmosphere is such that if anyone were to say they were going out to smuggle, they would be branded a traitor,” one source said.

With North Korea constantly emphasizing the danger posed by the Wuhan coronavirus through state media along with intensifying its border security, smugglers are on their toes, Daily NK sources said.

Not only is there a fear of infection, but smugglers are also worried that being caught smuggling while the government is so intensely guarding the border might lead to much harsher punishment than usual.

Article source: “N. Korea shuts down Sinuiju Port amid coronavirus fears,” Mun Dong Hui, Daily NK, 4/2/2020.

The state is taking very serious measures. According to another Daily NK report (in Korean), medical staff has been dispatched to all customs houses along the Chinese border, and are checking the vitals of everyone who enters from China. In the Nampo port, North Korea’s commercially most important one, foreign passengers are forbidden from leaving their ships and entering the country.

As NK Pro reports, tourism is essentially completely banned, and border crossings with China and Russia completely shut aside from outbound movements of people (with some exceptions, as reported here by Daily NK). Goods may still cross by land between the countries. People who have been to China are quarantined for one month.

Predictably, goods prices have soared as a result of the border closings, particularly on manufactured and imported goods from China. Prices for goods like flour have gone up by 47 percent since January. This is itself very interesting, since we’ve seen such small or non-existent market price changes following sanctions thus far. The most likely reason is that sanctions actually do not greatly impact most goods that matter to people’s everyday lives, and the North Korean government won’t exactly stop goods from crossing the border. Here, however, the government itself is enforcing a blanket ban on crossings. It’s serious, and reportedly even for smugglers.

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Posted in China, Coronavirus, Health care, International trade, Ministry of Public Health, Sanctions, SARS | Comments Closed

Tuberculosis in North Korea

Wednesday, April 11th, 2018

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Some interesting (and disturbing) numbers and facts in this article by Bloomberg. One wonders just how many TB treatments one of Kim Jong-un’s yachts could pay for…

While the rogue state’s nuclear ambitions have long inspired angst—and led to economic sanctions—the threat of TB, the planet’s biggest infectious killer, has garnered less attention. With more than 100,000 cases in 2016, North Korea is on the World Health Organization’s list of nations with the greatest incidence of the deadly lung disease, and doctors warn that an explosion in multidrug-resistant strains could be coming.

In February, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the biggest financial contributor to TB control in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea since 2010, announced that it will close its programs there in June, citing challenges working in the country. The closure of programs is likely to lead to “massive stock outs of quality-assured TB drugs nationwide,” wrote Harvard Medical School doctors in an open letter to the Global Fund, published on March 14 in the British medical journal the Lancet. Such privation in the past has “led to the rapid creation of drug-resistant TB strains, as doctors ration pills and patients take incomplete regimens,” they wrote.

Infections that can’t be cured with standard drugs are already rife in the country. No nationally representative survey has been conducted to measure the incidence among North Korea’s 25 million people, but according to WHO estimates, 5,700 of the country’s 130,000 TB infections in 2016 were caused by bacteria resistant to the antibiotic rifampicin or at least two other key TB medications.

That may be a gross underestimate, according to a study published last year in the Journal of Korean Medical Science that analyzed hundreds of patient sputum samples. More than three-quarters of those that tested positive for TB contained multidrug-resistant strains, and two samples contained extremely drug-resistant strains—a form almost impossible to treat in resource-poor countries such as North Korea. Treatment for patients with multidrug-resistant TB, or MDR-TB, commonly lasts two years or longer and typically involves six months of daily injections and a regimen of about 14,000 pills, including some that are toxic.

Treatment regimens that are too short or rely on inferior or inappropriate medicines are the fastest route to drug resistance, says Jennifer Furin, a Harvard-trained doctor and researcher, who’s cared for TB patients for 23 years. Cutting funding to programs in North Korea, she says, will undermine disease-control efforts beyond North Korea.

“This will be a disaster that the global health community will pay for later,” Furin says. “This is a politically created problem that will turn into a health catastrophe, not just for the people living in the DPRK, but for everybody in the region.”

