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Braille dictionaries for the DPRK

Friday, October 16th, 2009

Throughout 2009 we have been raising money for 2 humanitarian projects in the DPRK. We are aiming to complete one of these – a project to buy braille dictionaries which have been previously unavailable in the DPRK – by the end of October.

The total amount needed for for the dictionaries is EUR 2400 and the amount raised so far is EUR 505. We only have 2 more weeks to complete this project so your help is needed. More information about this project can be found here.

If you would like to make a donation to this worthwhile cause please do contact us for details of how to send us the money. Any amount really makes a difference! Surplus funds will be put towards our second project to buy playground equipment for an orphanage in Wonsan. If we can complete both these projects by the end of this year it will be fantastic.

Many thanks to all of you who have already donated money and we will be in touch with the results.

Nick, Simon and Hannah
Koryo Tours Ltd

Posted in International Aid, Koryo Tours | Comments Closed

Orascom completing Ryugyong Hotel

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

UPDATE 8: According to the BBC, Orascom claims the final plans for the hotel have yet to be approved:

Dozens of Egyptian engineers and some 2,000 local workers are working on the Ryugyong project, which Orascom’s chief operating officer Khaled Bichara tells the BBC is “progressing well”, despite reported problems with suspect concrete and misaligned lift shafts.

“There have been no issues that have caused us too much trouble,” Mr Bichara says. “Most of the work at the moment is coverage of different areas of the building. The first job is to finish the outside – you can’t work on the insides until the outside is covered.

“You can see that we have already completed the top of the building where the revolving restaurant will be. After 2010, that’s when it will be fully safe to start building from the inside.”

How the building will be divided up is not yet finalised the company says, but it will be a mixture of hotel accommodation, apartments and business facilities. Antennae and equipment for Orascom’s mobile network will nestle at the very top.

Mr Bichara denies reports that the company’s exclusive access to North Korea’s fledgling telecoms market is directly linked to the completion of the hotel.

But he says the job is a way of planting a rather tall flag in the ground. “We haven’t been given a deadline, we are not tied into doing it by a certain time,” he said.

“But when you work in a market like this, where we cannot sponsor things, a project of this kind is good to do – it’s word of mouth advertising for us, it builds good rapport with the people – on its own it’s a great symbol, one which cements our investment.”

Read the full article here:
Will ‘Hotel of Doom’ ever be finished?
BBC
10/15/2009

Read previous posts about the Ryugyong’s construction below: (more…)

Posted in Cell phones, Communications, Construction, Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, Hoteling, Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Joint Ventures, Orascom Telecom Holding | 3 Comments »

“150 Day Battle” production campaign stories

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Photo by Eric Lafforgue

North Korean claims record production gains through ‘150-day battle’
Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-10-12-1
10/12/2009

It has been boasted that North Korea’s ‘150-day Battle’ to boost the economy (April 20-September 16) resulted in record-breaking jumps in DPRK production numbers, and it has been suggested that that by 2012, some enterprises will “attain production numbers higher than the best numbers recorded at the end of the 1980s.” This claim was made by Ji Young-il, the director of the Chosun University Social Science Research Institute, which is run by the pro-Pyongyang “General Federation of Korean Residents in Japan.”

In “Professor Ji Young-il’s Monthly Economic Review: The 150-day Battle and Prospects for Building an Economically Powerful Nation,” an article in the federation’s newspaper, Choson Sinbo, the author wrote, “There are more than a few enterprises that have set production goals for 2012 at more than three times the current level of production.” He also claimed that some enterprises in the mining, energy and railroad transportation sectors had set goals of as much as 6 times today’s production numbers.

Professor Ji went on to write, “Basically, it is an extraordinary goal ensuring growth of 1.3-1.5 times (a growth rate of 130-150%) per year.” He also explained that surpassing production rates as high as those seen in the late 1980s is one of the fundamental markers on the road toward “opening the door to a Strong and Prosperous Nation.”

Citing North Korea’s “Choson Central Yearbook,” he gave production numbers in various sectors of the DPRK economy at the end of the 1980s: electricity, 55.5 billion kWh (1989); coal, 85 million tons (1989); steel, 7.4 million tons (1987); cement, 13.5 million tons (1989); chemical fertilizer, 5.6 million tons (1989); textiles, 870 million meters (1989); grain, 10 million tons (1987).

Director Ji claimed that during the recent ‘battle’, production in the metals industries was up several times that of the same period in previous years, while energy producers generated several hundred million kWh of electricity, coal production was up 150%, and cement and other construction materials were up 140%. He pointed out that in 14 years of the Chollima movement, beginning in 1957, during which socialist industrialization took place in the North, the yearly average production growth was 19.1%, and he stated that the annual growth of 9 to 10% in industrial production over the past several years was a noteworthy record.

