Archive for the ‘Manufacturing’ Category

North Korea Google Earth (Version 7)

Friday, December 14th, 2007

The most authoritative map of North Korea on Google Earth
North Korea Uncovered v.7
Download it here

koreaisland.JPGThis map covers North Korea’s agriculture, aviation, cultural locations, manufacturing facilities, railroad, energy infrastructure, politics, sports venues, military establishments, religious facilities, leisure destinations, and national parks. It is continually expanding and undergoing revisions. This is the sixth version.

Additions to the latest version of “North Korea Uncovered” include: A Korean War folder featuring overlays of US attacks on the Sui Ho Dam, Yalu Bridge, and Nakwon Munitians Plant (before/after), plus other locations such as the Hoeryong Revolutionary Site, Ponghwa Revolutionary Site, Taechon reactor (overlay), Pyongyang Railway Museum, Kwangmyong Salt Works, Woljong Temple, Sansong Revolutionary Site, Jongbansan Fort and park, Jangsan Cape, Yongbyon House of Culture, Chongsokjong, Lake Yonpung, Nortern Limit Line (NLL), Sinuiju Old Fort Walls, Pyongyang open air market, and confirmed Pyongyang Intranet nodes.

Disclaimer: I cannot vouch for the authenticity of many locations since I have not seen or been to them, but great efforts have been made to check for authenticity. These efforts include pouring over books, maps, conducting interviews, and keeping up with other peoples’ discoveries. In many cases, I have posted sources, though not for all. This is a thorough compilation of lots of material, but I will leave it up to the reader to make up their own minds as to what they see. I cannot catch everything and I welcome contributions.

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NK Forced to Revert to Agricultural Market System?

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Daily NK
Jung Kwon Ho
12/11/2007

Several sources in China have relayed that it is rumored North Korean authorities are planning to take extreme measures to prevent the sale of industrial products at the jangmadang (markets) next year.

One Chinese merchant, whom DailyNK met in Dandong, China on the 6th, said, “Rumors are circulating that a measure preventing all kinds of Industrial products from being sold in the jangmadang will be implemented next year, making Chinese merchants involved in trade between North Korea and China nervous.”

He informed that “In place of industrial products, only farm produce from the fields of homeowners will be allowed to sell in the jangmadang. Marine products that up to now have been selling in the jangmadang will only be made available at appointed marine shops, meat products at food shops, and industrial products at state operated stores.”

The Chinese source also maintained that, “There are quite a few overseas Chinese who, not knowing what will happen, have bought loads of industrial products with the idea that this might be their last chance, and they have brought them into the North.”

The North Korean authorities began unfolding a series of market regulations immediately following the Inter-Korea Summit in October. These included such policies as limiting the types of items for sale and imposing a minimum age limit on female merchants. However, limiting the sale of industrial products themselves, after having abolished permanent markets, can be seen as a means of returning to “agricultural markets,” where farmers traded only vegetables and a surplus of produce.

According to other Chinese merchants with whom DailyNK met in Dandong on the 3rd, “Under the name of the North Pyongan Party Committee in Shinuiju, a three-day meeting was held between the Secretaries of the Party and of the Army and enterprise managers, from November 20th to the 22nd.”

They informed that “The meeting was held to discuss whether to prohibit jangmadang operations and put people who have been trading in the market to work at enterprises or factories, since regular provisions will resume starting next year.”

The recent efforts to regulate the markets have been analyzed as means to revert the standard of societal regulation to that of the pre-90s by restoring the provision system and normalizing factory operations. However, such an extreme measure is likely to give rise to serious civilian opposition, so there are doubts as to whether or not it can be realized.

The North Korean civilians, before the mid-90s, relied on a complete provision system supplied by the State, which included the provision of goods such as soap, clothes and other necessities. However, after the food shortage, the national provision system completely collapsed. As a result, civilians began acquiring most necessities, goods and food items through the jangmadang.

However, agricultural markets, where miscellaneous cereals, vegetables and other agricultural items raised in home gardens were traded, existed around the time when North Korea’s provision system was in normal operation.

Following the execution of the “July 1st Economic Management Improvement Measure” of 2002, the North Korean government established general markets which brought simple agricultural markets out in the open in February 2003. Since then, individuals leasing stands from the city mercantile department have been able to sell all kinds of industrial products as well.

One source in Chongjin stated in a phone conversation on the 6th regarding the recent rumors, “If the sources are Chinese merchants, than the rumor is not likely groundless. A majority of citizens sustain their livelihoods through the jangmadang.”

He agreed that “It is highly feasible that measures to toughen the regulation of industrial products in the market will be executed.”

