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Juche: Idea for All Times

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
11/27/2007

The great and immortal idea of Juche, the most advanced social theory the world has ever known, was created by Kim Il-sung in 1930 when the ever-victorious general was 18 years old. Since then, the theory has been embraced by political and intellectual leaders across the world.

This is what North Koreans are required to believe. The idea of a high school graduate developing such a breakthrough social theory might sound strange, but after all the official line is that Kim Il-sung became a leader of the entire Communist movement at the tender age of 14 when in 1926 he allegedly founded the first truly communist group in the country.

However, early references to Juche are almost certain to be faked. The text of the speech which Kim Il-sung allegedly delivered in Manchuria in 1930 was first published in the 1960s, when Juche featured prominently in North Korean propaganda. There are good reasons to think that the entire text of the speech was actually written around the same time, to suit the political situation of the 1960s.

Actually, nothing was known about Juche until December 1955 when Kim Il-sung first used the word in a long speech, addressing a group of high-level party officials. In those days, Pyongyang was waging its first anti-Soviet campaign, still very mild by later standards. Nonetheless, in the mid-1950s the Soviet Union was liberalizing itself, so Kim Il-sung decided to move away from his erstwhile ally and patron. He did not want to be ousted and disgraced by local Korean reformers.

In his attempts to counter the liberal trends, Kim Il-sung decided to use nationalism as his preferred weapon. After all, the liberal wind was blowing from the north, from Russia, and hence it made sense to remind officials about their “Koreanness.” If we have a more careful look though the 1955 speech and other early references to Juche we will see that this was what Kim Il Song meant: not a coherent ideology, not even the idea of “self-reliance,” but rather need to emphasize one’s national identity as a Korean, a need to see Korea’s national interests as the top priority.

I have spent a long time reading through the pages of the Nodong sinmun of the 1950s, and it is clear that references to Juche remained rare until 1960. In the “Popular Dictionary of Political Terms,” published in Pyongyang in 1959, the term Juche is conspicuous in its absence, while in the large Dictionary of the Korean Language (1961-1962) the present-day ideological meaning of the term as a name for a political ideology is featured, but still occupies a modest place as a secondary interpretation. It took a large and concerted effort on the part of the Pyongyang ideologues in the mid and late 1960s to re-define Juche as a coherent ideology and the official philosophy of the DPRK.

Things began to really change in 1965 when the Juche promotion campaign was cranked up. While visiting Indonesia in April 1965, then still under a left-leaning nationalist dictatorship, Kim Il-sung delivered a speech which can be seen as the first Juche speech (the 1955 statement used the word in a different meaning). It was when Juche was first posited as the basic ideological principle of North Korean politics. This happened when the Sino-Soviet quarrel had reached its greatest intensity, and North Korea strove to stay neutral in the noisy feud of its two major sponsors. Nationalism in this situation had to promoted. So Kim Il-sung observed that the leading principles in North Korea were “independence in politics, self-reliance in the economy, and Juche as the ideology.”

Only in 1970 was Juche officially promoted as the leading ideology of the ruling Korean Workers Party. The KWP’s Fifth Congress stated that the Party would be guided by Marxism-Leninism and Juche. Judged by the standards of the Communist bloc, this was heresy. The local ideology was put on an equal footing with Marxism! However, by that time it did not really matter. The statement did raise eyebrows in the ideological departments of some ruling Communist parties, above all, in Moscow. However, nobody had either the will or the means to enforce orthodoxy, and everybody knew about the rampant nationalism of North Korea.

The next step came in 1980, when the Sixth KWP congress deleted references to Marxism-Leninism, leaving Juche as the sole official ideology of the Party. Thus the KWP became the only part of the Communist bloc which did not actually claim itself to be an adherent of Marxism-Leninism, even though its practical policy was still perfectly in line with the Stalinist tradition. This was the clearest possible declaration of ideological independence, a break with the official traditions of the Communist camp.

Nowadays, Juche is considered to be not only the girding principle of the KWP, but also the state ideology of the DPRK. The North Korean Constitution makes this clear in Article 3.

It is quite common to say that one has to understand Juche in order to understand North Korea. Well, I would not subscribe to that opinion. Juche is simply too vague to be taken seriously, and the interpretation of its philosophy has changed countless times. In a sense, Juche is an empty shell, a term which includes everything the North Korean leadership considers “correct” at any given moment in time, but hardly anything else.

Posted in Juche, Political economy | 1 Comment »

Recent DPRK market restrictions extended to mobility of the people

Tuesday, November 27th, 2007

Institute for Far Eastern Studies
NK Brief No. 07-11-27-1
11/27/2007

Following Kim Jong Il’s August 26 announcement that, “Markets have become anti-Socialist Western-style markets,” measures to increase restrictions on markets across North Korea have also restricted individuals’ ability to migrate.

The Central Committee of the (North) Korean Workers’ Party released a statement in October, revealing that Kim Jong Il had stated, “The current state of anti-socialism should not be moderately opposed. A strong and concentrated attack must be laid out in order to thoroughly eliminate [this anti-socialist behavior].”

