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DPRK-China realtions a little bumpy

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

The United States is blocking all possible ways of transferring money to North Korea. Along with a United Nations resolution, Washington is putting pressure on companies and banks of all countries that have business transactions with North Korea to cut the relations. Japan has blocked money transfers to North Korea, banned a North Korean ferry from entering its ports, frozen North Korea’s assets and banned companies from having transactions with North Korea.

The hardest blow on North Korea was China’s approval of the UN resolution. As the only ally to North Korea, China has provided it with more than half the food and energy the North needs. It is North Korea itself that has made China change its stance.

North Korea-China relations these days are the worst since in June 1995. Back then, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il released a statement in the Rodong Sinmun, or Newspaper of the Workers that China had betrayed the spirit of socialist revolution by introducing a market economy. Although the head of North Korea depends heavily on China for the survival of his country, he recently told an American delegate that China was unreliable.

Posted in China, Japan, Political economy, South Korea, USA | Comments Closed

Self-reliance or isolation?

Monday, July 17th, 2006

Joong Ang Daily
7/17/2006

At the end of “the hermit kingdom,” or Joseon Dynasty, the outer world tried hard to force Korea to open its doors.

Japan forced the Joseon leaders to sign the Treaty of Ganghwa, or Korea-Japanese Treaty of Amity, and then used force to enter Korea.

The United States also eagerly wanted to secure a market here. When the U.S. ship the General Sherman was attacked by infuriated Koreans, the United States used the incident as an excuse to force Korean to open its doors and also sign a trade treaty.

Russia intensified its fleet at Vladivostok in preparation for a southward expansion.

The Qing Dynasty couldn’t stand the idea of its tributary state being under the influence of other countries and thus gave Li Hongzhang, a Chinese politician and general, exclusive power to interfere in domestic affairs inside Korea.

What is the right way to keep self-reliance in the face of outer forces’ attempts to open a nation’s doors?

To this question by Emperor Gojong, a booklet titled “Joseon Chaengnyak,” or “Korean Strategy,” gave an answer.

The book was written by He Ruzhang, a Chinese minister of the Qing legation stationed in Japan.

The author advised that Korea should consult on all matters with China, engage with Japan and sign a trade treaty with the United States in order to keep Russia in check. (From “World Diplomatic History,” by Kim Yong-Koo.)

But Japan was brutal, the United States was too far away to help and Russia was insidious.

Self-reliance means balancing power between nations and that first requires the possession of a certain amount of power. Lacking that, there was little that Emperor Gojong could do.

One hundred and twenty years have since passed. But the foreign policy of Emperor Gojong and that of President Roh Moo-hyun look similar, except that Korea has gained a little bit more capability since those deplorable days.

Both leaders have emphasized self-reliance and a minimum of intervention by other countries. Both have tried to become mediators and secure a leading position through the balance of power.

Does President Roh then have more options in the midst of the current missile crisis?

There is little proof that international order has become more advantageous to us than during the times of Emperor Gojong in the late 19th century.

Except Japan, the other three powers ― the United States, Russia and China ― have become permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.

The format of the four countries has become two sided — the United States and Japan versus China and Russia.

On top of this, North Korea has been added as a rogue country that is a beneficiary of China and Russia’s strategic protection.

In this post-modern era, the legacy from the previous era remains clearly in the Asian region. People in Korea have vivid memories of the colonial era and strong nationalism recalls the nightmares of past imperialism.

Under these complicated circumstances, North Korea fired its missiles as if publicly displaying its political beliefs.

Borrowing the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s rhetoric, that was a “revolutionary force that will crush imperialism.”

The head of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, wants to get through this situation, although it may require him to resort to extreme methods.

After shocking international society, he has remained low-profile, as if asking, “What will you do now?”

South Korea is in the trickiest position. Seoul had told the world powers that it would resolve the North Korea problem in its own way and asked them to wait, while approaching Pyongyang.

Seoul must now feel that it was betrayed after giving aid to the North.

