North Korean Economy Watch

UPDATE: Lankov has ammended his Asia Times (in full below) article with this information published in the Korea Times:

North Korea remains a poor country, to be sure, and malnourishment is still widespread there. Nonetheless, North Koreans do not starve to death any more, and their access to consumer durables has improved considerably. TV sets are common, DVD players have ceased to be a rarity, and the number of mobile service subscribers grows in leaps and bounds. Even computers have begun to appear in more affluent North Korean houses.

However, there is an interesting paradox: this improvement does not necessarily mean that North Korea is becoming more stable.

A few weeks ago I discussed the economic situation in North Korea with a European colleague, one of a small number of people who do research on the North Korean economy. We both agreed that the economic situation in North Korea has improved over the last decade, and that this upward trend is likely to continue. But then my colleague said: “But this is not going to save the Kims’ regime. Actually, the recent economic improvements are bad news for them.” I could not agree more. My interlocutor spent his childhood and youth in the Soviet Union and East Germany, and he knew what he was talking about.

It has often been assumed that the extreme deprivation is what might trigger the regime collapse in North Korea. This indeed might be the case, but world history shows that people seldom rebel when their lives are really desperate. In a time of mass starvation people are too busy looking for food.

Most revolutions happen in times of relative prosperity. A typical revolution is initiated (or at least prepared) by the people who have the time and energy to discuss larger issues. Another condition for a revolutionary outbreak is a widespread belief that an attractive alternative to the current existence is available.

ORIGINAL POST: Lankov writes in the Asia Times:

Spring arrived, and the international media once again began to report that another famine was looming in North Korea. Such reports appear every year, and so far every such alarm has been eventually proven to be false.

When reading the alarmist reports, the present author, a native of the Soviet Union, cannot help but think about the Soviet media’s habit of reporting that a crisis in the capitalist West was becoming ever-more profound. This “crisis” kept deepening, irrespective of the actual state of affairs in the developed West.

Messages about the “threat of hunger” apparently hanging over North Korea largely come from two groups. On the one hand, they are disseminated by political activists who oppose the Kim family regime and want to underline the economic inefficiency of the North Korean government. On the other hand, similar messages are regularly sent by groups that are involved in providing humanitarian assistance to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) – in the current uneasy international situation alarmism helps to get more aid.

However, the actual situation is different. North Korea is a destitute place, to be sure, and in the past two to three months the food situation deteriorated, no doubt. Nonetheless, in recent years, the economic situation of the population has improved markedly.

Almost no economic statistics are available when it comes to North Korea: the authorities discontinued the publication of statistical data almost half a century ago, in the early 1960s. Almost everything one reads about the current state of the economy should be seen as a guesstimate, and hence should be approached with considerable caution. Nevertheless, experts agree that recent years have been a time of economic growth, albeit this growth has been slow and uneven.

The most oft-cited estimates of the economic situation in the DPRK are produced by the Bank of Korea. According to its analysts, the average annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the DPRK for the years 2000-2009 was 1.3% (though there were years when GDP declined).

This author frequently talks to North Korean refugees and their stories confirm this picture. The lives of North Koreans are tangibly better than 10 years ago – and keep improving slowly.

North Korea remains a poor country, though. Even rice, the staple food of East Asia, remains beyond the reach of the majority. The basic daily food of most North Koreans is boiled corn accompanied by pickled vegetables. Meat and fish appear on the table only occasionally, being a rare delicacy.

However, one thing is important: throughout the past seven or eight years, there has been little hunger in North Korea, even though malnourishment remains common. A meal of boiled corn is now regularly available to all but a very small minority of North Koreans. This is a far cry from the late 1990s, when between half million and one million people perished in a famine.

People have become much better dressed, largely due to the availability of cheap Chinese garments. Some durables, not so long ago inaccessible to the majority of the population, began to appear in North Korean houses after 2000. It seems that in the prosperous border towns of the northern provinces, which are the major target of the present author’s research interest, about 80% of all households have television sets, and about 25% have DVD players.