According to the Daily NK, an informant inside North Korea revealed that authorities are “contacting people who have applied for permission to travel to other regions at their trip destination and setting up interviews in order to verify that interviewees are conforming with their [stated] intentions,” and, “ultimately, long distance wholesalers are restricted in their movements, cause a reduction in the amount of goods circulating on the markets.”

Good Friends, a South Korean NGO for North Korean aid, also reported, “In North Hamgyung Province, if someone is absent from work for two days or not seen in their neighborhood, that person’s actions are carefully investigated,” and, “if someone does not check out, each of their family members are called in for interrogation.”

After the ‘Arduous March’, as market activity grew in North Korea, the number of whole-saling ‘middle-men’ grew considerably. These traders received travel permits by applying under the guise of visiting authorities, family matters, special occasions, or other personal reasons. Long-distance traders need a travel permit. In order to get such a permit, cash or goods were frequently offered as bribes.

Now, as it is becoming more difficult to receive travel documents, not only long-distance traders but also even normal vacationers are facing growing difficulties. In particular, people who need to travel to China for family visits are especially worried due to the increasingly strict issuance of travel permits.

The insider reported, “As markets grow, because wholesalers are gaining power as they make large amounts of money, authorities seem to be strongly restraining them,” and “if a wholesaler is caught, his goods are taken, leading to difficulties for market traders.”

According to a North Korean defector in the South with access to DPRK information, university students in Pyongyang are also being subjected to increasingly strict personnel inspections and restrictions. Even when they go to the library, they must fill out an exit record and can only remain out for one day before student leaders pay a visit to their home.

Students not strictly obeying school policies have their bags and pockets searched while being put under investigation and being further restricted. Of course, in the past, as well, students with problems faced inspections of their dormitory or personal goods, but recently, inspections of even everyday students are on the rise.

Posted in Arduous March, Black markets, Civil society, Domestic publication, Economic reform, Education, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

North Korean Market Research

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

Daily NK
Yoon Il Geun
11/23/2007

Unlike its external gesture towards openness as observed in the case of a recent agreement to expand South-North economic cooperation, the North Korean authorities regulate market activities at home.

On October 3rd, the Workers Party delivered a public message that urges the North Korean people to have a proper understanding about the market and to eradicate anti-socialist activities which threaten people’s interest. According to the message, the state bans females who are less than 40 years old from doing business and orders them to get back to factory complexes.

In regard to the recent regulation imposed on the market, many experts on North Korean affairs explain that the North Korean authorities are trying to hold in check a nouveau riche class who have made a fortune in the market and stop the infiltration of foreign culture and news into the society.

Experts believe that the North has decided to regulate the market, the very source of living of its people because it posed a treat to the Kim regime.

◆ The growth of the market since the mid 1990s

In 1990s, the country’s economy collapsed and the state failed to distribute food to its people. Many starved to death, and those survived turned to the market

In those days, despite the state’s tight regulation, the North Korean people had to make their living by either selling in the market or smuggling to China anything they could find in the sea, mountain or river such as fish, pine mushrooms, hemp, alluvial gold, etc. Some even stole metal such as copper and white gold from refineries or dismantled equipments from plants or factory complexes, and smuggled them to China.

Many North Koreans were able to secure the minimum amount of purchasing power by selling national resources overseas. Moreover, many defectors started to send money to their remaining family members in the North, and helped secure the purchasing power of their family. It was around this time when Chinese goods started to flow into North Korea and a new type of market began to grow. The new type of market differed from the state-approved farmer’s markets in the past. For the first time, it became possible for North Koreans to earn bread for a day in the market.

◆ The growth of a new type of market

On July 1, 2002, the nearly bankrupted country adopted an economic improvement measure designed to improve the competitiveness of factory complexes. As many individuals illegally sold national resources overseas and factories were shut down, the state ran short of revenue and became unable to give wages to workers, officials and college professors. In order to solve the shortage, the state began to issue paper money to fill national treasury.

Unfortunately, that increased workers’ wage 10 to 15 times on average. Moreover, the exchange rate which was about 220 won per dollar on June 30, 2002 increased to 1,800 won per dollar nine months after the adoption of the July 1st Economic Management Reform Measure.

Foreign Policy, an American magazine of global politics listed North Korea once again this year as one of the world’s worst currencies and pointed out the problem of the country’s skyrocketing inflation. The magazine also pointed out that the price for rice has increased by 550 percent since the adoption of the July 1st Economic Management Reform Measure. It should be noted that rice is one of those items whose prices have increased the least.

◆ The more the market grows, the more it threatens the regime

As inflation continued, more people turned to the market to make a living and started to manage their economic life independently. Having noticed that, the authorities began to worry what kinds of changes the market would bring about.

The authorities’ foremost concern lies in the rapid spread of foreign information through the market. As North Koreans’ preference for products from South Korea and Japan increases, so does their interest in these two countries. Many defectors say that a countless number of foreign VCDs have been circulated among people through the market.

In addition, the state has lost authority as more people relied on the market and became self-sufficient and individualistic. Prevalent corruption has also undermined its authority.

Lastly, illegal activities have increased so much that they are threatening public security. In fact, the North Korean people nowadays would do anything to make money.