To the South Korean unification minister who revealed this feeling, the head of the North’s delegation delivered his leader’s message that South Koreans also benefit from the North’s military-first policy.

Whether the head of the South Korean delegation became speechless at that remark or not, if a serious statement condemning the insane aspects of that claim is not released, the United States and Japan will assume that South Korea is not much different from the North.

If the North’s intention was to separate South Korea from an alliance with the United States and Japan, or to make publicly obvious the South Korean government’s sympathy for the North, it has achieved some of those goals by launching its missiles.

When President Roh, who has remained quiet on the missile incident, condemned Japan for talking about the possibility of a pre-emptive attack on the North, Kim Jong-il must have worn a smug face.

Kim Hong-jip, who claimed that Korea should engage the Japanese, was beaten to death by a public crowd in downtown Seoul. Emperor Gojong had to endure the collapse of the Joseon Dinasty.

Although 120 years have passed since the “Joseon Chaengnyak” was written, Koreans are still confused which country they should stay close to, which country to engage with and which country to reach out to.

The government set its strategy for peaceful co-existence to achieve self-reliance and to become a mediator.

It also kept providing aid to the North, arguing that it should help North Korea to stay afloat in order to avoid a war. These arguments were crushed by the North’s missile launchings.

Seoul seems unable to turn its head when Pyongyang asks for supply of electronic power and rice.

As the United States and Japan are likely to push North Korea further away, labeling it a rogue country, South Korea’s cooperation with the two countries does not seem probable either.

If there is no chance to work with other countries, South Korea will be adrift in the middle of a turbulent sea for a good while, with its flag of self-reliance flapping.

Japan is sly, the United States has adopted a hardline and China and Russian call themselves the big brothers of North Korea.

I wonder what is the “new Korea strategy” that can rescue the vessel named “Roh Moo-hyun”.

by Song Ho-keun
Professor of Sociology at Seoul National University
Translation by the JoongAng Daily staff

Posted in Political economy | Comments Closed

ROK halts DPRK humanitarian aid

Thursday, July 13th, 2006

The 2005 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics were selected for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis”. I would check out thier work in order to make sense of the current DPRK/ROK diplomatic posturing.

From the Washington Post:

South Korea on Thursday suspended humanitarian aid to North Korea until it agrees to return to international nuclear disarmament talks.

The action infuriated visiting North Korean officials, who immediately cut off high-level talks in South Korea and stormed back home.

The decision to postpone consideration of a North Korean request for 500,000 tons of rice marked the South’s first punitive action against its impoverished communist neighbor since it defied the international community and test fired seven missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2, on July 4.

The move came as the administration of South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun has come under sharp public criticism at home for what many there viewed as a weak response by Seoul to the North’s missile tests.

South Korea on Thursday reiterated its deep opposition to a push by Japan and the United States to impose broader sanctions on North Korea through a draft resolution at the United Nation’s Security Council. Seoul has also vowed to maintain its “sunshine policy” of engagement, which has fostered the warmest ties between the Stalinist North and capitalist South since the Korean War divided them in two more than half a century ago.

But the decision to follow through with a previous threat to suspend food aid if North Korea tested missiles — a threat many experts doubted the South Koreans would stick to — displayed a new willingness by the South to use its significant economic clout to apply pressure on the North.

The North Koreans — for whom economic assistance by South Korea is topped only by China — appeared jolted by the decision. At talks being held in the South Korean city of Pusan that were originally scheduled to end Friday, Pyongyang’s delegation abruptly departed Thursday afternoon.

South Korea’s Yonhap news service reported that the North Korean officials left after circulating a statement calling the rupture the result of “reckless” attempts by South Korea to raise “irrelevant issues.” Those issues, South Korean officials said, were the recent missile tests and the North’s refusal to return to six-party talks on its nuclear programs.

The North bitterly condemned Seoul’s decision to suspend food aid, saying “the South side will pay a price before the nation for causing the collapse of the ministerial talks and bringing a collapse of North-South relations.”