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The Number of Day Laborers Hired by Private Parties Increasing in North Korea

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Daily NK
Lee Sung Jin
12/11/2007

The number of day labor jobs offered by private parties is gradually increasing in the North. Unlike those with full time jobs at State-run factories, individuals with day labor jobs work by the day.

According to inside sources and many defectors who came to the South earlier this year, individuals looking for day labor jobs normally work as gold miners, construction workers in cities, as luggage carriers for train passengers and maids.

In North Korea, these day laborers are called “Bulbulee (which means a person sweats for labor),” “Sakbari (which means a person waiting for wages)” or “Ilkkun (workers).” It is reported that there are day labor hiring centers in big cities and around the closed mining areas.

Daily laborers’ wages vary based on the type of work. Laborers working at gold mines are provided with housing and food and get paid 1,500 North Korean won per day. In the city construction sites, skilled laborers such as plasterers earn 2,000 won daily whereas unskilled laborers make less than 1,000 won. Daily laborers are making good money compared to factory workers whose average monthly wages fall between 3,000 and 5,000 won.

Kim Yong Chul (pseudonym), a defector who used to work as a day laborer at a mine in Hoichang of South Pyongan Province said, “Since 2004, day labor hiring centers started to appear in the jangmadang (market) of Hoichang. Employers hired young men and women in good health on the spot and took them to workplaces.” He used to work at a mine well-known across the country since the Japanese colonial period. Mr. Kim said, “Day laborers not only dug for gold but were also mobilized to build or fix houses for their employers.”

In Hoichang, there are some gold mines closed by the authorities that were thought to be tapped out. In the mid 1990s, some locals dug the mines again and made a great fortune. Years later, around 2003, these locals began looking out for workers and started hiring individuals from other provinces. Now the county has a great number of day laborers from various provinces working at mines.

Good Friends, the Seoul-based relief organization dedicated to North Korea, said in a recent report, “On October 23rd at around 10 A.M., a gold mine in Hoichang of South Pyongan Province collapsed, leaving three miners dead and two wounded.” In the North, private parties are banned from trading gold and pine mushrooms by law, and only the State can make these types of transactions. However, it is well known that many officials in charge of enforcing the ban frequently take bribes and allow those who pay them to dig for gold in closed mines.

Gold miners usually stay underground between 15 to 30 days each time they begin a mining operation. The miners dig up the ore, crush it using a machine called a Maguanggi (ore-polishing machine) and apply mercury to extract gold. The whole process is done in underground tunnels, and the processed gold is sold to gold dealers in Pyongsung and Sinuiju.

Individuals who run the crushing machine are laborers from other provinces, and most of them are females. With food and housing provided by their employer, they make 1,000 won daily. If they work year-round this way, they can earn decent money.

45-year-old Park Jong Moo (pseudonym) who came to the South this year said, “I earned 2,000 won per day when I worked as a plasterer, building a house for a man who made his money from trade in Chongjin City.”

Mr. Park’s son worked as a cargo porter at the Chongjin railway station. Since there were so many “Sakbari (referring to cargo porters working for daily wages)” at the station, competition among “Sakbari” was fierce. Normally, these porters made less than 1,000 won per day.

It is becoming popular among party cadres and the new wealth to have a maid who does housework and takes care of children. These people introduce the maid to their neighbors as a ‘distant relative’ because having a maid is unthinkable in the Socialist North. While performing maid services and getting paid for the work that she does, the maid pretends to be a family member and acts as if she is merely helping out with the housework.

A source inside the North said, “There was once a party official in Chongjin who employed a girl as a maid after having paid her parents. When the official was accused of having a maid, the official said she was a ‘relative.’”

Regarding the rise in day laborers, an expert on North Korea says, “Those North Koreans who made a fortune from mining or trade privately employ laborers to further expand their businesses…However, since the regime will never allow the rich to become too powerful, it will begin to regulate the employment activities of private parties at the proper time.”

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First Train in 56 Years Crosses Border

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Korea Times
Jung Sung-ki
12/11/2007

The first regular freight service for over half a century began Tuesday operating across the heavily fortified border between South and North Korea.

The daily freight service is the first tangible result of an inter-Korean summit in October between President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The two leaders agreed on a package of cross-border economic cooperation projects including the train operation.

The last regular rail operation was in 1951, a year after the three-year Korean War broke out.

The freight service, agreed upon at the inter-Korean prime ministers’ talks last month, will connect South Korea with the joint industrial complex in Gaeseong, in the North.

Earlier this month, the militaries of both Koreas signed a written security guarantee for the cross-border service at working-level talks in the truce village of Panmunjeom, clearing a major hurdle for the agreement.