For instance, many party cadres, hospital workers and Red-Cross personnel are stealing aid supplies sent by the United Nations and advanced countries, and army personnel are selling military provisions including rice in the market. Furthermore, many violent crime incidents and lootings are taking place in the areas not under the government control.

“The army and gangsters are savagely looting the market” says a woman in her 50s says recalling her visit to Hwanghae Province prior to coming to Dangdong, China.

◆ The impact of adopting market regulatory measures

The growth of the market will likely deepen the crisis of the Kim regime. Any measure designed to restrict the market would backfire among people.

Since the second half of the year, the North Korean authorities have been promoting market regulatory measures in the hope of protecting the regime. Some have raised a possibility that the North might try to restore its public distribution system using international aid. However, unless the North continues to open its door, the country would never secure an amount of food enough to run the distribution system again.

“Kim Jong Il is aware of the importance of the market for people’s survival, so he tacitly approves its existence. However, when he feels that capitalism is spreading too quickly, he would try to control it.” says Gao Jingzhu, professor of Korean studies at Yanbian University.

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Economic reform, Fiscal & monetary policy, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), International Aid, Labor conditions/wages, Price liberalization, Private property | Comments Closed

Kims’ Clear-Cutting of Korean Forests Risks Triggering Famine

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Bloomberg
Bradley Martin
Hideko Takayama
11/21/2007

In some parts of the world, floods and famine are acts of God. In North Korea, they’re acts of government.

For decades, the late North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung mobilized vast work teams to fell trees and turn the mountainsides into farmland, allowing rainwater to wreck roads, power lines and agricultural fields.

Following Kim’s death in 1994 — just before a flood- linked famine gripped the nation — his son and successor Kim Jong Il continued the sacrifice of forest cover until 2000, when he began encouraging reforestation. But the shift hasn’t reversed the damage, and some analysts warn that another famine, close to the scale of the 1990s disaster that may have killed millions of people, might occur as soon as next year.

“Next year’s food situation is quite serious,” said Kwon Tae Jin, a researcher at the Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul. The famine risk is greatest starting next spring, after the current harvest is used up, he said; North Korea’s best hope may be for more food aid from abroad as a result of its agreement to begin dismantling its nuclear-weapons program.

Floods in August and September left 600 people dead or missing by official count, and 270,000 homeless. “Corpses were dug out of the silt” still clutching vinyl-wrapped photos of the Kims, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.

`Bad Governance’

South Korea has similar rainfall but has largely avoided such calamities. The North’s flooding “is a product of bad governance, economic mismanagement, poor agricultural policy and haphazard short-term survival strategies of the starving, desperate population,” Alexandre Y. Mansourov, a Korea specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, said in a study.

North Korea’s deforestation program dates back to a 1961 speech by Kim Il Sung. In a mostly mountainous country, he proclaimed, “it is necessary to obtain more land through the remaking of nature.” Not only tidelands but “hills throughout the country and plateaus” should be “brought under the plough,” he said.

“The hills and mountains still had trees, and I never heard of floods,” said Hiroko Saito, a Japanese woman who moved with her Korean husband to North Korea in 1961. Her husband joined one of Kim’s vast mountain work teams in the early 1970s, said Saito, now 66 and back in Japan.

Workers and Soldiers

The crews included “city workers, students, soldiers of the Korean People’s Army and anybody else who could move,” said Lee Wo Hong, a pro-communist Korean agricultural expert living in Japan who began spending time in North Korea as a teacher and adviser in 1981.

What he saw there turned him into a critic of Kim Il Sung’s agricultural policy, he said. The country “was filled with bald mountains” on which the North Koreans had planted fast-growing maize; even relatively light rain would wash the crop away.

Reclaiming marginal land appeared successful for a while as North Korea’s overall crop yields increased, agriculture specialist Edward Reed wrote in a 2001 University of Wisconsin study. “Yet from the mid-1980s on, there appears to have been a slow decline in production, probably due to soil depletion from overintensive production,” he said.

By the early 1990s, yields dropped so low that hungry North Koreans went to the mountains to bring even more land under cultivation. Meanwhile, increased demand for firewood — the result of an energy shortage caused when former communist trading partners halted cut-rate fuel exports — added a new incentive to strip the mountainsides.

Death Toll

The results came to the world’s attention in 1995, with the worst floods in a century. The lost farmland contributed to a famine — already under way — that killed somewhere between 600,000 and 1 million North Koreans, according to “Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform,” by Stephen Haggard and Marcus Noland. Other estimates put the death toll as high as 4 million.

As floodwaters poured into coal mines, the energy shortage worsened and the state-run economy all but collapsed. Economic recovery — which didn’t begin until 1998 — was halted by further catastrophic floods in 2006, when the economy again shrank, according to an estimate by South Korea’s central bank.

A report on North Korea’s environment as of 2003, jointly prepared by North Korean government agencies, the United Nations Environment Program and the United Nations Development Program, blamed severe “land degradation” on “conversion of forest land in hilly areas to agricultural land.”

Enthusiast

The report portrayed Kim Il Sung as a forest-planting enthusiast from as early as six decades ago. Nick Nuttall, a spokesperson at UNEP headquarters in Nairobi, said the agency was “not in a position to comment” on why the report didn’t mention Kim’s mountain-clearing policy.