South Korean officials, who in recent years have rolled out the red carpet for their visiting North Korean kin, this time offered them a simple meal and welcome bereft of customary sightseeing excursions and photo opportunities. When the North’s representatives understood they would not be returning with promises for more food aid, they simply left.

“The North Korean side expressed their position that additional negotiations would be unnecessary under the circumstance that additional humanitarian aid they need would be impossible,” Lee Kwan Se, a South Korean Unification Ministry official, told reporters.

For the United States and Japan, both pushing for a strong draft resolution at the United Nations that would ban international trade of North Korean missile and other military technology, the South Korean action was a rare diplomatic bright spot.

Christopher Hill, Washington’s top envoy on North Korea, left Beijing for Washington on Thursday after it became clear that Chinese efforts to persuade the Pyongyang government to come back to the six-party talks had apparently failed.

Before leaving, Hill said there was no indication that the North Koreans had changed their position to boycott the talks, which have been stalled since last November.

Japan, which has been deeply rattled by the North’s missile tests, vowed to continue pushing for a tough resolution that would impose sanctions on the North Koreas. But China and Russia back their alterative U.N. resolution unveiled on Wednesday. That draft would censure North Korea for its missile tests, but would endorse only voluntary measures aimed at restraining Pyongyang’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.

“The Chinese are as baffled as we are,” Hill told reporters in Beijing before departing. “China has done so much for that country and that country seems intent on taking all of China’s generosity and then giving nothing back.”

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service

Posted in China, International Aid, International trade, Japan, Military, Political economy, South Korea, USA | Comments Closed

What is the DPRK-China realtionship

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

An interesting strategic analysis fo the DPRK/PRC realtionship in a regional competition context. From the Council on Foreign Relations:

Introduction

China and North Korea have been allies for more than half a century. Beijing is a key provider of food and fuel to Kim Jung-Il’s regime, and it is heavily invested in preventing a destabilizing regime collapse that would send North Korean refugees flooding across its northeastern border. But as Kim tests ballistic missiles and develops his nation’s nuclear weapons capacity, China may be rethinking its support.

How strong is the current relationship between North Korea and China?

China has supported North Korea since Chinese fighters flooded onto the Korean peninsula to fight for the Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1950. Since the Korean War divided the peninsula between the North and South, China has given both political and economic backing to North Korea’s leaders: Kim Il Sung, and his son and successor, Kim Jung-Il. In recent years, China has been seen as one of the authoritarian regime’s few allies.

On July 4, North Korea test-fired a series of ballistic missiles despite explicit warnings from Beijing, Tokyo, and Washington. This led to an unusually public rebuke from Chinese officials, a sign of strain in the relationship. Despite their long alliance, experts say Beijing cannot control Pyongyang. “In general, Americans tend to overestimate the influence China has over North Korea,” says Daniel Pinkston, a Korea specialist and director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. At the same time, China has too much invested in North Korea to halt or withdraw its support entirely. “The idea that the Chinese would turn their backs on the North Koreans is clearly wrong,” says Adam Segal, the Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

How does North Korea benefit from the relationship?

Pyongyang is economically dependent on China, which provides most of its food and energy supplies. North Korea gets about 70 percent of its food and 70 to 80 percent of its fuel from China. Beijing is Pyongyang’s largest trading partner, and an estimated 300,000 North Koreans live in China, many of them migrant workers who send much-needed remittances back home.

China is also a strong political ally. “As an authoritarian regime that reformed, they understand what Kim Jung-Il is most concerned with—survival,” Segal says. China has repeatedly blocked UN Security Council resolutions against North Korea, including some threatening sanctions. China has also hosted the Six-Party Talks, a series of meetings in which North Korea, South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, and the United States have tried to resolve the security concerns associated with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. There and in other international forums, China is seen as a buffer between North Korea and the United States and Japan, which favor punitive sanctions and other measures to prevent Pyongyang from gaining nuclear weapons.

How does China benefit?

