North Korean Economy Watch

Good Friends claims that a prestigious local politician has been executed for his bourgeois lifestyle…

(excerpt)  A cooperative farm chief who was once honoured by North Korea’s founding president has been publicly executed for starting a private farm to support his luxurious lifestyle, a South Korean aid group said Thursday.

The unidentified man — said to be a member of the national legislature — and two colleagues were put to death by firing squad on December 5 in Pyongsong City, 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of Pyongyang, the Good Friends group quoted sources as saying.

The farm chief, his accountant and the local county’s party secretary were accused of selling produce from an unauthorised farming operation to lead a luxurious lifestyle, said a newsletter from the group which provides aid to the hardline communist state.

The farm chief was accused of failing to register 196 acres (79 hectares) of farmland that had been cultivated over the past decade. He allegedly fed retired soldiers with the produce and used them as his private bodyguards.

The man “acted like a king” in Mundok County and had been deemed untouchable because of his status and the gang of retired soldiers who followed him everywhere, Good Friends said.

All those put to death were said to have lived in upmarket two-storey homes and driven illicit cars.

Read the whole story in the AFP here
1/3/2008

When President Kim il Sung was alive, he delivered a “state of the nation” address each new year.  Since his death in 1994 audio recordings of his past speeches have been played publicly.  However, the North Korean government did develop a new tool to fill the role of informing the public about the government’s policy goals without overshadowing the unique position of the deceased leader: the “Joint Editorial” published by three of the DPRK’s leading journals, Rodong Sinmun, the People’s Army, and the Youth Vanguard. Each January it is published and North Korea watchers rush to interpret and extrapolate what each line signals. If you have a lot of spare time, you can read some extensive excerpts here.

The title: Glorify This Year of the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the DPRK as a Year of Historical Turn Which Will Go Down in the History of the Country

Although many publications have pointed out that North Korea missed yet another deadline to declare its nuclear facilities, South Korean reviews seem to indicate that the editorial was docile compared to previous years:

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Writing for the Washington Post (December 30, 2007; Page A27), Francine Uenuma covers the DPRK defector-run radio stations in the South which broadcast for audiences in the North.

Who is in this game?
All told, Seoul has three privately run radio stations targeting the North: Open Radio for North Korea, Radio Free Chosun and Kim’s [Free North Korea Radio], the only one run by defectors, who are helped by a committed South Korean staff. Washington-based Radio Free Asia and Voice of America also broadcast to the North.

Tactics:
[FNK’s] broadcasts avoid overtly political messages in favor of cultural subjects. While for some North Koreans “politics is a matter of life and death,” others turn away from it, he noted. “We want to broaden our base as much as possible. For that purpose our radio programs are soft.”

Kim Yun-tae, director of Radio Free Chosun, said his station takes a similar approach. “At first we were doing more propaganda broadcasting, but we changed our minds,” he said. Added Kyounghee An, the station’s international manager, “We don’t think we can cause the collapse of the regime directly. . . . We think after listening, people can compare their real situation to Kim Jong Il’s propaganda and can change their minds, step by step.”

Radio Free Chosun broadcasts North Korean domestic news as well as stories of escapes, revisions to North Korean textbooks and dramas about Kim Jong Il.

The two stations run by South Koreans have defectors on staff who try to make the broadcasts palatable to a North Korean audience, smoothing out political and cultural differences in language, for instance.

Who is listening?
Determining how many people are listening to the stations’ broadcasts is impossible. Though jamming is an impediment, improved signals and electricity shortages that stop the jamming limit North Korea’s ability to block broadcasts completely.

Funding:
The South Korean government, eager to encourage good relations with the communist capital, Pyongyang, discontinued most of the programs its Korean Broadcasting System aimed at the North. But it has taken a hands-off approach to the private stations, broadcasters say, allowing them to operate but offering no financial support. All three services indirectly receive about $200,000 in U.S. government funds annually through the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy.