While the report said reversing the environmental damage through reforestation has become “an all-out campaign,” hungry people have continued cultivating crops between the tree seedlings, according to Han Young Jin, a defector from the North who lives in South Korea.

As the branches spread, “people would tie the sprigs together so the trees could not grow,” Han wrote on a defector-staffed Web site, Daily NK. “When the trees inevitably died, new saplings would be planted.”

Posted in 1990s Famine, Agriculture, Arduous March, Civil society, Forestry, Lumber | Comments Closed

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.”

Posted in 1990s Famine, Agriculture, Arduous March, Black markets, Civil society, Economic reform, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Labor conditions/wages, Light Industry, Manufacturing, Price liberalization, Restaurants | 1 Comment »

Inspecting Markets, the Hotbeds for Anti-Socialist Activity

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Daily NK
Kwon Jeong Hyun
11/15/2007

North Korean authorities have recently tightened regulations in markets as a warning against private economics, according to inside sources.

The regulation of Pyongyang markets has continued since President Roh Moo Hyun’s visit to North Korea in the beginning of October. North Korean authorities closed all markets in Pyongyang during the Inter-Korea Summit under the whitewash of mobilizing a welcoming crowd. Afterwards, when it reopened the markets, street venders and women under the age of 40 were restricted from engaging in business.

The North Korean inside source said in a November 12th phone conversation that “With the increase in Pyongyang markets, the authorities are not looked at in a favorable light. Regulations worsened after President Roh’s visit to Pyongyang.”

“A week or two before President Roh’s visit, regulations became strict, such as prohibiting outsider visits to Pyongyang and ceasing the operations of the jangmadang (markets). From that point on, the jangmadang has been persistently regulated.”

Leading up to the Inter-Korea Summit, North Korean authorities implemented other civilian regulations as well, such as issuing “special travel permits.”

One Pyongyang trading company head, currently in Dandong, China, said in a meeting with a reporter, “Regulations were tightened after word got out that a clandestinely filmed video clip showing Pyongyang markets had been widely broadcasted in South Chosun (Korea).” He surmised that a clip showing Pyongyang’s Sunkyo Market has been broadcasted on Japanese news programs three times since last month.

He also said, “A decree was issued by the Pyongyang People’s Committee that women under the age of 40 should be employed in enterprises. Our enterprise received the same decree, so we have to take in 200 female workers.”

He said however, “Too many workers have been dispatched, even though our enterprise business is not that large. We objected, saying that we can not receive them because we can not even give them provisions. Other enterprises in Pyongyang are in the same position.”

He emphasized, “People go to the market, because the state cannot sustain them. The party leaders also survive relying on the market, so regulation of the market is impossible. Market control can only be a temporary because the wives and daughters of party leaders are in the situation of selling goods as well.”

He also added, “The number of people in charge of general markets is exorbitant across the country. Those who received 30,000 won per month have to go into enterprises where they will only get 2 to 3,000 won. Restricting the market is something nobody wants.”

The North Korean state is currently prohibiting the undertaking of businesses by women under 40. In North Hamkyung Province, the business age limit will be fixed at 45 and above starting in December, so the members of the Union of Democratic Women have put up a significant resistance.

According to an internal Workers’ Party document which has recently come into the hands of a diplomatic source, the North Korean government is supposed to have given the order to “regulate the markets, as they are hotbeds for anti-socialist activity.”

The document, which was published last October under the auspices of the Central Committee of the Chosun Workers’ Party, read, “The Great Leader Kim Jong Il pointed out, ‘In order to absolutely eradicate this anti-socialist phenomenon, we have to unfold a concentrated offensive.’”

The document states, “Civilians were able to attain some comfort through the market; but now, it has deteriorated into a place that breaks societal order and national rules. In one city, several tens of thousands of merchants come out to the sidewalks and even car lanes and have brought about a severe disruption in traffic.”

The paper gives evidence to the fact that the North Korean government itself recognizes the citizens’ growing reliance on the market due to market revitalization, and that anti-socialist activities are rampant.

The document further criticized, “A more serious issue is that mostly women under the age limit are conducting business in the market, and women who have received high-level education under the auspices of the Party and the nation have thrown away their positions to go into sales, an act which forsakes justice and the most basic conscience.”

Additionally, it specifically addressed those who disseminate illegal South Korean film products, “middlemen,” referring to brokers who secretly sell nationally-regulated, military, and electronic goods, and Chapan-Jangsa (selling goods off trucks) who earn excessive profits from wholesales.

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Black markets, Central Committee, Civil society, Domestic publication, Economic reform, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Price liberalization, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

Working through Korean unification blues

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
11/15/2007

For six decades, the myth of unification as Korea’s supreme goal has been enshrined in the official mythology of both nations. The lip service to this myth is still paid by virtually all political forces in both Koreas, but the actual policy of both Pyongyang and Seoul nowadays is clearly based on a very different set of assumptions and hopes: both sides try to avoid situations which might lead to unification.

There are good reasons for this quiet change of policy. The gap between the Koreas is too great; depending on which calculations you believe the per capita gross domestic product in the South is between 15 and 40 times higher than that of the North. Perhaps, nowhere in the world one can find two neighboring countries whose income levels would be so vastly different – and in this case the two countries happen to speak the same language.