The new service is expected to slash the cost of transporting products to and from the business complex, just north of the border, considered a major achievement of Seoul’s “sunshine” policy of engaging the North over the past decade.

Several South Korean firms are operating in the economic zone, dubbed a testing ground for mixing South Korean capitalism and technology with North Korea’s cheap labor.

Previously, trucks moved raw materials and finished goods back and forth across the border.

South Korean officials hope the cargo train service will lay the groundwork for a regular train service for passengers and the railway will be linked through North Korea to the Trans-China and Trans-Siberian railroads.

A 12-car train carrying curbstones and other construction materials left left South Korea’s Dorasan Station at 8:20 a.m. and arrived at North Korea’s Panmun Station 20 minutes later. A joint ceremony was held at the North Korean station around 11 a.m. with the attendance of some 180 officials from both Koreas.

The train returned to the South later in the day with goods including shoes, clothes and watches made at the industrial complex.

“We are reconnecting the last vein that has been severed for 56 years,” Lee Chul, president of the Korea Railroad, told reporters at Dorasan Station. “This looks like a humble start, but I hope this link will serve as a stepping stone for the inter-Korean railways to be connected to Europe through the Trans-Siberian railway.”

Lee also expressed hope that South and North Koreans could travel together vial rail to Beijing to cheer for next year’s Summer Olympics.

Trains will run daily on weekdays from Dorasan Station in Munsan to Panmun, carrying up to 10,000 tons of cargo on each run. The train service begins at 9 a.m. and returns from the North Korean station at 2 p.m. Trains are restricted to a maximum speed of 60 kilometers per hour when traversing the closely guarded frontier.

The original agreement was to connect a 25 kilometer section of track from Munsan to Bondgong in the North, next to the industrial complex, but the plan was modified because of the lack of loading facilities at Bongdong Station, according to Unification Ministry officials.

In May, two trains crossed the border on two reconnected tracks on the western and eastern sides of the peninsula in a one-off test run.

The two Koreas are technically still at war since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

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Builder to Set Up Venture With North

Tuesday, December 11th, 2007

Korea Times
Ryu Jin
12/11/2007

Namkwang Engineering & Construction, a South Korean company which has recently been stepping up efforts for inter-Korean economic projects, plans to form a joint venture with a North Korean firm for construction works in the North and other countries.

Namkwang E&C CEO Lee Dong-chul told reporters Tuesday that his company, along with 516 Construction Company in the North, will seek to win construction orders in foreign countries including Angola as well as North Korean cities such as Gaeseong and Pyongyang.

“We signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for joint projects with the North Korean firm late last month,’’ he said in a press meeting. “They could be operated in the form of a joint venture, depending on the final agreement to be signed early next year.’’

Lee added that Namkwang would largely provide capital and construction technologies to the proposed joint-venture company while the North Korean firm would supply labor.

Founded about 50 years ago, 516 Construction Company is the only construction firm in the North Korean border city of Gaeseong where an inter-Korean industrial complex is located. It has constructed apartments in the city with more than 3,000 workers.

“Currently, the firm is building a steel-frame factory in the Gaeseong Industrial Complex including reinforced concrete, tiles and plaster work under a contract with us,’’ Lee said. “Maybe we can take part in construction works in Angola and Libya jointly.’’

Namkwang, which recently got government approval for cross-border projects, has invested some 7.6 billion won ($8.23 million) since October to build the steel-frame factory which would be used for the second-phase construction of the Gaeseong Industrial Complex.

Lee said that his company would also redouble efforts to get more orders for overseas construction in such countries as Angola, Libya and Vietnam next year. Namkwang has received orders worth $1.1 billion along with NIEC, a joint venture in Angola, since 2005.

Established in 1947, Namkwang has carried out a lot of large-scale projects in South Korea and also advanced to foreign countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Philippines for construction of buildings, roads, dams and harbors on the back of its unique technology.

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South to Send Steel Plates to North

Sunday, December 9th, 2007

Korea Times
Yoon Won-sup
12/9/2007

South Korea will provide 5,100 tons of steel plates to North Korea on Dec. 17 in a six-party deal that involves the provision of energy or alternatives to North Korea in exchange for the North’s disablement of its nuclear facilities by year’s-end, government officials said Sunday.

U.S. President George W. Bush sent a personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il last week urging him to keep his word on the disablement and declaration by Dec. 31.

The shipment is the first alternative to oil sent to the North under the agreement, although participants in the six-way talks have been taking turns to provide 50,000 tons of heavy fuel oil to the North every month recently.

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Koreas agree on daily schedule for inter-Korean freight train

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

Yonhap
12/2/2007

The two Koreas have agreed on the daily schedule for a cross-border freight train that will resume service later this month for the first time in over 50 years, the South Korean Unification Ministry said on Sunday.