China’s support for Pyongyang ensures a stable nation on its northeastern border, as well as providing a buffer zone between China and democratic South Korea. North Korea’s allegiance is also important for China as a bulwark against U.S. military dominance of the region and the rise of Japan’s military. And China gains economically from its association with North Korea; growing numbers of Chinese firms are investing in North Korea and gaining concessions like preferable trading terms and port operations. Chinese trade and investment in North Korea now totals $2 billion per year. “They’re becoming a stakeholder in the North Korean economy,” Pinkston says.

What are the drawbacks to the relationship?

Pyongyang is not an ally Beijing can count on. Kim Jung-Il’s foreign policy is, like its leader, highly unpredictable. “North Korea is extremely difficult to deal with, even as an ally,” says Daniel Sneider, the associate director for research at Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center and a former longtime foreign correspondent specializing in Asia. “This is not a warm and fuzzy relationship,” he says. “North Korean officials look for reasons to defy Beijing.” Some experts say the missile tests were just one example of North Korea pushing back against China’s influence. “”It was certainly a sign of independence [and] a willingness to send a message to China as well as everyone else,” Segal says. The Chinese, who favor “quiet diplomacy” with North Korea instead of public statements, took the unusual step of making public the fact that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese premier, warned North Korea not to launch their missiles. The fact that Pyongyang did anyway has hurt China’s image, other experts say.

What kind of leverage does Beijing have over Pyongyang?

Not as much as outsiders think, experts say. Beijing has bullied or bribed Pyongyang officials to get them to the negotiating table at the Six-Party Talks many times. “It’s clear that the Chinese have enormous leverage on North Korea in many respects,” Sneider says. “But can China actually try to exercise that influence without destabilizing the regime? Probably not.” Pinkston says that for all his country’s growing economic ties with China, Kim still makes up his own mind: “At the end of the day, China has little influence over the military decisions.”

What are China’s goals for its engagement with North Korea?

“For the Chinese, stability and the avoidance of war are the top priorities,” Sneider says. “From that point of view, the North Koreans are a huge problem for them, because Pyongyang could trigger a war on its own.” Stability is a huge worry for Beijing because of the specter of hundreds of thousands of North Korean refugees flooding into China. “The Chinese are most concerned about the collapse of North Korea leading to chaos on the border,” Segal says.

If North Korea does provoke a war with the United States, China and South Korea would bear the brunt of any military confrontation on the Korean peninsula. Yet both those countries have been hesitant about pushing Pyongyang too hard, for fear of making Kim’s regime collapse. “They’re willing to live with a degree of ambiguity over North Korea’s military capability,” Sneider says, as long as Pyongyang doesn’t cross the “red line” of nuclear testing. Even then, “the Chinese can live with a nuclear North Korea, because they see the weapon as a deterrent against the United States, not them,” agrees Segal. But North Korea’s military moves could start an arms race in Northeast Asia and are already strengthening militarism in Japan, which could push for its own nuclear weapons if North Korea officially goes nuclear.

How does Washington factor into the relationship?

The United States has pushed North Korea to verifiably and irreversibly give up its uranium enrichment activities before Washington will agree to bilateral talks. Experts say Washington and Beijing have very different views on the issue. “Washington believes in using pressure to influence North Korea to change its behavior, while Chinese diplomats and scholars have a much more negative view of sanctions and pressure tactics,” Pinkston says. “They tend to see public measures as humiliating and counterproductive.” Since U.S. officials have repeatedly refused North Korean invitations to establish bilateral talks, “the Chinese have some sympathy for the North Korean view that the United States is not interested in negotiating,” Segal says.

Pinkston says the adversarial Pyongyang-Washington ties will likely not improve. “I don’t think the relationship with the Bush administration is reparable,” he says. “It’s a complete disaster, and someone else has to pick up the pieces. We can only hope it doesn’t degenerate more, but that the status quo will be maintained” until a new U.S. administration takes over, he says. In the meantime, U.S. pundits and lawmakers who push China to take what it sees as destabilizing actions in its region—i.e. support punitive actions or sanctions against North Korea—”are living in a different world,” Pinkston says.