Chinese authorities are on alert for cases among migrant workers from North Korea. Still, many people who’ve been exposed to TB develop a latent infection with no symptoms, making it difficult to stop at borders.

Dandong, a city in China’s northeastern Liaoning province and separated from North Korea by a river, is a main entry point for migrant workers. Quarantine officials identified 33 TB cases among 9,500 North Koreans screened from 2012 to 2014, according to a government report published in 2014 that recommended heightened surveillance in the Dandong area. Local authorities pledged in December to beef up border screening and epidemic management.

Just as HIV has helped spread TB in sub-Saharan Africa, chronic malnutrition is fueling the epidemic in North Korea, according to Kwonjune Seung, who was among the authors of the open letter to the Global Fund published in the Lancet. Seung visits a dozen TB centers in North Korea twice a year as medical director of the Eugene Bell Foundation, a Christian charity focusing on treating North Korean patients. A spillover of MDR-TB from North Korea “would take decades to clean up and could detrimentally affect the public health of bordering countries like China and South Korea,” Seung and his colleagues wrote in their letter.

More than 38 countries contribute to the Global Fund, including South Korea and the U.S.; in late March, Congress approved $1.35 billion in funding for the 2018 financial year. The Global Fund defended its decision to suspend its programs in North Korea, saying in an email that it was fully aware of the risks that might arise from disorderly closure of its grants and that it’s working with Unicef to accommodate mitigating actions. The decision to withdraw from the country wasn’t taken in response to pressure but rather influenced by concerns about the “unique operating environment” in North Korea, it said. The closed environment prevents donors from properly assuring effective use of grants and resources and managing risks. As of last August, the Global Fund’s internal performance reviewers gave the North Korea program a B1, or “adequate,” rating.

In an open letter to the Geneva-based organization published on March 13 by the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s official news agency, Kim Hyong Hun, the country’s vice minister of public health, accused the Global Fund of bowing to the “pressure of some hostile forces.” President Trump has been trying to enlist other nations in a campaign of sanctions against North Korea.

“The decision to suspend the Global Fund projects in North Korea, with almost no transparency or publicity, runs counter to the ethical aspiration of the global health community, which is to prevent death and suffering due to disease, irrespective of the government under which people live,” Seung and his colleagues wrote in the Lancet.

Furin sees it as another dimension of the tensions between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom the U.S. president nicknamed “Little Rocket Man” after the nation tested its missile capabilities in September. The two nations are slated to meet in an historic summit as early as May. “You can’t help but think global powers are very concerned about North Korea’s erratic behavior, and this is a way to punish the country,” she says. “But this is a weapon of destruction in and of itself. TB is an airborne disease. It doesn’t stay within borders.”

Article source:
North Korea’s Other ‘Weapon’ Is Poised to Explode
Fiona Li, Peter Martin and Dandan Li
Bloomberg News
2018-04-11

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Friday fun: More North Korean “viagra”

Friday, January 19th, 2018

Here is the scan of a box of North Korean “viagra” tablets:

I am not a pharmacist, so I cannot speak to the efficacy of the product. However, the Washington Post reviewed a similar product back in 2016 and concluded it may actually work because it contained sildenafil. This product also claims to contain sildenafil, though we do not know how it is formulated.

Perhaps most humorously, the dosage instructions caution the consumer to “take one or two capsule [sic], 30 min to an hour before married life”. Presumably “married life” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. There is a great joke here but you have to actually know me to hear it.

The pills are manufactured by the Tongyang Koryo Medicine Factory (pictured below):

 

The name Tongyang shows up in several industries, so if they are all linked, the company may also be involved in mineral water, alcohol, building materials, and retail.

Have a good weekend.

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DPRK doctors earn hard currency abroad

Wednesday, November 25th, 2015

According to the Joong Ang Ilbo:

North Korea is making $15 million a year from deploying 1,250 doctors and nurses in 26 nations where they perform illegal medical practices such as abortions and injections of illegal substance, South Korea’s intelligence agency reported Tuesday.