The prime ministers of South and North Korea met in Seoul last month and agreed to restart the railway service, which will traverse the heavily armed border, on Dec. 11. The train will run between the South’s Munsan station and the North’s Bongdong station as a follow-up to the October summit between their leaders in Pyongyang.

The ministry said a freight train will depart from Munsan at 9:00 a.m. each weekday and reach the North Korean border station of Panmun before returning to the South at 2:00 p.m.

The train, which will not operate during weekends, will extend its route to Bongdong once the construction of a cargo-handling facility there is completed, the ministry said. The Bongdong station serves as a gateway to an inter-Korean industrial park in Kaesong.

The soon-to-be-resumed service is expected to facilitate transportation of raw materials and manufactured goods between South Korea and the North’s Kaesong park, the ministry said.

The 19.8-km route between the two Koreas was severed in the midst of the 1950-53 Korean War and has since remained closed.

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N. Korean graphite material to arrive in S. Korea on Saturday

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

Yonhap
Lee Joon-seung
11/23/2007

North Korean graphite material made at an inter-Korean joint venture factory is being shipped to South Korea, the Commerce Ministry said Friday.

The 200-ton shipment from the factory near the city of Haeju left the North Korean port of Nampo earlier in the day and is expected to reach Incheon on Saturday, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said.

“The shipment is significant because it is the first time that products made from minerals in the North have been shipped to the South after being manufactured at an inter-Korean joint venture company,” a ministry official said. The graphite can be made into heat-resistant bricks, pencils, ceramic melting pots and car brake linings.

South Korea’s state-run Korea Resources Corp. (KORES) holds a 50 percent stake in the US$10.2 million graphite processing plant along with the North’s Kwangmyung Trading Co.

The factory can produce 3,000 tons of processed graphite every year, with KORES entitled to 1,830 tons for 15 years as payment for its initial investment. The amount is equivalent to 15 percent of the graphite products the country imports every year. China, Japan and Germany are currently South Korea’s main suppliers of the material.

The state-run company signed the contract for the joint venture in July 2003, and commercial production began in April of this year. Initial test production began in April 2006.

The ministry also said the Jeonchon mine near the factory is estimated to hold 6.25 million tons of crystalline graphite ore.

Wonjin Co., a local carbon refractory brick manufacturer, signed a contract in September with the KORES to buy all the graphite from North Korea and market it in South Korea.

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Selling to survive

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Financial Times
Anna Fifield
9/19/2007

Pak Hyun-yong was, by North Korean standards, an entrepreneur. Too much of an entrepreneur. During the famine that ravaged the country in the late 1990s, Mr Pak watched his family die of starvation – first his younger brother, then his older sister’s children. Then, eventually, his sister too.

Somehow he pulled through this period, dubbed by the regime as “the arduous march”, and was spurred into taking some very non-communist, almost subversive action. He began selling noodles.

Every day he would take 10kg of “corn rice” – a poor North Korean imitation in which dried kernels are fashioned into grains – and turn it into noodles. Then he would get on his bicycle and pedal around his home town of Hamhung on the east coast, bartering the noodles for 12kg of corn rice: 10kg for tomorrow’s noodles and 2kg for his remaining family.

“The police would come by and try to persuade me not to sell the noodles, saying that I should not succumb to capitalism and that the Dear Leader would resolve our food shortages,” says Mr Pak, who escaped from North Korea a year ago and is upbeat and energetic considering the hardships he has endured.

Now 32, he is in hiding in a bleak, remote village in northern China not far from the North Korean border, together with his wife, with whom he escaped, and their new baby. They live in a one-room house with no bathroom – protected by locals who are helping them settle.

“The [North Korean] police even threatened to imprison me if I didn’t stop selling. Suddenly I realised that North Korea was a country where they would stop people’s efforts to survive,” he says, sitting on the warm floor of his house, still dressed in the apron he wears to work in a nearby butchery.

“I heard that China was a rich and modern country – that they had tractors and that people could eat rice every day, even in rural areas,” he says, shaking his head. “Chinese dogs wouldn’t eat our rice – they would ask for better.”

In almost 20 interviews along the border with China, ethnic Koreans born in China and North Korean escapees, some of whom had been in the isolated state as recently as two months ago, describe a country where change is taking place from the ground up rather than under the direction of its leader, Kim Jong-il.

North Korea remains the most tightly controlled state in the world. But recent escapees tell of the changes that are being driven by necessity in areas near China, especially in the cities of Rajin and Hoeryong in the north and Sinuiju at the southern end of the border.