Merely a few years ago, a fridge was a sign of luxury. It still remains a rare symbol of worldly success and is present only in the wealthiest houses, being the North Korean equivalent of a Porsche, but nonetheless, even fridges are becoming less uncommon.

The same can be said about computers – the penetration rate in the border towns seems to be 1-3%. A home computer is seen as a luxury, but it is nonetheless an affordable one for a small but growing number of families. The mobile phone market is booming: some 300,000 handsets are in use, largely in the capital, Pyongyang. Even private cars have begun to appear – something that was almost unthinkable until recently (admittedly, a private car in North Korea is roughly as rare as a private jet in the United States – and it carries a comparable weight as a status symbol).

All this is accompanied by an increase in income differentiation. There is no way to gauge the Gini coefficient (measure of the inequality in wealth) in North Korea, but it is obvious that income inequality is large and growing, not least because the major role in the new economy is played by the informal market sector.

North Korea’s nouveau riche are entrepreneurs or corrupt officials who often do business by proxies, as well as people who have profitable connections with China (usually through family ties). It is in their houses which one finds refrigerators and computers, and it is them and their children who frequent expensive – by North Korean standards – restaurants in Pyongyang.

On the other hand, one should not describe the situation by applying the oft-repeated but primitive and often misleading cliche about “the poor are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer”. Incomes of ordinary North Koreans, however modest, are growing as well and perhaps have approached the level at which they were around 1990, the time when the crisis struck. For the majority of our readers, this would appear to be a level of abject poverty, but as long as North Koreans remain ignorant about the outside world (as they are), they are likely to perceive it as acceptable.

One can only speculate the reasons behind this improvement. Different factors might be in play. First, in the past 10-15 years a new, essentially capitalist economy, grew in what once was a perfect example of a Stalinist state. Now it seems that a majority of families make a living in the private sector, and its growth might account for the general economic improvement. Second, it seems that the state-run sector (or what remains of it) also adapted and learned to work in new conditions. Third, the large role played by foreign (in recent years – only the Chinese) aid, which North Korean diplomats know how to squeeze.

However, these changes do not necessarily bode well for the regime’s future. People who talk about the alleged deterioration of the economic situation in North Korea often are those who hope to see the regime collapse and assume that a food crisis might become the proverbial last straw to bring it about.

This is not really the case. People seldom rebel when their lives are desperate: they are too busy looking for food and basic necessities. Most revolutions happen in times of relative prosperity and are initiated by people who have time and energy to discuss social issues and to organize resistance. Another condition for a successful revolution is a widespread belief in some alternative that is allegedly better than present-day life.

There is little doubt that the North Korean elite welcome signs of economic growth, but paradoxically, this growth makes their situation less, not more, stable. North Koreans are now less stressed and have some time to think and talk – more so since the once formidable surveillance and indoctrination system was damaged during the crisis of the 1990s, perhaps beyond repair.

Since the economy is increasingly under the influence of China, the elite has become more aware about the outside world – in other words, they are beginning to realize how poor they actually are compared to their neighbors. They are learning that there is an alternative, and they have some time to discuss this.

Last but not least, the spread of new technologies is dangerous for the regime in the long run. In a sense, the North Korean power elite is unlucky: they run an anachronistic dictatorship whose survival depends on isolation, but they do it in an era in which new technology is largely about processing information, not materiel.

More or less every DVD player is used to watch foreign – even South Korean – movies that give more than a glimpse of overseas lifestyles, and this makes many old propaganda lies unsustainable. Computers, which come with USB ports, are even more potentially dangerous. Mobile phones enable people to communicate. They are afraid of eavesdropping, and with good reason, but it is doubtful whether the North Korean security police can handle an explosive growth in communications.

One might point at the recent Chinese experience as a testimony to an autocratic regime’s ability to withstand such challenges and even benefit from new technology. After all, the Internet is a good environment for spreading and enhancing nationalism that is now the de-facto mainstream ideology of China. However, North Korea is no China, the existence of a rich and free South makes its situation dramatically different and inherently unstable.