“There’s always been a difference between how the Chinese felt we should approach these negotiations and how the Bush administration felt about it,” Sneider says. “That tension has always been there, and both governments have gone out of their way to obscure that gap because they’re well aware that the North Koreans are good at exploiting those differences.”

What is likely to happen to the China-North Korea relationship?

Despite the tensions caused by the recent missile tests, the relationship will likely continue to be close. Each side has too much invested in the other to drastically change the situation, experts say. If North Korea continues to test missiles, it’s possible that China will react more strongly than it has in the past. Most of the nations involved in the crisis will try to bring North Korea back to the Six-Party Talks. But after that, it is unclear what happens next. “Everyone who deals with North Korea recognizes them as a very unstable actor,” Sneider says.

However, some experts say North Korea is acting assertively both in its relationship with China and on the larger world stage. “The North Koreans are developing a much more realist approach to their foreign policy,” Pinkston says. “They’re saying imbalances of power are dangerous and the United States has too much power—so by increasing their own power they’re helping to balance out world stability. It’s neo-realism straight out of an International Relations textbook.”

The China-North Korea Relationship
Esther Pan, Staff Writer

Posted in China, Japan, Military, Political economy, South Korea, USA | Comments Closed

North Korea’s Military-First Policy: A Curse or a Blessing

Thursday, June 8th, 2006

Nautilus Institute
Alexander V. Vorontsov
6/8/2006

The “Songun Chongch’i” or military-first politics mantra adopted by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il as a guideline for domestic governance and foreign policy has elicited mostly negative responses from Korea-watchers. Many view songun as the final phase in the deterioration of North Korea and a serious threat to neighboring states saying that an impoverished country of 24 million inhabitants supporting a military of more than 1 million soldiers is incapable of modernization and economic reform. They argue that greater military participation in politics creates a dual-pronged threat: the army may appropriate a greater share of already-dwindling state funds to increase its readiness and effectiveness; and the generals, supposedly the most militant sector of the policy-making structure, will have a louder voice in foreign policy formulation, which could lead to hostile rhetoric towards South Korea.

A less alarmist interpretation of military-first politics is that Kim Jong-il is trying to maintain the existing order, to strengthen his regime based on personal authority, and consolidate control of military forces with the goal of preventing an overthrow of the state.

So, is military authority a curse or a blessing? The lessons from history are ambiguous, as states ruled by the military have experienced both prosperity and hardship. But some argue that South Korea represents a relatively positive example in which it has experienced a national revival because of a period of military rule.

In 1961, Park Chung-hee, a colonel in the ROK army, seized authority South Korea in a bloodless coup and established a rigid dictatorship with his military comrades. Though politics became more repressive, the national economy grew exponentially and General Park is remembered by many as the “father of the South Korean economic miracle.” Few dispute that this economic growth planted the seeds for the ensuing process of democratization. So it is hardly accidental that, in recent years, Kim Jong-il has started to speak favorably of General Park and his role in the modernization of the Republic of Korea.

The implementation of songun in the mid-1990s increased the role of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) in daily life. The army began to participate even more in social and economic decision-making, from large-scale infrastructure development to providing its own food. While military personnel are required to serve for ten years, they spend most of their service participating in different areas of the country’s socio-economic life. Thus, the army is now not as heavy economic burden, and is serves as an important resource and catalyst for developing the national economy.

The movement to the military-first policy has accompanied a gradual transformation of North Korea’s planned economy to the direction of a mixed economy. The result may eventually be a network of large, less state-controlled corporations that share close ties with government agencies, similar to the “chaebol” that Park Chung-hee created in South Korea. Because of this, the North Korean military is now involved in different spheres of economic activity, including foreign economic ties and trade operations, and will likely play a key role in this ongoing process of privatization.