Daily NK
Park Hyun Min
12/28/2007

The future dream of North Korea’s teenagers is no longer to become party leaders or soldiers, or even join the Party, but to become “merchants.”

“Good Friends,” an aid organization for North Korea, said through “Today’s News on North Korea” No. 104 on the 27th, “Most of the elementary and senior middle school students nowadays, upon being asked what they would like to do post-graduation, say they would like to be merchants.”

The source relayed, “Many of their peers have stopped going to school and have started doing business. It is too burdensome for some students to attend school, so they sell noodles or vegetables by sticking around the jangmadang (markets) and contribute to their families’ livelihoods.”

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Korea Times
Yoon Won-sup
12/27/2007

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il made 86 public appearances this year as of Dec. 27, down from 99 during the same period last year, according to a survey of various North Korean media.

His public appearances have decreased since 2005 when he made 123 appearances.

In the first half of the year, Kim appeared in public 29 times, and later he made 57 appearances, mainly on military bases and business sites.

Out of the 86, 41 were at military bases, followed by 19 at industry or business sites, and 14 at performing centers.

One striking feature is that he reduced his visits to military facilities, which accounted for 60-70 percent of his appearances in the past. Last year, he visited military bases 66 times.

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Daily NK
Han Young Jin
12/26/2007

As North Korean authorities, including the People’s Safety Agency and the National Security Agency (NSC), move to control the jangmadang (markets), the atmosphere in these markets has become intimidating and the traders are becoming nervous.

A source in Sinuiju said on the 25th, “The authorities intended to destroy the jangmadang. The NSC allocated special agents who are each responsible for a particular market and they are working to ferret out traders who deal in forbidden items.”

The National Security Agency is a national-level organization in charge of intelligence services, including monitoring people and seeking out anti-party, anti-state, and anti-socialist activities. This move by the National Security Agency is unprecedented because it is the first time that NSC agents have engaged in activities that would reveal their identities to the citizens first hand.

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Korea Times
Yoon Won-sup
12/25/2007

The two Koreas began four-day talks in the southern port city of Busan Tuesday to discuss ways of establishing shipbuilding areas in North Korea, according to the Unification Ministry.

A sub-committee for shipbuilding and marine cooperation, part of an agreement reached at the inter-Korean prime ministers’ meeting last month, convened for the first time to map out the details of the shipbuilding project.

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Daily NK
Moon Sung Hwee
12/23/2007

Excerpt:

Porno became prevalent in late 1990s, first among party officials and it leaked out to the public. Nude or bikini-worn women dance in North Korean porno with music.

Such indigenous videos disappear as foreign-made porno being imported. The first consumers, and the largest now, are high-ranking officials of the party and army.

It costs 2000 North Korea won (approx. USD 1 =3,200 North Korean Wown) to rent a porno CD for an hour in North Korea. Even middle school students collect money to rent one.

Yonhap
Byun Duk-kun
12/19/2007

Lee Myung-bak, almost certain to be South Korea’s next president, will likely continue engaging North Korea through economic cooperation, but the extent should rely deeply on Pyongyang’s commitment to full denuclearization, unlike his predecessor who has often been under fire for granting unconditional aid to the North, analysts said Wednesday.

Closer ties with Washington will also be prioritized by the incoming administration of conservative Lee, who has criticized President Roh Moo-hyun for alienating the U.S. in dealing with the nuclear-armed communist North.

The entrepreneur-turned-politician says he can and will increase the communist nation’s per capita income to US$3,000 in 10 years, if Pyongyang completely abandons its nuclear ambitions.

“There will be no immediate changes to the country’s North Korea policy if the North continues to move down the path of denuclearization,” Kim Woo-sang, a political science professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University and a key advisor to the president-elect for security and foreign policy, said in an earlier interview with Yonhap News Agency.

Under a six-nation deal, North Korea has to disable its key nuclear facilities and disclose all its nuclear programs by the end of the year in return for economic and energy assistance and political benefits.