So, the improvement of the economic situation in North Korea might actually shorten the life expectancy of the Kim family regime. At any rate, this is too early to see. But one thing is certain: the annual outbursts of alarmist reporting about the looming food crisis should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Read the full story here:
Why the Kim regime will falter
Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
3/11/2011

Quite unlikely yet, but …
Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
3/13/2011

UPDATE: The Daily NK (2011-3-7) reports that the DPRK’s recently minted commemorative coins have been been appearing in the markets:

Chosun Workers’ Party cadres who attended the Delegates’ Conference in Pyongyang on September 28th were each presented with a commemorative gold coin. Now, however, some of the same coins have begun to appear on the open market, according to a source from North Pyongan Province who spoke with The Daily NK on Sunday.

The commemorative coins were minted from gold, silver and nickel by the Chosun Central Bank, and form part of a tradition of coin presentation for state events or to commemorate notable national achievements which began with the 75th birthday of Kim Il Sung in 1987 and continued with the joint 50th anniversary of the Party founding and 50th anniversary of the liberation of the country from Japanese rule in 1995.

The money needed to obtain the raw materials for the 2010 coins was apparently gathered by Bukang Trading Company, which operates under the Workers’ Party.

“The Delegates’ Conference commemorative coins which have appeared on the market are mostly being sold by people who trade with China,” the source explained. “They are not pure gold, but there is a good amount of gold in them, so the price is reasonably high.”

Kim, who defected to South Korea in the second half of the 1990s, said that such coins used to be treated with the greatest of respect, explaining, “When I was in North Korea, I saw a number of commemorative coins. Even until the end of the 1990s, people looked after them at home as a precious thing and a source of great pride. The coin itself was evidence of a person’s status.”

However, recently people’s values have changed a great deal. The source from North Pyongan said, “In those days, even a starving man wouldn’t sell a ‘gift’ from the Suryeong or the General. But now, no matter how precious the gift may be, people will sell it in the market without a second thought.”

“Watches with Kim Il Sung’s name on and various commemorative coins do appear in the market sometimes,” he went on, adding, “Things which were beyond our wildest dreams in the olden days are becoming normal. Sellers point out, ‘What am I supposed to do with possession of this kind of thing?’ Having something to eat is better.”

More than being a simple indication of difficult economic times, the act of selling something which was intended to be thought of as a personal gift from a benevolent leader appears to present compelling evidence of the deteriorating authority of the regime and its control of social discipline. This seems to be particularly so given that the commemorative coins must be being sold by cadres, in theory the most loyal group of North Korean citizens and certainly one which needs to remain loyal if the regime is to maintain its grip on power in the long term.

ORIGINAL POST (2010-10-4): The DPRK is issuing gold and silver coins to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Worker’s Party.

Images courtesy of Daylife.com.

Kim Jong-un’s binocular kerfluffle

According to Yonhap:

Last week, North Korea’s official television station aired footage of leader Kim Jong-il’s past military inspections, during which his third son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-un, was seen watching a tank drill while apparently holding a pair of binoculars upside down.

I posted this very clip from North Korean television to Youtube.  You can see it here.

This gaffe seemingly appears a second time in the very same show:

Though this is a different guidance tour, these appear to be the same set of binoculars, and he appears to be holding them the same way. Maybe he is holding them correctly. Maybe no one has the guts to correct him. I don’t know.

Another interesting fact: This show aired on North Korean television on February 16, 2011 (Kim Jong-il’s official birthday). This particular guidance tour, however,  was first publicized on January 17, 2010, when KCNA reported that Kim Jong-il watched combined maneuvers of the KPA three services.  At the time, KCNA did not report that Kim Jong-un was present at this exercise (this occurred eight months before he was officially unveiled and given his titles in September 2010). So this video, if accurate, is evidence that Kim Jong-un was traveling on guidance tours with Kim Jong-il well in advance of his official promotion. If this video is not accurate, in other words if Kim Jong-un was not actually present at this exercise but was recently spliced in, it could mean that Kim Jong-un’s military bona fides are being built up for public consumption.  The Daily NK reports on more of that here.