The North Korean rulers know perfectly well that in a unified country they would be unable to keep their privileges, and also are likely to be held responsible for decades of gross human-rights abuses and economic mismanagement. South Koreans are no more willing to unify with their impoverished brethren – unification of Germany where the initial situation was much better, became an ordeal, so the unification of Korea would clearly become a disaster.

Therefore, South Korean politicians are doing everything possible to support the dictatorship in Pyongyang, assuming that “stability” in the North is necessary for South Korean economic prosperity. Sufficient to say that some 40% of all grain consumed in North Korea is either received from the South or produced with the help of the mineral fertilizer shipped by Seoul free of charge.

This policy is usually explained as a way to “create the environment for Chinese-style reforms”. This indeed might be its long-term goal, but for all practical reasons the major immediate outcome of massive South Korean aid is a continuous survival of the Pyongyang dictatorship. The statement that a “German scenario is unacceptable” has become a mantra of Seoul politicians.

However, over the past decades, Kim Jong-il’s regime has not shown the slightest inclination to reform itself. Obviously, the Pyongyang elite believes that the Chinese model, so enthusiastically extolled by the good-wishers from Seoul, is not acceptable for them. Perhaps they are correct in their fears. The existence of a rich and free South, always presented as another part of the same nation, makes the situation in Korea quite different from that of China or Vietnam.

Chinese-style reforms, if undertaken by Pyongyang, are bound to produce a certain openness of the country and certain relaxation of political control. As a result, the North Korean populace will soon learn about South Korean prosperity and will be less afraid of the regime’s repressive machine. It’s questionable to what extent the North Koreans would be willing to obey a government whose track record has been so bad after they see an attractive alternative of the South.

Hence, North Korean leaders have made a rational decision: to keep stability and their own privileges, in recent years they have used foreign aid to roll back the changes which happened in the mid-1990s. Instead of reforms, they now do everything possible to limit or ban private economic activity and reassert their control over society.

Despite the government’s resistance to reform, the North Korean system is gradually crumbling from below, and this slow-motion disintegration might turn into an uncontrollable collapse in any moment. A sudden death of even a serious illness of Kim Jong-il is almost certain to trigger a serious crisis. If this happens, all bets are off, but it seems that a collapse of the system, Romanian or East German style, is one of the most likely outcomes.

This is what people in the South fear most. Indeed, unification might indeed spell economic and social disaster for the rich South. There are different estimates of the “unification costs”, the amount of money that would be necessary to close the yawning gap between the two Korean economies. The most recent estimate was made public last October. A report prepared by a committee at the South Korean National Assembly states that if unification happened in 2015, it would cost US$858 million to raise North Korean per capita income to half of the South Korean level. This is guesswork, of course, but everybody agrees that the amount of money necessary for reconstruction of the impoverished North could ultimately be counted in trillions of US dollars.

The “unification cost” is a hot topic, but many problems are of a social nature and have nothing to do with money issues. For decades, North Korea has remained one of the world’s most isolated regimes whose rulers once perfected Stalinism to the level undreamt of by Joseph Stalin himself. The population, with the exception of a tiny elite, has very vague and distorted ideas about the outside world.

North Korea is a well-educated society, but the technology and science they teach at the colleges is of 1950s vintage. The average North Korean engineer has never used a computer. Society has been conditioned to perceive the total distribution of goods and services as the norm, and experts seem to agree that the average North Korean defector in the South has serious problems when it comes to making consumer or career decisions for oneself (no such decisions are necessary or even possible under the North Korean system).

So, it is easy to see why South Koreans are so afraid of unification. However, history does not flow in accordance with human desires. If the North Korean state collapses, South Koreans will have few choices but to prepare themselves for unification at time and under circumstances which they would not be too happy about.

As the East European revolutions of 1989-1990 (or, for that matter, of nearly all popular revolutions) have demonstrated, once changes begin, nobody can control the pace and direction of events. Now it is time to think what should be done if an emergency happens and the North Korean regime follows the fate of nearly all regimes which once were its models and aspirations – Albania, Romania and the Soviet Union itself. When a crisis starts unrolling, it doesn’t leave much time for rational thinking.

Alas, any open media discussion of this subject remains taboo in the South. There are fears that such discussions might annoy the North, undermining inter-Korean detente. The Korean nationalist left, now (barely) in power, still believes that the Chinese solution is possible and “progressive”, and also perceives any talks about regime collapse in the North as a reminder of the official anti-communism of the past. The right is slightly more realistic, but it seems that its supporters are not too eager to discuss the difficulties such a turn of events could bring about.

It will be a simplification to think that South Koreans are completely unprepared for such an eventuality. Seoul government agencies do not like to talk about it, but it is clear that somewhere in government there are secret files with short-term contingency plans, to be put in motion in case of a power collapse in the North. However, these plans deal with immediate consequences of the crisis, especially with handling of refugees, and not with the long-term strategy of reconstruction, and this strategy is actually the hardest part of the task.