Moving to the agricultural sector, Director Ji also noted that while overseas experts have critiqued this year’s harvest, there has been a definite breakthrough in grain production with land cultivation hitting previously unseen levels over the past several years.

Previous 150-day battle stories below:
(more…)

Posted in 150-Day Battle for Production, 2012 Strong and Prosperous Nation (Kangsong Taeguk), Coal, Energy, Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Labor conditions/wages, Manufacturing, Mining/Minerals, Railways, Transportation, Worker's Party | 6 Comments »

Samaritan’s Purse Press Release: Rev. Graham headed back to Noth Korea

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

BOONE, N.C., Oct. 9, 2009—Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is preparing to make another historic visit to the DPRK (North Korea) to meet with high-level government officials and visit his ministries’ humanitarian assistance projects.

“I believe it is important to make visits like this to help improve better relations and to have better understanding with each other,” said Graham. “I’m going as a minister of Jesus Christ with a message of peace and that God loves each one of us regardless of our borders or politics.”

This is Graham’s third trip to the country rarely visited by Americans, but his family has a long history in the DPRK, going back to 1934 when his mother Ruth Bell Graham attended a mission school in Pyongyang. His father Billy Graham visited in 1992 and 1994, meeting with President Kim Il Sung. Last year Franklin Graham visited the DPRK to oversee several aid operations and to preach at a newly constructed Protestant church in Pyongyang.

Samaritan’s Purse has been working in the DPRK since 1997, primarily with medical and dental programs, providing more than $10 million in assist ance. Next week, Graham will be making a presentation totaling $190,000 in equipment and supplies for a new dental center being built in Pyongyang. He will also visit a provincial hospital in the countryside where a generator system installed by Samaritan’s Purse in conjunction with USAID is now providing electrical power where none previously existed. Graham also hopes his limited time in the DPRK will allow visits to other hospitals and dental facilities where Samaritan’s Purse has offered assistance during the past twelve years.

Samaritan’s Purse has also recently been involved in several major projects in DPRK. In response to devastating floods in 2007, the Christian relief organization chartered a 747 cargo jet to deliver $8.3 million in medicine and other emergency supplies (and more here). That was the first private flight directly from the United States to the DPRK since the Korean War.

Following Graham’s visit to DPRK he will travel to China where in 2008 Samaritan’s Purse sent a Boeing 747 cargo plane filled with urgently-needed supplies to Chengdu in response to a 7.9 magnitude earthquake that killed 40,000 people. One year after the disaster the N.C.-based organization also airlifted 70 tons of Operation Christmas Child shoe box gifts which were hand-delivered to hurting children in that region.

Posted in Foreign aid statistics, Health care, International Aid, Samaritan's Purse, Statistics | Comments Closed

DPRK admits sanctions pressure, stresses frugality

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-10-7-1
10/7/2009

The March 2009 issue of the North Korean Journal Economic Research emphasized that with the strengthening of international economic sanctions against the North, actively participating in the “Battle for Savings” was essential in all sectors in order to construct a “strong and prosperous nation.”

The recently obtained academic journal called on readers to broaden the “savings battle” in an article titled, “Strongly Spreading the Battle for Savings Is an Important Measure for the Construction of an Economically Strong Socialist Nation.” The article stressed that the “savings battle” was necessary for the successful completion of large-scale industrial construction projects, such as the Huicheon Power Plant, as well as the construction of hundreds of thousands of private homes and pubic facilities. North Korean authorities consider these projects essential to the successful construction of a ‘strong and prosperous nation’ by 2012, the year marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Kim Il Sung.

The journal reported that Kim Jong Il had ordered, “Instances of waste among workers and laborers is to be eliminated and the Battle for Savings strengthened.” It also offered, “The ‘Battle for Savings’ is one of the conditions necessary to be able to overcome the economic difficulties created by the Imperialists’ sanctions.”

The journal accused the United States of “villainously daring to carry out military pillaging and economic sanctioning measures” in order to blockade the North and reported that “American and Japanese Imperialists are not only sanctioning imported and exported goods, but are going as far as to interfere with loan accounts.” These statements may provide some insight into the economic and social difficulties the international sanctions are causing for North Korea.

The article went on to say that these circumstances demand that all people “Raise the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance and strenuous efforts while strengthening to new heights of the savings battle throughout all sectors of the People’s Economy.”