Pyongyang’s theme parks
Pyongyang has three theme  parks: Mangyongdae, Kaeson, and Mt. Taesong (A fourth “folk village” is under construction).  Most visitors usually stop at just one, but a theme park enthusiast was able to visit all three in a single trip.  His pictures are here (h/t to a reader)

KCNA Web page fail

The search box on the English version of the new KCNA web page is too small to type “Kim Jong il”.  The best you can do is “Kim Jong i”.  If you are looking for the “January 18 General Machinery Plant” you can forget about it.  The best you can do is “January 18”.

On the Korean Version of the page, you can type “Kim Jong il” in Korean (김정일), but it does not allow enough space for his honorific title: 위대한 령도자 김정일동지 (The Great Leader Comrade Kim Jong-il) . On KCNA, the best you can do is: 위대한 령도자 김정 (missing the “il” and “comrade”). If you take out the spaces, you can get all but the last character in “Comrade” (지). The programmers obviously don’t expect many North Koreans to use the page!

Tofu Pizza Recipe For North Koreans
Kim Hwang’s pizza recipe is designed to be used in a place where cheese is hardly available — North Korea.

Pyongyang goes pop: Inside North Korea’s first indie disco
The Diplo. Done it.

Kim Jong-il birthday synchronized swimming show…
This is a must see, though I was a little disappointed that there was not a “CNC” formation this time around.

On January 18th, 2011, Kim Jong-il visited the “technologically updated” January 18 General Machinery Plant (1월18일기계종합공장, pictured above on Google Earth).  Usually when dates are incorporated into facility names they are public holidays (April 25th House of Culture–4.25 is KPA founding day) or the day Kim Il-sung visited the facility. Since I cannot find a North Korean Holiday on 1.18, I assume this is the day Kim Il-sung first visited the facility.

According to KCNA:

General Secretary Kim Jong Il gave field guidance to the technologically updated January 18 General Machinery Plant.

He went round the inside and outside of the plant to learn in detail about its technological updating and production there.

The workers of the plant have finished the work for its modernization and scientification based on the latest technology by their own efforts and wisdom and energetically developed new technologies to bring about a radical change in production.

Leader Kim Jong Il expressed great satisfaction over this success, watching the production processes equipped with home-made CNC-based machines and new machinery.

The plant has undergone radical changes to meet the need of the knowledge-based economy era thanks to the brisk mass technical innovation movement conducted by its officials, workers and technicians true to the Party’s policy of attaching importance to science and technology, he said, adding: This signal advance is a display of the great mental power of the heroic Korean workers who have always won victories through progress and innovation.

He also made the rounds of newly-built canteen and other cultural and welfare facilities for the workers to acquaint himself with the cultural life and supply service at the plant.

Seeing neat and clean dining room, kitchen, bean store and processing room, he noted that the plant has made signal changes in the supply service in a few years through its careful arrangement and redoubled efforts with the proper viewpoint on the workers. And he expressed great satisfaction over the provision of good living conditions to the workers.

The plant has an important role to play in the development of the nation’s machine building industry, he said, advancing the tasks for it.

Its most important task is to keep the production of machinery going at a high rate and produce more new-type efficient machinery, he said. He set the goal for the plant to hit in the near future and indicated orientation and ways to do it.

The officials of the plant should energetically guide the masses as the supporter and implementer of the Party’s policies and the fighter standing in the van of the drive to devotedly carry out the tasks set forth by the Party, he urged.

He expressed great expectation and conviction that the workers of the plant would creditably perform their role as the vanguard and shock brigade in implementing the WPK’s economic policy.

This factory goes by several similar names, but NTI reports:

According to a source in the South Korean military, this factory produces Scud missile engines. Han Tŏk Su, former chairman of the pro-North Korean General Federation of Korean Residents in Japan (Choch’ongnyŏn), reportedly visited the January 18th Machine Factory in April 1987. His guide told him the facility had been built under an apartment complex, and that very few people living in Kaech’ŏn knew about the factory. Han was also told that the factory mainly produced missiles, tanks and motors. According to the South Korean Ministry of Unification, this factory produces rocket engines.