The major task is to smooth the transition, to make the shock of unification less painful and more manageable. It seems that one of the possible solutions is a confederation. The idea of confederation has been suggested many times before, but in most cases it was assumed that the two existing Korean regimes would somehow agree to join a confederative state. Needless to say, one has to be very naive to believe that the North Korean rulers could somehow co-exist with South Korea, which even in its worst times was a relatively mild dictatorship committed to a market economy (and become a liberal democracy two decades ago).

Such confederation is plainly impossible. However, in this case we mean a different type of state union, a provisional confederation, whose sole and clearly stated task would be to lay the foundations for a truly unified state and to cushion the more disastrous effects of North Korea’s transformation.

Such a confederation will become possible only when and if the North Korean regime changes dramatically, and a new leadership in Pyongyang will have no reasons to fear the influence of the democratic and capitalist South. In other words, only a post-Kim government can be realistically expected to agree to such a provisional confederation. It does not really matter how this government will come to power, whether through a popular revolution, a coup or something else. As long as this government (most unlikely, bowing to pressure from below) would be genuinely willing to unite with the South, it might become a partner at these negotiations and a participant of the confederation regime.

The confederation regime should make North Korea a democracy, one that introduces political freedoms and basic political rights. There should be an explicit statement about the length of the provisional confederation regime, and 10 to 15 years seems to be ideal. A longer period might alienate common North Koreans who will probably see it as an attempt to keep them from fully enjoying the South Korean lifestyle while using them as “cheap labor”. On the other hand, a shorter period might not be sufficient for any serious transformations.

One of the tasks of such a provisional system will be to control cross-border movement. South Koreans are now haunted by nightmarish pictures of millions of North Koreans flooding Seoul and other major cities, where they will push the South Korean poor from unskilled jobs or resort to robbery and theft. Such threats are real, and the confederation will make it relatively easy to maintain a visa system of some kind, with a clearly stated (and reasonable) schedule of gradual relaxation. For example, it might be stated that for the first five years all trips between the two parts of the new Korea will require a visa, and North Koreans will not be allowed to take jobs or long-time residency in the South. In the following five years these restrictions could be relaxed and then finally lifted.

South Korean fears of a North Korean crime wave might be well-founded – notoriously tough North Korean commandos indeed make ideal mafia enforcers. However, the North Koreans also should be protected from the less scrupulous of their new-found brethren – for example, from South Korean real estate speculators. In the case of uncontrolled unification, South Korean dealers will rush to buy valuable property in the North, a task which will not be too difficult in a country where $10 a month is seen as a good income.

South Korean dealers vividly remember what happened in Kangnam, former paddy fields which were turned into a posh neighborhood in southern Seoul. In some parts of Kangnam land prices increased more than a thousandsfold within a decade or so, making a lucky investor super-rich, and there are good reasons to believe that the price of land in Pyongyang or Kaesong could sky-rocket as well.

However, it is easy to predict the resentment of those North Koreans who will lose their dwellings for what would initially appear to be a fortune, but soon will come to be seen as small change. If real estate speculations are left uncontrolled, in a few years entire North Korean cities could become the property of South Korean dealers – with predictable consequences for relations between northerners and southerners. Hence, the provisional confederation regime, while encouraging other kinds of investment, should strictly control or even ban the purchase of arable land and housing in the North by South Koreans.

Another painful issue is that of land reform, distributing the land of state-run agricultural cooperatives among individual farmers. One of the major challenges would be claims of land owners who lost their property during the North Korean radical land reform of 1946. A majority of the dispossessed landlords fled to the South in 1945-1953 when some 1.5 million inhabitants of the North crossed the border between the two Koreas. Their descendants now live in the South and, as both anecdotal evidence and some research testify, carefully kept the old land titles. It is just a minor exaggeration to say that an arable plot in the North usually has an aspiring landlord residing in Seoul. These claims remain technically valid since the Republic of Korea has never recognized the North Korean land reform of 1946.

For generations, the North Koreans have been told by their government that the collapse of the communist regime will bring back the nasty landowners who have been laying in wait in the South. If in this particular case the propaganda statements are correct, this would produce a very serious negative impression on North Koreans, further increasing their alienation and disappointment.

Under protection of the confederation regime, a land property system could be redesigned, or rather created from scratch. The recognition of the 1946 land reform and its results is a necessary first step. To placate former owners, some partial compensation might be paid, even though the present author is not certain whether grandchildren of former landlords, usually rich and successful men and women, are really in dire need of such compensation.

As the next step, the cooperative property should be distributed among its members, preferably among the people who are really present in their villages (perhaps, a free rent system might be the first step). At any rate, by the end of the confederation period, land and real estate in North Korean should be safely privatized, with North Korean residents (and, perhaps, recent defectors) being major or even sole participants in this process.

One of the more controversial parts of the package might be a general amnesty for all crimes committed under the Kim family regime. This is especially necessary because the fear of persecution seems to be one of the reasons which keeps the North Korean elite, including its lower ranks, united around the inefficient and brutal regime. They believe that collapse of the Kims’ rule will mean not only the bend of their privileges (which actually are quite small – only a handful of top officials enjoy a really opulent lifestyle in North Korea), but they are more afraid of judicial persecution and even mob violence.