While it would be an overstatement to say that this represents the type of nascent transition to free-market reforms that has occurred in countries such as Russia and China, the worsening state of the North Korean economy is leading to widespread trading and the emergence of a fledgling merchant class crossing into China, the escapees say.

Some agricultural markets – rather than just state markets – were permitted during the “economic improvements” of 2002, but ad-hoc markets have since sprung up around the country with the tacit approval, if not the encouragement, of the regime. These markets are now the backbone of North Korea’s creaking economy as the regime provides almost nothing by way of rations any more.

The parlous state of the economy is probably the driving factor behind Mr Kim’s decision to roll back his nuclear programme. The six-party denuclearisation talks are making surprisingly good progress, analysts say, as his regime seeks heavy fuel oil for its rusting industries and an end to economic sanctions.

Certainly, recent escapees from North Korea describe a desperate situation inside the country. Somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 North Koreans are thought to be living in hiding in the north-eastern provinces of China, especially in Jilin and Heilongjiang, areas considered backward by Chinese standards.

The Financial Times travelled throughout this region to meet North Koreans while seeking to avoid endangering their lives. (North Koreans who are repatriated from China face detention in labour camps or worse, and even those who are not caught put the lives of family members at risk by talking to journalists. For that reason, names have been changed.)

“In Rajin, all the factories have stopped,” says Oh Man-bok, a 22-year-old who escaped in September from the city near the borders with Russia and China, considered relatively prosperous because it is one of the North’s main trading channels. “The men still have to go to work and have their name checked off but there is nothing to do. Sometimes they sit around and sometimes they go home. They don’t get paid but sometimes, in a good month, they get 15 days’ worth of corn in rations,” he says.

That means women are increasingly becoming the breadwinners, going to the mountains to collect edible plants or to the market to sell home-made snacks. “People survive by selling. They do whatever they can to earn money – selling fried dough sticks or repairing shoes and clothes,” Mr Oh says. “But it’s very difficult to earn enough to survive and even in Rajin, many people have to eat porridge made from the whey left over from making tofu.”

Rajin and Sinuiju, as the main thoroughfares for trade with China, have been more open than the rest of North Korea for some time, but the experiment with capitalism that has been taking place in these two cities now appears to be expanding to Hoeryong.

The city of Hoeryong can be clearly seen from the Chinese side of the border, which is marked by a shallow river only 20 metres wide in places. On the bridge between the two countries, the Financial Times watched North Korean trucks trundle into China and dozens of Chinese – and a few North Koreans wearing badges stamped with the image of Kim Il-sung, Mr Kim’s late father and founder of the state – lug bags across.

A Chinese border official says that about 100 a day cross the bridge from the Chinese side, mainly going to visit family members, although in summer as many as 300 go on tour packages to the beach on North Korea’s east coast. About 10 North Koreans a day cross into China for trading or to see their relatives. “With Rmb1,000 [$135, £65, €92] they can come to China even if they don’t have family here. So they often borrow money to come here and buy things for trading in the market in Hoeryong,” the official says.

Bribery appears to be becoming more widespread as trade and travel increases – from a few cigarettes needed to pass through internal checkpoints to the few hundred renminbi expected at border crossings. “Everyone wants to be a border guard these days,” says one Chinese-Korean trader. “They don’t explicitly say, ‘Give me money’ – they just keep going through your paperwork and asking you questions until you offer them money.”

Again, Pyongyang seems to be aware that this is happening and allows it as a way to keep people happy – rotating border guards every six months to give officials from around the country a chance to earn extra money, according to escapees.

In Hoeryong, the market used to be beside the bridge on the outskirts but this year it was moved to a school building right in the centre of town. Its 180,000 residents enjoy a relatively privileged existence because Kim Jong-il’s late mother was born there.

The market has become central to the city and to people’s lives, driven by grassroots demand, says Song Mi-ok, an ethnic Korean living in China who has made several trips to the city recently. She has gained access by visiting fake relatives, a family to whom she pays Rmb1,000 every time she pretends to visit them.

“You can find everything there,” she says of the market, which opens at 7.30am and closes at dusk. “People usually start by selling food that they have grown or made, using the profits to move into goods trading.”

North Koreans say one can buy everything in the markets “except cat horns”, as their expression has it. Rice given as aid from South Korea is on sale and people even display the bag – even though they risk having it confiscated by the authorities – because people know that South Korean rice is of high quality, Ms Song says.

One kilogram of rice in Hoer­yong market costs 900 North Korean won – a huge amount in a country where the average wage for a government employee is about between 3,000 and 4,000 won a month, or slightly more than one US dollar.

“There are a lot of people buying and it’s all money trade; there’s no bartering now,” Ms Song says. “North Koreans are poor, so it’s quite surprising to see people with a lot of money. They don’t receive money from the state – it’s all money they have made themselves.”