Some 1,170 North Korean medical staff are working in Africa, according to lawmakers Lee Cheol-woo of the ruling Saenuri Party and Shin Kyoung-min of the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy. They were briefed by the National Intelligence Service (NIS) on Tuesday as members of a parliamentary intelligence committee. The NIS reported that North Korean doctors are engaged in illegal medical practices with a focus on earning foreign exchange. They also sell dubious medical products.

The NIS said the North was accused of bribing local officials to keep their illegal activities going. Citing a report by a local newspaper in Tanzania published on Feb. 21, the NIS said North Korea was caught trading sexual enhancer products, or aphrodisiacs, that contained mercury 185 times higher than international standards.

Dispatching medical operatives overseas appears to be part of Pyongyang’s long-running effort to earn foreign currency. The intelligence agency also reported that North Korea, which it said was accelerating its exports of labor, is earning $230 million a year on average from 58,000 workers in 50 different countries overseas. Pyongyang is also reportedly planning to export 3,000 new workers to labor in the fields of construction, medical and IT industries.

North Koreans sent abroad also work in logging, mining, construction and agriculture.

The two lawmakers also quotes the NIS as reporting a sense of disappointment among North Koreans after Pyongyang failed to deliver on its promise to improve people’s living conditions to mark the anniversary of the 70th foundation of the Workers’ Party. The Communist state is also suffering from an acute shortage of electricity, according to a NIS report.

On Choe Ryong-hae, secretary of the Workers’ Party who has vanished from the public view for nearly a month, was sent to a rural agricultural cooperative for “revolutionary re-education,” the NIS reported, citing a classified source of information.

The agency said Choe was removed from power partly to take responsibility for a partial collapse of a power plant in Yanggang Province.

Read the full story here:
Pyongyang’s flying doctors pull in $15M a year: NIS
Joong Ang Ilbo
Kang Jin-Kyu
2015-11-25

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German NGO establishing school for deaf

Wednesday, July 8th, 2015

According to the Associated Press:

In a country with zero kindergartens specifically for the deaf, Robert Grund wants to help establish the first — just a small suite of rooms for perhaps a couple dozen kids, in North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, a city of roughly 2.5 million.

It’s a small step, but Grund, the Pyongyang representative of the World Federation of the Deaf and the city’s only full-time deaf foreign resident, sees it as part of a larger push to end isolation for the deaf here by helping them be heard, involved and empowered in projects about them.

He appears to be making progress.

Over the past few years, North Korean officials have grown more receptive to helping the disabled. Events have become more frequent and get a higher profile in the state-run media, while more cultural exchanges are being allowed abroad. Recent media stories played up a new all-deaf soccer team. The North last month held high-profile events to mark Disabled Persons Day.

The kindergarten project is also coming together.

Grund says officials have approved a location for the facility, several rooms in a now under-used nursery building, and appear keen on opening it in time for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the country’s ruling party on Oct. 10.

The kindergarten itself will be wholly paid for and funded by TOGETHER-Hamhung, a German non-profit Disabled Persons Organization.

“Nobody knows how many kids will come,” Grund said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “If necessary, we can assign more rooms for children.”

The plan is to accept children from infancy on up until they are old enough to attend regular deaf schools. Grund hopes access will be based solely on need, but he is not sure whether the government will instead decide who gets to go.

“From our point of view, every deaf child has access,” he said. “Since this country strongly advertises the right of children to be in nurseries and kindergartens, it is probably not so much a matter of choosing, but a matter of information and spreading the word so that the families get to know the new option and dare to bring their deaf child, overcoming the traditional hiding in the family.”

___

To be deaf in North Korea is to endure a level of isolation that is hard to imagine.

For most of his childhood, Ri Jong Hyok was a shut in.

While his father went out to do construction work, he stayed at home in Pyongyang helping his mother make tofu. He didn’t go to school. He had no friends and, with no one to teach him sign language, essentially no way to communicate with them even if he did.