It is not incidental that North Korean officials and guides in Pyongyang ask one foreign visitor after another about the fate of former East German bureaucrats. Indeed, despite considerable liberalization in recent years, the regime remains exceptionally brutal, and its officials have no illusions about this. Unfortunately, this fear of persecution has kept the murderous regime going for the past decade or so and led to many more deaths.

One might argue that such unconditional amnesties to all Koreans is probably “unethical”. Perhaps, but let’s face it: the sheer scale of the crimes committed makes any serious and fair investigation impossible. About half million people have been in prison during those decades, and many more exiled, and nobody will be capable of investigating all these cases carefully and impartially. A great number of people have been directly or indirectly involved with the human-rights abuses, and again, it is impossible to investigate a few hundred thousand former officials who by the nature of their job might have been responsible for some criminal actions. Hence, only partial, selective symbolical (and therefore largely politically motivated) justice can be served at best.

A general amnesty would solve two problems: first, it will make former North Korean bureaucrats less willing to resist changes; second, it would diminish the scale of intrigue and manipulations, since people would not be fighting to avoid the fate of arbitrarily chosen scapegoats. It should become part of the law, and to be taken seriously the amnesty should be made as straightforward and unequivocal as possible.

Of course, amnesty does not mean complete forgiveness. There might be restrictions for former party and secret police officials to occupy certain positions in a post-Kim Korea (a policy pioneered by Eastern Europe). It might be a good idea to create non-judiciary commissions to investigate former abuses, like it was done in post-apartheid South Africa. This commission might lead to truly awful discoveries, but the promise of amnesty should be kept even if it will become clear that North Korean prison camps were not much different from Adolf Hitler’s Auschwitz or Pol Pot’s Tuol Sleng in Cambodia.

The confederation treaty also should include some legal measures which will make certain that North Koreans will not remain the source of “cheap labor”, to be used (and abused) by South Korean businesses.

For example, the military of the two Koreas should be integrated first, and there should be large quotas reserved for former North Korean servicemen in the united army. Politically, the North Korean military might become a hotspot of social discontent: the 1.2 million-strong North Korean armed forces probably lack the skills necessary for modern warfare, but this force consists of professionals who have not known anything except the barracks life and intense nationalist indoctrination. If former military officers are given commissions in the post-unification forces, their skills and zeal will find a good and useful outlet. Otherwise, the very same people are likely to join the ranks of organized crime.

It is also important to provide large admission quotas for North Korean youngsters at major South Korean universities. Korean society is both hierarchical and meritocratic, and being a graduate of a major Seoul school is a necessary condition of entry for nearly all important jobs. It is not incidental that the entire life of a middle-class South Korean family is often designed to facilitate exam preparations for the children.

Unfortunately, for decades to come even the most gifted North Koreans will be unable to compete on equal terms with much better prepared South Korean students, and this means that they can realistically hope to get only to lower-level universities, usually in the North. Both actual and perceived quality of education in those schools will remain relatively low for decades, and this will ensure that North Koreans, even with “new” college-level education, will be permanently relegated to subaltern positions. Hence, affirmative actions are necessary, even if such measures are certain to provoke an hysterical outcry from Seoul and Busan parents.

The confederation regime will help to solve another important problem – that of the North Korean middle class. As East Europe demonstrated, a majority of active supporters of democracy and reform has come from local-educated urban groups, a close analogue of the Western “middle class”. The same is likely to happen in Korea.

However, the same people will become very vulnerable after unification. Who will hire an engineer who has not seen a computer? What can be taught by a social science teacher who spent his or her college years memorizing Kim Il-sung’s genealogical tree and the “Dear Leader’s” asinine pronouncement on everything, from rice planting to nuclear physics? Who will visit a former North Korean doctor whose medicine is essentially on the 1950s level?

During the confederation regime, special efforts could be made to re-educate those people, at least partially, preparing them for a new environment while still allowing them to continue their professional work in the North. Most of them will be unable to adjust, unfortunately, but at least the 10 or 15 years leniency will give a chance to the lucky and determined few, and will also provide others with time to find other ways to make a living.

The confederation model does have serious shortcomings. For example, there are good reasons to believe that the new North Korean political elite will consist largely of Kim-era officials (or their children) who will retain their old habits, including that of corruption and inefficiency. A Northern democratic government would be prone to populist decisions, based on pressure from below, and North Koreans are likely to have particularly naive views on how their society and economy can and should operate, so some mistakes introduced via popular vote might become ruinous and costly.

But no ideal solution is possible. One should not harbor too many illusions. The recovery of North Korea will be prolonged and painful. Even if unification happens tomorrow, the difference between the two Koreas will remain palpable until 2050, if not longer. Tensions, misunderstanding and even outright hostility between northerners and southerners are bound to continue for a long time.

There are no easy and simple solutions. But the current state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely, and it is time to think how unavoidable problems can be mollified. The current policy of Seoul administrations merely helps to postpone the problems created by Korea’s division, and the disastrous choices made by the North half of the country. But sooner or later, Korea and the entire world will have to face these problems – and solve them.

Posted in 1946 Land Reform Law, Agriculture, Economic reform, International Aid, International trade, Labor conditions/wages, Light Industry, Manufacturing, Military, Political economy, Real estate | Comments Closed

DPRK Economic Revival Campaign Redefined

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 07-11-6-1
11/6/2007

Following the economic turmoil of the early 1990’s, the North Korean Workers’ Party adopted the slogan of ‘salvation through our own efforts’ for its economic revival campaign. Recently, signs of change in that campaign have been apparent.