Furthermore, it stated that if the “Battle for Savings,” was strengthened, “The capital saved could increase the number, quality and variety of products, increasing the export base,” and, “foreign capital can be saved by closely managing and efficiently using materials which must be imported, such as crude petroleum and some raw materials and equipment.”

The article also evaluated the implementation of savings plans in factories and enterprises, stating, “Pilot projects to increase production need to be expanded through schemes such as prizes and money for saving of raw materials and increasing output by introducing overtime pay schedules.”

Posted in 2012 Strong and Prosperous Nation (Kangsong Taeguk), Banking, Domestic publication, Economic Research Journal, Finance, Institute for Far Eastern Studies | 2 Comments »

Reform from Below: Behavioral and Institutional Change in North Korea

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Peterson Institute Working Paper (Sept 2009)
Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland

(Download PDF here)

Abstract: The state is often conceptualized as playing an enabling role in a country’s economic development—providing public goods, such as the legal protection of property rights, while the political economy of reform is conceived in terms of bargaining over policy among elites or special interest groups. We document a case that turns this perspective on its head: efficiency-enhancing institutional and behavioral changes arising not out of a conscious, top-down program of reform, but rather as unintended (and in some respects, unwanted) by-products of state failure. Responses from a survey of North Korean refugees demonstrate that the North Korean economy marketized in response to state failure with the onset of famine in the 1990s, and subsequent reforms and retrenchments appear to have had remarkably little impact on some significant share of the population. There is strong evidence of powerful social changes, including increasing inequality, corruption, and changed attitudes about the most effective pathways to higher social status and income. These assessments appear to be remarkably uniform across demographic groups. While the survey sample marginally overweights demographic groups with less favorable assessments of the regime, even counterfactually recalibrating the sample to match the underlying resident population suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the North Korean regime.

JEL Codes: P2, P3, F22
Keywords: failed states, transition, reform, North Korea, refugees

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Peterson Institute, Political economy | 2 Comments »

North Korea looks to southern China to attract tourists

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

By Michael Rank

North Korea is spreading its net wider in its quest to attract more tourists from China, and now has its eye on the southern province of Guangdong as well as Shanghai.

A Chinese website (link here) reports that a delegation of North Korean travel agents is expected to travel to Guangzhou next month and that local tour operators in Guangzhou and nearby Shenzhen, on the Hong Kong border, are eager to do business.

Tourists will have a choice of two routes to North Korea – they can either fly to Shenyang or Dalian in northeast China and then take the train to Pyongyang via Dandong, or they can fly to Pyongyang via Shenyang. It puts the price at 5,000 yuan ($730) but doesn’t say how many days the tours last or any further details. It says the main attractions will be the usual ones of Pyongyang, the DMZ at Panmunjom, the Myohyang mountains and the annual Arirang pageant.

As NKEW reported in July, North Korea is also targeting Shanghai as a source of tourism revenue, and there is further talk of charter flights from Qingdao in Shandong province to Pyongyang.

Quite apart from the question of how many Chinese are likely to be tempted to visit a Cultural Revolution-type theme park like North Korea, there are also bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. North Korea does not have “approved destination status” for Chinese tourists, which means in theory at least that travel there is restricted to business groups and official delegations. (Incidentally, South Korea doesn’t seem to be an ADS country either).

As the website notes, “An important issue within ADS is to avoid possible illegal immigration through tourism channels. All tourism groups travelling within the ADS framework are supposed to be monitored by both Chinese and foreign authorities to ensure they return to China. Embassies and consulates apply different methods to monitor the return of the Chinese tourists. Whenever a tourism group member does not return to China, the local travel agency is held responsible and sanctions are applied.” Not that there is much likelihood of Chinese tourists defecting to North Korea.

Furthermore, China is encouraging tourists to counter the world recession by spending their money at home, and although this is China-DPRK year marking the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations, a further obstacle is the fact that Chinese citizens now need a passport to travel there, not just a border pass that was all that was needed previously to cross into the country at Dandong by train.

Nick Bonner of Koryo Tours says: “We have noticed a sharp drop in Chinese tourists visiting DPRK in comparison to this time last year – even though the spectacle of the 100,000 strong performance of the mass games is still going on and has been extended to October 15th.

“I think next year Chinese tourism will be coming back strong – there is a certain ‘busman’s holiday’ attraction for Chinese tourists to visit DPRK.”

Posted in China, Koryo Tours, Tourism | 2 Comments »

New Evidence on Inter-Korean Relations, 1971-1972

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP)
September 23, 2009

NKIDP is pleased to announce the publication of NKIDP Document Reader #3, New Evidence on Inter-Korean Relations, 1971-1972.