North Korea began disabling the Yongbyon complex early last month, but has yet to make a full declaration of its nuclear programs amid a five-year dispute between Pyongyang and Washington over the existence of a secret nuclear weapons program in the North.

The nuclear crisis erupted in late 2002 when the U.S. accused the North of running a uranium enrichment program. North Korea denies having any uranium program.

Seoul has regularly provided hundreds of thousands of tons of food and other humanitarian aid to the North since the historic inter-Korean summit between then President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in 2000.

The Lee administration will continue to provide such assistance strictly based on humanitarian views, but economic cooperation between the divided Koreas will suffer significant reduction should the communist nation choose not to give up its nuclear weapons, Kim noted.

Further development or continuation of “ongoing economic cooperation projects, such as the Kaesong industrial complex, will be left to the market,” Kim said.

“The government will no longer try to encourage South Korean businesses to move into the industrial complex by providing subsidies and other benefits as it currently does, but will try to foster a better environment so the businesses and foreign investors will invest voluntarily,” he added.

At an October summit in Pyongyang, President Roh Moo-hyun and the North Korean leader agreed to launch various other reconciliatory projects, but Lee has said some of those projects will be subject to reconsideration.

Another visible change in policy towards North Korea will come in the way Seoul deals with the nuclear issue, the Yonsei professor said.

“Mr. Lee puts more weight on the six-nation denuclearization process than anything else, so the new administration will never try to take its own initiative or try to pressure China to convince North Korea to denuclearize,” he said.

While seeking more international cooperation in denuclearizing the North, Lee is expected to move closer to the United States, an ally Lee says has served as a capstone for Seoul’s security and economic development since the end of 1950-53 Korean War.

“The governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun neglected Korea’s relationship with the United States. China and Japan are important partners, but the next government will be moving in a different direction, focusing on Korea’s traditional relationship with Washington,” Lee had said in September.

The 65-year-old Lee has also noted his administration may try to push back the timing of taking back the wartime operational control of South Korean troops from the United States, which is currently scheduled to occur in 2012.

“As Mr. Lee has repeatedly said, there will be no renegotiation of the transfer of wartime operational control, but the scheduled timing of the transfer could become very sensitive depending on security conditions surrounding the Korean Peninsula in 2012,” said Kim.

Korea Herald
12/19/2007

Czech authorities have stopped extending visas of North Korean laborers in conformity with U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang and all will probably leave by year’s end, officials were quoted as saying by Associated Press.

Czech authorities stopped renewing residency permits for North Korean workers on Jan. 25 in line with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 adopted in October 2006 and laborers have gradually left since then, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The sanctions are aimed at punishing North Korea for carrying out its first nuclear test, on Oct. 9, 2006 _ a test that prompted international condemnation.

Among other things, the resolution allows cargo to and from North Korea to be stopped and inspected for prohibited goods, bans the import and export of certain military material, and freezes the assets of, and bans travel by, individuals and companies involved in the country’s programs to produce weapons of mass destruction.

On average, several hundred North Korean laborers have been working in various clothing and shoe factories in the Czech Republic since 2001, the ministry said.

The laborers have been leaving the country as their visas expired and all were expected to be gone by the end of the year, said Katerina Jirgesova, a spokeswoman for the Czech foreign police.

While 331 North Korean workers were still in the country in May, only 134 remained on Nov. 27, she said. Police have investigated allegations that the workers were used as a source of revenue for the North Korean government, she said, but she added adding that no wrongdoing could be determined. The allegations reportedly were made by a former North Korean diplomat and a major Czech labor organization.

None of the workers applied for asylum in the Czech Republic, she said.

There do not appear to be many North Korean laborers in other parts of Europe. The Italian labor ministry said it did not have a program of this nature. Officials in Portugal and the Netherlands said there were no North Koreans employed in their countries.