This was Kim’s second official visit to the factory. The first was on June 10, 1998.

And…

On January 3, 2011, North Korean television broadcast from the Pongchang District Coal Mine (봉창지구탄광).  This is interesting because the mine is located inside Kwan-li-so 18.  Pictured above is the perimeter of the facility identified in The Hidden Gulag.  I posted the relevant television footage to YouTube here which you can use to match up with Google Earth satellite imagery if you wish.  The DPRK might like to give the impression that it is an ordinary coal mine, but most of their other mines do not have security perimeters.

Pictured above are Kim Jong-il’s two birthplaces. On the left is Vyatskoye, Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, where Kim Il-sung was reportedly stationed with the Red Army and where Kim Jong-il is believed to have actually been born.  Learn more here.  On the right is Kim Jong-il’s official birthplace southeast of Mt. Paektu and the nearby “Jong-il Peak”.  Both images via Google Earth.

But although Kim’s birthday is supposed to usher in a period of celebration, by most accounts times are tough in the DPRK.  According to the Associated Press (via Washington Post):

But this year many North Koreans are hungry, and a brutal winter is threatening the early spring harvest. The country is coping with natural disasters: foot-and-mouth disease has devastated its livestock and heavy flooding swamped precious farmland last year. There is also the ever-present tension with neighboring South Korea; conservative lawmakers in the South planned to mark Kim’s birthday Wednesday by floating balloons filled with anti-Kim propaganda across the border.

…

North Korean diplomats have been asking for food aid when meeting officials in foreign countries, a South Korean intelligence official said. North Korea’s food shortage is grave, and the North is likely looking to stockpile food to distribute to citizens next year, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to reporters.

The North has also reached out to the U.N. World Food Program, saying it needs help because of the severe winter and a bad vegetable harvest. On Monday, the United Nations said it had begun a new assessment of North Korea’s food needs and planned more than 300,000 tons of humanitarian assistance.

These signals seem to point to skimpy holiday gift distributions to everyone outside Pyongyang and senior party/military leaders. However, with the rise of markets, these gifts have meant less and less over the years.

Though according to KCNA, the North Koreans are in a celebratory mood nonetheless.  Pyongyang held a rally, a figure skating competition (with Japanese participation), a synchronized swimming  show (Footsteps was played), Kimjongilia flower exhibition, an art show, and a photography exhibition all in celebration of Kim’s birthday.

The AFP also reported on some other activities highlighted by the official North Korean media:

Aircraft delivered gifts on eight islands in the Yellow Sea as part of an annual handout of candy, chewing gum and cookies to all children, the agency reported.

Spring has even come early to the leader’s claimed birthplace at Mount Paekdu on the border with China, the agency said Monday, and a solar halo appeared above Jong-Il Peak there.

Although times are tough for the vast majority of North Koreans, I still see the DPRK as relatively stable, so maybe Kim and his supporters have something to celebrate after all.

Here is additional coverage of KJI’s birthday:
Hankyoreh
AFP
BBC
Daily NK
Donga Ilbo
Yonhap
New York Times
KCNA: Natural wonders

There have been several news reports this week that Pyongyang has gotten smaller as periphery areas were transferred to another province.  I was a little confused by this news because I first read about it back in July 2010.

But anyhow, since there are not any good maps out there of the reapportionment, I will post this one I made on Google Earth:

The red and green areas combined represent Pyongyang’s boundaries up until the change.  The red areas, kangnam-gun, Junghwa-gun, Sangwon-gun, and the Sungho district, are all now counties (gun, 군 ) in North Hwanghae province.

Update (2/25/2011): The Daily NK writes about this as well.