This latest addition to the NKIDP Document Reader series features newly available South Korean, Romanian, East German, and Bulgarian documents on the North-South dialogue which marked the first significant thaw between the rival regimes on the Korean Peninsula.

New Evidence on Inter-Korean Relations, 1971-1972 , like all NKIDP publications, is available for download free of charge from the NKIDP website.

Yonhap reports on this publication here.

Posted in North Korea International Documentation Project (NKIDP) | Comments Closed

DPRK-China trade (Q1,Q2 2009)

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

According to Yonhap:

Trade volume during the January-June period totaled US$1.1 billion, down 3.7 percent from a year earlier and the first decline since 1999, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said in an emailed release that cited official Chinese data. The drop was in striking contrast with a 41 percent increase during the same period last year and a 16 percent gain in 2007.

North Korea was put under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear test in May, barring its weapons trade and strictly limiting cash flows into the country. The sanctions, however, do not appear to have affected North Korea’s trade with China, an official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.

Prices of crude oil, which account for a quarter of North Korean imports from China, subsided this year after steep hikes in 2007 and 2008, said Jeon Dong-myeong, a ministry official overseeing North Korean trade.

“It’s not a steep decline. The 3.7 percent decline in trade volume can arise from price differences,” Jeon said.

North Korean imports from China amounted to $750 million, down 8.4 percent, while exports increased by 8.2 percent to $352 million, according to KOTRA.

By item, North Korea’s crude oil imports showed the steepest decline of 54 percent, or $111 million.

Food imports slightly increased to $23 million, and fertilizer imports considerably grew to $11.9 million, close to the amount the North brought in during all of 2008, $12.7 million.

Despite the international sanctions on the country, North Korea’s trade with Germany gained by 46.53 million euros during the first half of this year, according to KOTRA. Citing Germany’s figures, it said trade volume was up 160 percent from the same period last year, and up 30 percent from the total trade volume the two countries registered for last year.

Read the full story here:
N. Korean trade with China falls slightly in first half of 2009
Yonhap
9/23/2009

Further information and requests:
1. Here is the PR of China’s Ministry of Commerce database where trade data is published (does not work well with Mozilla). The usual caveats apply.

2. I have given up on the KOTRA web page. Can someone please send me the KOTRA email mentioned in the Yonhap story?

3. Here are general stories about North Korea’s trading activities. Here are stories mentioning specific trade statistics.

Posted in China, International trade, Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA), Statistics, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

DPRK harvest to decline

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

According to Yonhap:

The North’s corn crop for this year is estimated to be less than 1.5 million tons, considerably down from the 2.5 million to 3 million tons it usually garners, said Kim Soon-kwon, a leading corn biologist and head of the International Corn Foundation. The forecast yield portends a severe food shortage in the country where corn is believed to make up 40 percent of the total food supply.

“Of all the corn harvests I’ve seen while visiting North Korea over the past 12 years, this year’s crop was the worst,” Kim said over the telephone from China where he was staying after last week’s trip to the North.

During the Sept. 12-16 trip, he surveyed corn farms on the outskirts of Pyongyang and around Mount Myohyang and found a widespread shortage of fertilizer had slowed corn growth. Also, a drought in July — a critical period for the crop — followed by heavy downpours further damaged corn fields, he said.

“Corn needs fertilizer more than any other grain,” Kim explained. “The fact that the fertilizer had not been provided appropriately because of the limbo in inter-Korean relations is a major factor in the bad crop.” said Kim, who spent 17 years in Africa helping develop higher-yield corn seeds and spreading farming technologies.

Since 1999, the South Korean government has provided an average 300,000 tons of fertilizer worth 96 billion won (US$77 million) to the North every year to help ease the country’s chronic food shortages. But the aid was suspended after conservative President Lee Myung-bak took office last year, linking inter-Korean aid to progress in North Korea’s denuclearization.

North Korea’s own fertilizer output is estimated at less than 500,000 tons a year, about a third of the 1.5 million tons the country needs for its grain farming, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry.

Aid activists from World Vision, who visited North Korea last month, said rice paddies were more yellow than green this year due to a fertilizer shortage, which will equate to low yields in the harvest season.

Seoul expects the North will fall more than one million tons short of the 5.48 million tons of food needed to feed its population of 24 million this year.

Read the full story here:
N. Korean corn crop to fall by 40 percent: agronomist
Yonhap
9/22/2009

Posted in Agriculture, Food, International Aid, World Vision | Comments Closed

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