With songun also come changes in ideology. This change and its underlying goal of building a powerful and prosperous state – “kangsong taeguk,” are justified by flexible and creative interpretations of the bedrock ideal of self-reliance – “juche,” a nationalist ideology developed by revolutionary leader Kim Il-sung. The songun concept replaces the proletariat and the vanguard Communist Party with the army as the driving force in society. This innovation is significant because the army is typically a less ideological and more pragmatic institution than the Party.

The army’s role in society is not the only example of Kim Jong-il’s liberation from orthodox ideologies. Since the early 1990s, North Korea has shifted its emphasis from socialist ideals to historical and spiritual values. This is reflected in the use of Confucian norms in public policy and everyday life, and legitimizing the state through reference ancient Korean kingdoms. Again, the parallels with Park Chung-hee are very strong. Kim Jong-il has also sought to reduce the prevalence of the personality cult. From early 2004, for example, there could be only one portrait of Kim Il-sung in public places. Similarly, Kim Jong-il is to be described only by his official positions, rather than the use of laudatory epithets such as “Dear Leader.”

Songun should not be automatically dismissed as an ideological dead-end. As the experience of South Korea under Park Chung-hee demonstrates, military rule can have positive effects on society under certain conditions.

Posted in Economic reform, Juche, Korean People's Army, Military, Political economy, Songun, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

North Korean Economics Presentations at KEI

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

Economic Reform and SEZ as Survival Strategy of DPRK
PDF: Deok Ryong Yoon.pdf
Deok Ryong Yoon

Introduction to & implications of Gaesong Industrial Complex Project
PDF: kaesong.faqs.pdf
Ministry of Unification

Gaeseong Industrial complex: Past, Present and Future
PDF: Dong-geun Kim.pdf
Speech by Dong-geun Kim, Chairman of Gaeseong Industrial District Management Committee

Gaeseong Industrial Complex : Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
PDF: kaesong.faqs1.pdf
Ministry of Unification, ROK

Posted in Agriculture statistics, China, Economic reform, Finance, Fiscal & monetary policy, Foreign aid statistics, Foreign direct investment, GDP statistics, International Aid, International trade, Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), Mt. Kumgang Tourist Special Zone, Political economy, Price liberalization, Rason Economic and Trade Zone (Rajin-Sonbong), Sinuiju Special Administrative Region, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013), Statistics, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

Efforts begun to hand over North’s Reins

Thursday, November 24th, 2005

Joong Ang Daily
Yoo Kwang-Jong
11/24/2005

Organized efforts are ongoing in North Korea to hand over the hereditary communist regime to a son of current leader Kim Jong-Il, doplomatic sources here with strong connections in Pyongyang said yesterday.

North Korea has reportedly founded a department inside the governing Workers’ Party to promote Kim Jong-chol, the second son of Mr. Kim, as his successor. “When the Workers’ Party reorganized its departments in 2004, two new bureaus were opened under the organizational guidance department,” a source well-informed about Pyongyang affairs said. “The bureaus handle matters about the regime’s succession.”

According to the source, 10 officials in their 30s work at each bureau, and are in charge of educating Kim Jong-Chol about party governance affairs. While the two bureaus are publicly under the control of Ri Je-gang, a senior party official, Kim jong Il’s National Defense Commission oversees their operations directly, the source added.

Antoher source said the third generation father-to-son hand-over was seriously resisted in North Korea, but Pyongyang appeared to have decided on its course. “with the Workers’ Party backing, the succession has become more and more visible,” the source said.

Kim Jong-chol, 24, studied in Switzerland in the late 1990s.

Meanwhile, South Korea said it was checking a recent German media report that Kim Jong chol attended a presidential dinner for the visiting Chinese leader Hu Jintao in late October.

Posted in Political economy, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

N Korea admits South kidnappings

Tuesday, October 25th, 2005

BBC
10/25/2005

North Korea has admitted it is holding 21 South Koreans either captured during the 1950-53 Korean War or subsequently, the South Korean government has said.
Seoul had pressed the North about 52 POWs and 51 citizens it believes were abducted after the war.

Seoul has been raising the issue for decades, but has recently been wary of campaigning too hard for fear of damaging relations, analysts say.