“I had never seen sign language before I came here,” Ri told the AP through a sign language interpreter during a visit to the country’s largest school for the deaf, in Songchon, outside of Pyongyang, last year.

Ri is lucky to have found the school.

He wants to be a barber, and the school has a classroom where the students practice cutting each other’s hair, with barber’s chairs and pictures of various hairstyles on the walls. With few other trades open to the deaf, the most common jobs are barber or tailor for men, and hairstylist or seamstress for women.

Of the eight schools for older deaf children in North Korea, none are located in Pyongyang, though statistically the deaf population in a city the same size in a developing country would likely be in the tens of thousands.

There are roughly 300,000 deaf people in all of North Korea, according to official estimates.

But while about 10-20 percent of deaf children in developing countries are able to study in deaf schools, according to the World Federation of the Deaf, that rate is just 2 percent in North Korea, said an aid worker who spoke on condition of anonymity because of worries that ongoing projects might be hurt.

North Korean officials dispute that estimate.

Ro Kyong Su, director of the Korean Economic and Cultural Center for the Deaf and Blind, said mainstream public schools or other special-needs facilities currently accommodate most deaf or hearing-impaired students. By his calculations, there are about 6,000 school-age deaf children who need to be in schools that are specifically for the deaf. He said about half already are, and the number is rising.

“The other half will soon be able to go to school. We aren’t looking at a five-year or 10-year plan. It will be much sooner than that,” he said.

Officials involved in projects for the deaf acknowledge an outdated grasp of the size of the deaf community.

A major problem continues to be getting access to and diagnosing pre-school children, many of whom are shut in at home with families who have little awareness of hearing disabilities or the resources that might be available to them.

The government’s figures are also based on an old, somewhat ambiguous survey. Underreporting of disabilities is common, both because of a sense of shame and a fear among parents that, if reported, their children might be sent off to distant institutions, pigeonholed and channeled into an educational or career path with few opportunities. Nevertheless, a new survey is underway, which Ro believes will provide a more reliable picture.

___

Grund, possibly more than anyone else, has helped influence the change in attitudes toward the deaf here.

As a teenager, he watched a TV report in his native Germany suggesting there were “practically no” deaf people in North Korea. A fourth-generation deaf child in his own family, an incredulous Grund decided to go see for himself. Grund, now 30, has since devoted himself to improving life for deaf North Koreans. He works with the bureaucracy and with the deaf to train them to plan and lead their own projects.

Though funding is always a struggle, he has received support from Catholic and Protestant groups and private donors, mainly in Germany. The biggest individual contribution came from Michael Spavor, of Paektu Cultural Exchange and the organizer of former NBA star Dennis Rodman’s visit last year, who donated $20,000 to the deaf kindergarten project.

Grund’s mantra for empowering the deaf, “nothing about us without us,” often rankles with even the most sympathetic North Korean officials. In the country’s top-down system, hearing bureaucrats who often don’t understand the deaf experience are used to making decisions on their behalf.

Grund says he will continue to cooperate with deaf North Koreans — he currently works closely with about 20, up from just two in 2013 — to help them join mainstream society.

One priority is more schools for occupational training and educational opportunities for the deaf. Another is teaching more deaf children — and interpreters — how to sign. He also wants sign language interpretation made available at workplaces and meetings. But most of all, he wants to see signing on national television broadcasts, if just to raise awareness in the hearing community that the deaf exist and need not be hidden away.

“That has been my oldest dream, from the time I first came here,” he said.

Read the full story here:
German attempts to break down barriers for deaf in N. Korea
Associated Press
Eric Talmadge
2015-7-8

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“Dwarfism” in the DPRK

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

This week I read the following report in the Washington Free Beacon (2015-3-13):

North Korea’s communist government has created a dwarf village in a remote part of the country where short people it regards as undesirables are prevented from reproducing and forced to fend for themselves within the harsh Stalinist system.

The abuse of North Koreans who have dwarfism, a genetic condition that produces short bodies and disproportionate limbs, is the latest disclosure of widespread human rights abuses within the country. A U.N. commission report a year ago charged the regime with “crimes against humanity.”