On October 30, the Rodong Sinmun, the DPRK socialist party’s newspaper, printed an editorial headlined, “Let’s hold the ‘salvation through our own efforts’ banner even higher and go forward,” in which it explained, “Our strengthening of the [campaign] in no way means building the economy while ignoring the relationship with the international economy.”

In the past, the economic campaign encouraged the mobilization of outdated technology and methods in areas that were seen as lacking, but without fail, to do so independently. Now, the campaign has shifted toward being based on ‘modern science and technology’ and ‘utility’.

The article emphasized, ‘turning our back to science and technology and not relying on science is tantamount to not revolutionizing,” and “if you make world-wide vanguard technology your own and actively use it, that is ‘salvation through our own efforts.”

The newspaper highlighted childrearing, excavation, and mobilization as the three most important areas in which science and technology would play a role as the foundation the newly defined economic revival campaign. The latest twist came when the article purported that utility would be the new foundation for the campaign. “The future [campaign] for the 21st century is a [campaign] based on utility,” and, “economic projects in which the people can see no virtue, and which can give no benefits to the nation are absolutely meaningless.”

In particular, “It is easy to rely on capitalist elements in the economic sector,” and, “if we do not have the will to overcome obstacles and move forward, strange, non-socialist factors will enter [our society] and shake the physical foundation of socialism.”

The article portrays the idea that even if, through inter-Korean economic exchange and transactions with the international community, capitalist elements of the outside world enter the North, ultimately they would not get in the way of bracing up the socialist system, and the current regime could be maintained by adopting a utilitarian economic revival campaign.

It would be difficult to interpret this Rodong Sinmun editorial as a green light for opening up North Korea. However, it does appear to indicate a decision to redefine the campaign to reach ‘salvation through our own efforts’ due to the recognition that the North cannot survive in isolation, and that outside assistance is necessary in order to revive the economy.

Posted in Domestic publication, Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, Juche | Comments Closed

Signals coming from the media in North Korea

Saturday, November 3rd, 2007

Joong Ang Daily
Brian Lee
11/1/2007

Newspapers indicate a desire for more outside interactions

North Korea is increasingly sending out signals through its state media indicating a desire to interact more with the outside world.

The North’s communist party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in an editorial earlier this week that it is no longer a time for production and construction to be achieved through the workers’ bare hands alone.

“We are stressing self-sufficiency, but that does not mean we are disregarding international economic relations while striving to build our economy,” the newspaper said. “The republic has always maintained its position that it wants to have good relations, even with capitalist countries.”

The Chosun Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper in Japan widely believed to be representing North Korea’s views, also said this week that progress in the six-party talks reflected Pyongyang’s political will to improve ties with neighboring countries.

“The nuclear test was Pyongyang’s tool to change the stalemate with Washington,” said Koh Yoo-hwan, a North Korean specialist at Dongguk University. “It got its attention and now both sides are talking. The diplomatic exchanges with other countries are a sign from the North that it can accept capitalist methods and that it is open to the outside. This is not coming just out of the blue. In the North everything is planned from the top and all these moves are done strategically. They want to connect to the outside.”

Yesterday, North Korea restored diplomatic ties with Burma after 24 years of severed ties over the North’s involvement in a bomb attack on South Korean cabinet members in 1983, The Associated Press reported.

North Korean Premier Kim Yong-il has also embarked on a rare sweep of the Asian region, visiting Vietnam last week with Malaysia, Cambodia and Laos also on his itinerary.

Washington has tried in its own way to lure the isolated North more into the open.

A visit by the New York Philharmonic to the North is being pondered while the JoongAng Sunday reported that the North’s women’s soccer team may visit the United States.

In a related development, Christopher Hill, Washington’s chief representative to the six-party talks, met with his North Korean counterpart Kim Gye-gwan in Beijing yesterday to discuss progress in the nuclear negotiations.

Hill is scheduled to arrive in Seoul today to brief officials here on the meeting, a government official said yesterday on condition of anonymity.

Foreign Minister Song Min-soon told reporters a U.S. team of nuclear experts is scheduled to enter the North today to take actual steps to disable the North’s key nuclear facilities. Pyongyang said earlier this week that such measures would start within this week.

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Civil society, Domestic publication, Economic reform, Football (soccer), Foreign direct investment, Music, Myanmar, Political economy, Sports | Comments Closed

Economic doldrums, restrictions on hawking cost jobs in N. Korea: aid group

Friday, October 26th, 2007

Yonhap
10/26/2007

North Koreans have been suffering from chronic job shortages due to worsening economic conditions and a recent move by North Korean authorities to limit the number of hawkers for fear of capitalism spreading in the isolated, communist state, an aid group said Friday.

The North has recently forbidden women under the age of 40 from selling merchandise on their own, Good Friends said in its latest newsletter. The previous age limit was 30.

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Black markets, Civil society, Economic reform, Good Friends, Labor conditions/wages, Manufacturing, Price liberalization, Private property | Comments Closed

North Korean Economy Watch