It is not clear why the normally secretive North Korea has responded.

“North Korea has confirmed there are 11 abductees and 10 prisoners of war alive in the North,” a South Korean Unification Ministry official told Reuters news agency on condition of anonymity.

Of the other South Koreans whom Seoul had inquired about, the North said 10 kidnapped citizens and six POWs were dead, and the rest unaccounted for.

Many people in South Korea believe around 1,000 South Koreans are alive in the North.

These include more than 540 POWs, according to the Red Cross.

Reunions

A number of the kidnapped South Koreans will be able to see their families again during the next round of reunions between relatives who ended up on different sides of the Korean border after the war ended, Yonhap news agency reported. This is scheduled for 5-10 November.

Japan also believes its citizens are being held in the North against their will.

It has been much more vociferous in its inquiries, and in 2002 Pyongyang admitted it had abducted 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 80s, but said eight of them had since died.

The five still alive returned to Japan three years ago, but Tokyo questions whether the others are really dead, and believes there may be yet more held captive in the North.

Posted in Civil society, Political economy, South Korea | Comments Closed

Two Pillars of the North Korean Regime, Information Politics and the Reign of Terror

Monday, October 17th, 2005

Daily NK
Han Young Jin
10/17/2005

Many people wonder about how North Korea is maintains despite the chronic food crisis and many other difficulties it suffered for a long time.

In South Korea, people would have organized more than a dozen of popular riots.

What would be behind the silence in North Korea? The answer is the notorious two pillars in North Korea, information politics and the reign of terror.

The National Security Agency in North Korea is the core agency for information politics. Since the Chief of Agency Lee Jin Su died in August, 1987, no other head of the agency was appointed. The role was taken over by Jang Sung Taek, #1 vice director of Organization and Guidance Department, and Kim Young Ryong, the former National Security Agency #1 Director (deceased in 1998).

Kim Jong Il directs the agency himself, making them believe his right over the agency is that the agency is for the security of the Supreme Commander, which is himself.

There are about 50,000 employees under the National Security Agency and its branch offices. It is estimated that about 20,000 are directly involved in the information activities. This means there is one agent per 1,000 North Koreans.

The security agents secure their sources individually, train them and collect information in their secret places. Even among the peers and friends, all the people mistrust each other because they do not know who the sources are for the agents.

According to the agency principles, even among agents have double or triple layers of supervision. One of the main reasons why the anti-regime force did not become active remains in this very system of mistrust

The North Korean regime, through the collective living style, ▲encourages mutual criticism and self criticism and increases mistrust among them, ▲The agents keep watch of the people and arrest them, ▲ the safety agency (police) make sure people do not meet in group through the people’s department. This is the reality of North Korea.

Securing Sources, Training in Secret Places

Security sources and training is done according to the characteristics of the agent. The agency runs secret places especially for training.

In November 12, 1992, Kim Jong Il changed the name of the National Security Agency to the National Safety and Security Agency and ordered to strengthen the training in crack down the anti-party, anti-revolution forces.

It was in 1993 when such secret places were made. It was of course made in top secret. Those involved in building such secret places believe they must be apartments for high level officials, such as honorary revolutionists of the independent movement (against Japan) or war heroes. However, these “luxurious apartments” were for the people receiving training, who spend ten to fifteen days there.

Because there is danger of discovery of identification, only one person is trained at a time. Those who leave home for the training their wives they are leaving for work.

Training is done directly by the secretary of the agency or designated security agents. They give off the belief, saying, “With the trust of the Great Commander, 00 (name of the trainee) is to engage in the national security activities.”

The agent provides professional training to the trainee such as how to approach the targets, inducement to conversation, such reporting. After the training, they are sent back to their workplaces.

The persons in charge of the secret places are selected among the sources, and he is to cut of all the contact to the outside world. Looking at expensive cars going in and out of a remote place, people are only wonder about what kind of house it would be.