Several North Korean defectors disclosed the existence of the village, called Yeonha-Ri, and said it is located in Kimhyongjik County, a border region in northeastern Ryanggang Province. The province is named after North Korea’s founding dictator Kim Il-Sung’s father, Kim Hyong-Jik.

Dwarfs are persecuted by the regime under a policy that combines Korean superstitions about physical deformities manifesting from personal or ancestral sin, and the hardline communist regime’s demand that all citizens must work, according to North Korean defectors.

As part of the anti-dwarf measures, all people under 120 centimeters in height, or just under four feet, have been forced to relocate to the farming village at Yeonha-Ri.

One defector, who disclosed details of the village on condition of anonymity, said the North Korean government originally planned to exterminate the dwarfs as part of a policy of eliminating those within the population with undesirable physical traits. But concerns about international reaction to the population “cleansing” instead resulted in allowing the dwarfs to set up the farming village.

The goal of the separation is to prevent the dwarfs from marrying and reproducing. To that end, they are forced to undergo sterilization.

Also, North Korean dwarfs face a greater risk of starvation because they are not given the same food rations as other North Koreas.

Travel is also restricted under the dubious claim that as little people the dwarfs could be crushed while riding on crowded train cars.

The Free Beacon article later references this article in the UK’s Daily Mail.

For what it is worth, Yeonha-ri, or Ryonha-ri (련하리) as the North Koreans call it, can be found on Google Earth at 41.418403°, 127.513423°. Here is a satellite image:

Ryonha-ri-2011-5-10

At its closest point, the village is just under 4 km from the Chinese border.

ryoha-ri-china-border-2011-5-10

Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea briefly mentioned dwarfism in the detailed findings document:

Another research institute based in the ROK reported that human rights violations against persons with disabilities include the segregation and forced sterilization of persons suffering from dwarfism.

The citation for this quote is: KINU, White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea (2013), pp. 442-444. You can download the report here (as well as the most recent 2014 report, which does not mention “dwarfism” but rather “midget persons”).

The 2013 KINU report is based on defector interviews, so it is subject to the usual caveats.

The KINU 2013 survey respondents identify three locations of a dwarf village in Kim Hyong-jik County.

The first is a village named “Sangchangri” (Sangchang-ri), identified by two defectors. I am unable to locate a village by that name in Kim Hyong-jik County. It does not appear on any of my North or South Korean maps. I am aware of two villages named Sangchang-ri, but they are in North and South Hamgyong respectively.

Three other defectors independently report that they knew of a village for little people near Koup-gu, which is just north of Ryonha-ri (though they specifically identify Jungri-dong which is just 2.5 km south of Ryonha-ri).

Jungri-dong

A third location was identified as Wolthan Worker’s District (41.408095°, 127.059341°) which is in Kim Hyong-jik county, but on the western side.

The KINU reports also go on to say that the current legal status of little people is much more complicated than the simple narrative of identification, sterilization, and isolation that is reported in the contemporary media–especially following the death of Kim Il-sung.

Previous KINU reports also describe villages for little people in other parts of the country.

The reports of mistreatment of little people, however, date back many years. Hwang Jag-yap, who defected to South Korea in 1997 reported:

Concentration camps [plural] for persons of very short stature were set up in Jungpyung, in South Hamkyung province, after express orders from Kim Il-sung to isolate them to “prevent dwarves from multiplying.”

Additionally, I have a declassified report (FOUO) titled “Translations on Korean Affairs” published on May 18, 1979. It also mentions a dwarf village (p35):

In North Korea, in order to prevent the proliferation of dwarfs (deformed dwarfs), they are all put in a cooperative farm near Kanggye, Chagang Province, which is completely isolated from the outside. Therefore you cannot see dwarfs anywhere else.

This report gives the impression that there was only one village for little people and it was not so close to the Chinese border.

So there is lots of information on this topic that goes back many years and is not very consistent. Maybe somebody with more time than me could do a timeline of all the data and try to standardize all of the geographic names given.

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