One Korean-Chinese man who visited relatives in Hoeryong last year also describes an increasingly active drug trade. It is not uncommon, he says, to be approached by people in their twenties or thirties selling a white narcotic called “ice” – probably a form of crystal methamphetamine. The drug fetches 20 times the North Korean price in China, making smuggling a lucrative business, but the punishment for drug trafficking in China is so severe that Hoeryong dealers try to sell it to visiting Chinese.

The markets are thriving thanks to new border regulations. While the number crossing illegally has dropped because of tighter restrictions in both countries, the number of North Koreans who are allowed to cross into China legally has steadily increased, according to several Korean-Chinese who help those who make it across the border.

North Koreans with relatives in China but not in South Korea are allowed to apply for passports to cross the border. This is creating a new group of migrant workers – those who are legal but working for themselves and their families rather than for the state. “Young people come here to work for one or two months and earn some money – they’re coming from Pyongyang as well as the regions,” says Ri In-chol, an ethnic Korean missionary from China who supports border crossers, legal or otherwise.

“They pay Rmb300-Rmb400 to get a passport and then they can cross. There is now a much freer flow because Kim Jong-il realises that this is the only way to keep the people alive. They take back money, used sewing machines and used clothes from their relatives that they can sell in the markets,” Mr Ri says.

Although Chinese clothes are most prevalent, North Koreans prefer South Korean products for their higher quality. “The labels have to be cut out of South Korean clothes, so if they don’t have a label then people assume that they’re South Korean and they like them more,” says another Chinese-Korean who has recently visited Rajin.

Indeed, Mr Ri says that North Korean officials are picky about what they will let through. “When North Koreans come to China they are allowed to take used clothes back. But when Korean-Chinese people want to give clothes to their relatives in North Korea, they have to be new because otherwise the officials think they are being looked down on,” he says. (Jeans and short skirts, seen as representative of American immorality, are still not allowed.)

The economic changes – particularly the lessening dependence on the state – are potentially destabilising for Mr Kim’s regime because they weaken the tools of control. That means that there is a fine line between what is permissible and what is not. “Kim Jong-il is tolerating this much openness because people need to survive, but if he wakes up one morning and sees capitalism is spreading too far, he will order it all to be stopped,” says Gao Jing­zhu, professor of Korean studies at China’s Yanbian University, near the border.

“North Korea is small, so if there is too much change it will threaten the sustainability of the regime and it will collapse,” Prof Gao says. “North Korea is in a dilemma.”

Good Friends, a Seoul-based civic group that monitors life inside North Korea, this month said Pyongyang was cracking down on women working in street markets. “The authorities have judged that female merchants have reached a point that threatens the country’s government,” Good Friends quoted a North Korean official in China as saying.

“The men are tied to their workplaces but they don’t receive proper rations,” the official reportedly said. “This has shifted the men’s burden of supporting their families on to the women. With trade directly linked to the people’s survival, the crackdown isn’t going well.”

Indeed, it may already be too late. The increased economic interaction with China means that the flow of information to North Koreans is steadily increasing. “People’s awareness and illusions have changed,” says one Chinese-Korean who drives trucks into North Korea.

This is just the kind of contact that threatens Mr Kim’s regime, which has kept the 23m-strong population under control by cutting off access to the outside world and telling them they live in a socialist paradise. Mr Ri, the missionary, says: “People living in open areas like Rajin and Hoeryong are more exposed to the outside world but that is not the case when you go further into North Korea. So even if it is becoming more open, you never know when that is going to change. They will still come after you if you are involved in political activities.”

But recent escapees from North Korea say that people are increasingly discussing – in private – one topic that they say would have been unimaginable until very recently: the eventual death of the Dear Leader. “State control is still as strong as before but now, when people gather together as families, they say that the system is really wrong. That never used to happen before,” says Mr Pak, the man who left Hamhung last year.

“Kim Jong-il always says he will feed the people and make them happy, but that has not happened. There are many people who hope that Kim Jong-il will die soon,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. “I have to admit it: the state is already kind of breaking down.”

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Joint Korea Prime Ministerial meeting wrap up

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Korean PMs ‘agree rail-link deal’
BBC

11/15/2007

A regular freight train service over the heavily-armed border between North and South Korea could start before the end of the year, officials say.

The deal, on the second day of talks between prime ministers from the two countries, marks the first agreed schedule for the train link.

The South has pushed for reliable transport links to supply the factories its firms run in the North.

It follows an agreement made last month at a summit of the countries’ leaders.