To read speculation as to why these changes were made, check out the stories below:

N. Korea halves Pyongyang in size in apparent economic bids: sources
Yonhap
Sam Kim
2/14/2011

Pyongyang Downsized
Choson Ilbo
2/15/2011

Meng Jianzhu, state councilor of the People’s Republic of China and minister of public security, is visiting the DPRK.  According to North Korea’s official news outlet, KCNA:

Meng warmly congratulated Kim Jong Il upon his reelection as general secretary of the WPK and Kim Jong Un upon his election as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the WPK at the historic Conference of the WPK, hailing the successful solution of the issue of succession to the Korean revolution.

This is interesting for two reasons.

Reason number 1: As far as I am aware this is as close as KCNA has come to identifying Kim Jong-un (김정은) as the explicit successor of Kim Il-sung’s revolution.  Though the signals over the last few months strongly suggested KJU’s trajectory in that direction, I am not aware of any NK media reports saying specifically “KJU is the chosen successor”. Maybe after several months of shakeups and signaling, Pyongyang’s power-brokers have gotten all their ducks in a row–so making an explicit succession statement at this point will not be domestically controversial or arouse serious disloyal intentions.

Reason number 2: According to Yonhap, Xinhua did not report China’s endorsement of the DPRK’s succession plan to the Chinese people. You can read Xinhua’s report here.  Yonhap also reported that later in the day Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu declined to comment on the issue.

UPDATE 1: China’s Global Times DID report on China’s endorsement of the DPRK’s succession–in English.  I am still trying to find out if they have done so in Chinese.

UPDATE 2: Russia’s ITAR-TASS reports that the DPRK and China also signed a security agreement.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

The most important dates for North Koreans born since the 1970s are the birthdays of former leader Kim Il-sung on April 15 and present leader Kim Jong-il on Feb. 16. North Koreans may forget their parents’ birthdays but they always remember the leaders’, because that is when gifts of food and other daily necessities are doled out and a festive mood prevails throughout the country.

But now, due to international sanctions and the spread of grassroots capitalism, the traditional “gift politics” may be coming to an end as the regime can no longer afford to dole out grace and favor.

Gift Packages

The candy and cakes that were doled out on Kim Il-sung’s birthday were traditionally much better quality than those available in ordinary shops. Nylon and tetron fabric were also distributed, much more highly prized than the normally available synthetic cotton, mixed-spun or vinalon fabrics that shrink in the wash. Parents who can barely afford to clothe their children have no choice but to be grateful to Kim Il-sung.

On the two birthdays, a bottle of liquor, five eggs, two day’s supply of milled rice, 1-2 kg of meat, and cigarettes are distributed to every household. These are precious commodities not normally available to everyone. Thanks to these gift packages, the birthdays of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il have long become established as major holidays.

The elite of the Workers Party are given luxurious houses, luxury cars like Mercedes and Swiss-made Omega gold watches. Quality wristwatches are given to ordinary people who have distinguished themselves meritorious and are preserved as heirlooms.

Economic Changes

But amid a food shortage and international sanctions, the regime is having to rethink the practice. And markets are booming there now despite the regime’s attempt to suppress them, so North Koreans can buy Chinese-made candies and cakes and other necessities without much difficulties. This makes the leaders’ birthday gifts look not so special any more.

The quality of gifts is also falling year by year. Senior officials, unable to live on gifts and official supplies alone, enrich themselves through corruption. An increasing number of officials secretly hoard hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it is therefore natural that the leader’s gifts lose their luster.

January 8 was the birthday of Kim Jong-il’s son and heir Jong-un. Although there had been rumors that the regime would designate Kim junior’s birthday as a national holiday and hold lavish celebrations, it passed quietly.

The North designated Kim Jong-il’s birthday as a national holiday quite a few years after he made an official debut in 1974. It was also only when his power base was cemented that he began to dole out gifts to celebrate his birthday. While Kim Il-sung was alive, he gave gifts only to close associates as a gesture of courtesy to his father. So long as Kim Jong-il is alive, therefore, chances are that there will be no gifts to the public or nationwide celebrations on Jong-un’s birthday.

This story is reported every year for the leader’s birthday. Here is a link to previous posts on this topic.

Read the full story here:
N.Korean Regime’s ‘Gift Politics’ Starts to Lose Its Luster
Choson Ilbo
2/2/2011

This weekend a Japanese newspaper published an interview with Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-il’s eldest son, living in Macao.

Kim Jong-nam claims that his father is actually opposed to hereditary succession in the DPRK but is forced to promote it because there is no other political institution that can guarantee “stability” of the both DPRK’s incumbent interest groups and North-East Asia’s political balance.

Kim Jong-nam also refuted claims that his life was at risk; commented on the shelling of Yonpyong; called the recent currency re-nomination a failure; and endorsed economic liberalization in the DPRK.

Kim Jong-nam ‘s comments were widely reported in English.  You can read more below:

N. Korean leader opposed hereditary power transfer, eldest son says
Yonhap
1/28/2011

Kim Jong-Il opposed succession: eldest son
AFP
1/28/2011

Kim Jong Il Was Against Succession
Daily NK
Chris Green
1/28/2011

(more…)

Pictured above: Ontan Worker’s District, Onsong (Google Earth)

According ot the Daily NK:

In advance of next week’s lunar New Year’s Day holiday, National Security Agency agents are concentrating on getting together things for the holiday from households of those whose family members have crossed into China or South Korea.

Exploitation by the NSA or other powerful state apparatus is exceedingly common, of course, and the obtainment of necessities for holidays such as Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il’s birthdays, the Korean thanksgiving day (Chuseok) and lunar New Year’s Day are often covered via exploitation of the people. The difference this time, however, is that the specific targets are the families of defectors.

A source from North Hamkyung Province told The Daily NK today, “NSA agents in charge of northern border regions including Onsung have been engrossed in preparations for the holidays and generating private benefits, targeting smugglers and households with family members who have crossed into China or South Korea.”

The source explained, “Modes of exploitation by agents of the NSA and People’s Safety Ministry and cadres of the Party or prosecutors have been varied of late. They win houses which have problems over to their side and then get them to give certain things.”

The source said that as the lunar New Year’s Day comes closer, these moves have become more active and transparent. “NSA agents visit all of these houses and force them, or sometimes beg for things. They are no different from thieves, just without a knife.”

According to the source, the Conspiracy Research Office of the NSC in Onsung, North Hamkyung Province, which employs 25 agents, has allotted each agent items to get from their district.

There are two sets of items: one set is ten bottles of liquor, 5kg of pork, 20 packs of expensive cigarettes called “Yeomyung,” and the other set contains 20kg of gasoline, a certain amount of fruit and candy, and bottles of oil. Each agent has to select one set.

According to Onsung Jangmadang standards, a bottle of liquor can be bought for 4,000 won, 1kg of pork for 5,000 won, a pack of “Yeomyung” for 6,000 won, 1kg of gasoline 3,000 won, and a bottle of oil for 5,000 won.

In Ontan workers-district within Onsung, there are three agents. The goods assigned to them are also unaffordable, but only defector families have to provide them, the source said.

The source explained, “When an agent visits one’s home, they won’t leave until the host has set up a table of drinks for him. After drinking some, the agent coaxes them, ‘Have you got some news from the South?’ ‘Are you getting money well?’ or ‘When you get a call next time, you should grumble that the situation is hard, so that they will send more money.’”

Sometimes, agents call for bribes for their own family events, too. The source said, “While talking, agents hint furtively that there will be a family event and call for something for that, saying, ‘There will be nothing bad for you if you help out.’”

“Agents say openly that, ‘If more money is delivered, we can live well; it’s is a good thing, and a way to maintain socialism.’ They only need so much as to smell money and they come running,” the source complained.

Due to possible revenge from agents, people cannot complain about the situation and have to provide them with the things they demand, according to the source, who added, “However, the effect works only at that moment when they get the goods. When a problem occurs for these defector families, they are nowhere to be seen.”

Read the full story here:
Defector Families Are Moneybags for NSA Agents
Daily NK
Im Jeong Jin
1/27/2011