‘Shared understanding’

North Korean Prime Minister Kim Yong-il and his counterpart from the South, Han Duck-soo, are spending three days in discussions in the South’s capital, Seoul.

The South’s Unification Ministry spokesman, Kim Nam-shik, said the two sides were now trying to set a specific date for starting the rail service.

The 25km (16 mile) track runs from the heavily-guarded border to a joint industrial complex in the North’s city of Kaesong.

“Both sides shared an understanding that it would be meaningful in further vitalising the Kaesong industrial complex,” said the spokesman.

The meeting – the first at prime ministerial level for 15 years – follows October’s historic summit in Pyongyang between the two countries’ leaders.

Divided families

The summit between the North’s Kim Jong-il and the South’s President Roh Moo-hyun was only the second such meeting since the Korean peninsula was partitioned over half a century ago.

The two leaders signed an accord calling for greater peace and economic partnership, despite the two countries remaining technically at war with each other.

They also agreed in principle for the regular cargo rail service to be established.

The prime ministers are using their meeting to discuss more specific proposals.

One key issue is the establishment of a joint fishing area around the disputed western sea border – the scene of naval clashes in the past – and a new economic zone around the North Korean port of Haeju.

The South also hopes to increase the number of reunion meetings for families separated when the peninsula was split.

Prime ministerial meetings between the two Koreas were suspended in 1992 amid growing concern over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

 

Ministerial infidelity
Joong Ang Daily

11/16/2007
Lee Yang-soo

The prime minister of North Korea holds one of the top positions in the country’s hierarchy, officially fourth in political power.

Many believe, however, that the prime minister may actually be about 20th in actual influence, as there are plenty of hidden power elites in the political and army circles.

The post of prime minister in North Korea was created after the introduction of the state president in 1972. Since then, eight people have occupied the post. Among them, the person who impressed us the most was Yeon Hyung-muk, who held the job from 1988 to 1992.

The prime minister of North Korea faces tough and dangerous working conditions.

Kim Il Sung emphasized the significance of the post by insisting that the “prime minister is the general of the nation’s economy.” The prime minister, in turn, has often been made the scapegoat for the people’s discontent about the country’s struggling economy.

And to make a bad situation worse, the public economy always took a backseat to the military economy, which led to nuclear and missile development.

One after another, numerous ministers have stepped down in dishonor or suffered incurable illness.

After the dishonorable withdrawal of former Prime Minister Li Gun-mo (1986-1988), Li’s successor, Yeon Hyung-muk, was demoted after four years to the post of candidate member for the Political Bureau Presidium, or secretary of Jagangdo Provincial Party. In addition, Prime Minister Park Bong-ju was demoted last April to manager of a small-town company.

Since assuming the reins of government, Kim Jong-il has recruited people who know the economy well to the top posts.

However, he took a “military first” attitude whenever the cabinet, the Workers Party, and army were in discord over the issue of opening and reform.

In contrast, the president of the People’s Republic of China, Jiang Zemin, gave Zhu Rongji, premier of the state council, a carte blanche to decide every affair in public administration and the national economy.

For example, when rumors spread that the yuan would be further devalued, he consulted Zhu. At that time, Zhu’s nickname was “emperor of the Chinese economy.” China has shown great fidelity to the principle that the “prime minister is the general of the national economy.”

Come to think of it, South Korea has had 27 prime ministers since 1972, representing its own infidelity to the prime minister. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

 

Koreas agree to open cargo railway, but key issues remain unresolved
Yonhap

Kim Hyun
11/15/2007

South and North Korea agreed Thursday to open a cross-border cargo railway by the end of this year — resuming the service halted more than half a century ago — as part of economic cooperation projects agreed upon in their leaders’ recent summit.

Seoul proposed Dec. 11 as the date to start the railway service through the demilitarized zone, a Unification Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. But North Korea’s response was not yet known.

The agreement to open a freight railway came on the second day of talks between South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and North Korean Premier Kim Yong-il in Seoul. The rare prime ministerial talks were aimed at devising concrete plans to implement wide-ranging accords reached between the leaders of the Koreas.

In their summit in early October, President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il agreed on a slew of economic cooperation and peace projects. They also agreed that the agreements should be implemented through two follow-up talks — one between prime ministers and the other between defense ministers.

“There is a growing understanding between the sides for the start of the cargo rail service,” Kim Nam-shik, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry, told reporters. He said that the project “seemed highly possible,” even though more consultations are needed to secure a military guarantee by North Korea.

The 20-km cross-border route between South Korea’s Munsan and the North’s Bongdong will allow the mass transport of goods from a joint industrial complex in North Korea to the South, Seoul officials say.

The Koreas also agreed to set up a joint committee to create a peace zone in the disputed border area in the West Sea, part of key summit accords to reduce tension, the ministry spokesman said. Bloody skirmishes occurred in 1999 and 2002 near the disputed sea border, which North Korea does not acknowledge. The western sea border was unilaterally drawn by the U.S.-led United Nations Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Pyongyang has called for a new line to be drawn further south.

The peace project in the West Sea will likely include the creation of a joint fishing area in the western sea border area, and the establishment of an economic special zone in Haeju in southwestern North Korea, which will transform the naval base area into an economic stronghold.

The Koreas also made progress in social and cultural areas, the spokesman said, without elaborating on specifics.

But key issues remained unresolved.

The top item on North Korea’s agenda is South Korea’s heavy investment in the renovation of its antiquated railways and roads, said the Chosun Sinbo, published by ethnic Koreans in Japan.

The North Korean premier said in the talks that such South Korean support will help implement the summit accords “in a relatively short amount of time,” the paper said.

Pyongyang also expects Seoul’s money to develop shipbuilding facilities in the country, Seoul officials said.

South Korea is expected to seek North Korea’s support in improving the business environment in the Kaesong industrial complex, where communication facilities are poor and border customs inspections are highly restrictive.

The Kaesong complex, where scores of South Korean factories produce garments, shoes and other labor-intensive goods with North Korea’s cheap but skilled labor, emerged from agreements at the first-ever inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in 2000. But business restrictions and political strains have limited its development.

Other issues include reunions of families separated since the 1950-53 Korean War, with South Korea pushing to regularize the sporadic events.

The two Koreas are expected to issue a joint statement wrapping up their three-day talks on Friday. To settle outstanding details, Seoul has proposed to hold follow-up economic talks between vice prime ministers in the second week of December, a Unification Ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

The Koreas held eight rounds of prime ministerial talks until 1992, when they signed an accord calling for an end to Cold War hostilities on the Korean Peninsula. But the talks were suspended afterward as relations soured over a dispute on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

This week’s talks, covering economic projects, will put aside thorny issues on military tension, which will be dealt with in defense ministers’ talks set for Nov. 27-29 in Pyongyang, Seoul officials said.

Unification Minister Lee Jae-joung said on the first day that this week’s talks were “a bit more flexible, a bit more amicable” than previous inter-Korean meetings.

South Korea expects that improved inter-Korean ties will facilitate progress in ongoing multilateral talks to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

The communist nation has shut down five key nuclear facilities under an aid-for-denuclearization accord signed in early October in talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.

Pyongyang is also supposed to disable its key nuclear facilities at Yongbyon and submit a full list of its nuclear programs by the end of the year in return for the normalization of ties with the U.S. and Japan, as well as economic and energy assistance from the other parties involved.

N.K. asks for help in repairs to facilitate implementation of summit agreement: report
Yonhap

Byun Duk-kun
11/15/2007

North Korea has asked South Korea to help repair its dilapidated railways and roads so the agreements at the recent inter-Korean summit can be quickly implemented, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper published in Japan reported Thursday.

In a rare report from Seoul, the Chosun Shinbo said North Korean Prime Minister Kim Yong-il proposed the modernization of North Korea’s railway between the border town of Kaesong and the northwestern city of Shinuiju at his talks with South Korea’s Han Duck-soo.

Kim, 63, was also quoted as saying that projects to modernize railways and roads will enable the joint declaration from the inter-Korean summit to be implemented “in a relatively short amount of time.”

The North Korean arrived here Wednesday for three days of talks to follow up on the summit held in Pyongyang on Oct. 2-4.

At the summit, President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il called for a quick expansion of economic cooperation and an end to military hostilities between the divided Koreas.

This week’s talks had been expected to focus on economic issues as separate talks between the defense ministers of the two countries are to be held in Pyongyang later this month.

Seoul is also calling for an early opening of cargo rail service between the North’s border town of Kaesong, where dozens of South Korean businesses are producing over US$1 million worth of goods each month, and its border town of Munsan.

Still, the Seoul government is placing more weight on the opening of other areas in the reclusive North to South Korean businesses as well as establishing a joint fishing area in the West Sea, where a maritime border dispute led to deadly clashes between the navies of the divided Koreas in 1999 and 2002. The Koreas technically remain at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Seoul officials are also calling for easier access for South Korean businesses to the South Korea-funded industrial complex in Kaesong as well as the relaxing of customs and quarantine inspections at the border.

The North Korean premier said his country is ready to resolve the difficulties facing the South Korean businesses operating in Kaesong, according to the report.

“The North side believes what the leaders (of the two Koreas) agreed are not mere economic cooperation projects, but projects that will lead to the reconciliation, unification and prosperity of the nation,” the report said.

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