Even the Former Detention Camp Prisoners and Wanderers Selected

The security agents have their own ways of contacting each other such as leaving memos under a rock, between a crack on factory walls, or inside a rotten tree trunk. The agents even select former prisoners and wanderers as one of their sources, but they are not given the special training session.

This is because only through such sources information about anti-regime or anti-party forces could obtained. The agents use both credence and threat to manipulate their sources. Sometimes, they used to give compensation as much as 100Won (in 1990, average worker’s monthly wage was 70Won), but after the food crisis, such cash awards stopped altogether.

There also exist some conflicts between the agents and the sources. In local place, one of the sources asked his agent to issue him a travel permit. When he could not, the source spread a rumor that “the National Security Agency has less power than the Safety Agency” which made a big issue in the region.

There is no compensation for providing high level information while people get arrested for ambiguous things they commit, so the people who were selected as sources become distressed. Recently, there is an increase of the people who prefer to not cooperate with the agents.

Also it is known that the information agents (sources) and the security agents together take advantage of their status. The sources report the security agents of the people who do business with prohibited goods such video tapes from another country, and they make benefit themselves by confiscating of all such goods.

Posted in Ministry of State Security (MPSS, NSA, SSD), Organization and Guidance Department, Political economy | Comments Closed

The North Korean ‘Salaryman’

Tuesday, October 11th, 2005

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
10/11/2005

“How much do they earn there, in the North?” “What are North Korean salaries now?” These questions come naturally, even if people are aware that in a socialist economy the formal size of one’s salary is less significant an indicator of wealth than it is in capitalism.
Under socialism, access to goods is at least as important as the amount of money in somebody’s possession. Since retail prices in the socialist economies tend to be subsidized, this means that many goods are not readily available in shops, but are distributed by the state bureaucracy instead. Thus, people who are deemed more deserving get such goods… goods that are not available to the “less valuable” people.

A party bureaucrat and a skilled worker often might have roughly similar salaries in a socialist economy, but their actual consumption levels may be vastly different. Apart from bureaucrats, another group of people who have privileged access to commodities are people employed in the retail system. They always can divert some goods from the public distribution system and use them either for their own consumption, or for barter with those who control other valuable commodities. Thus, the position of a sale clerk is seen as very prestigious occupation in the North.

The 2002 reforms (never called “reforms” in the North Korean press) dramatically changed the structure of wages and prices in the country. For a while it was not clear what the current price and wages levels were, but recent research by the World Food Program seems to answer a few questions. Now we know what was regarded as “normal” wages in 2004.

According to the survey, most types of low-paid workers earn between 1,700 and 2,500 won per month, with an average estimated at 2,100. Low-level professional jobs such as clerks and teachers at nursery and primary schools earn between 1,400 and 2,000 won per month. The average old age pension is just 900 won; women, in particular housewives, sometimes get pensions as low as 300_400 won.

The official exchange rate is 1,700 won per Euro (they to play down the significance of the imperialist dollar, so exchange rates are usually quoted in euros). However, throughout 2004, the actual exchange rate fluctuated between 1,600 and 2,200. This means that the average pension was something like 50 cents a month, with a nursery teacher earning as little as one dollar a month. This is not as bad as it sounds, since prices are also relatively cheap. But this is still pretty bad…

Most of the people who draw salaries live in the cities (some 70% of the North Koreans are inhabitants of urban areas), and rely on the public distribution system for their survival. The system, which almost ceased to function a few years ago, obviously has made a moderate comeback. Since all data in the secretive North is classified, nothing is known for sure, but it seems that in early 2005, the Public Distribution System was “the main source of cereals for the 70 per cent of the population living in urban areas” (such was an estimate by the FAO, a U.N. food agency).

Still, the official rations are hardly generous. According to the WFP, in early 2005 rations were cut to 250 grams per person per day _ 40 per cent of the internationally recommended minimum. People have to purchase food on the markets, and this food is expensive, with rice costing some 500 won a kilo.

According to the FAO report, “the income of cooperative farmers from the annual obligatory crop sales to the Government varies greatly from one farm to another, resulting in monthly incomes per person ranging from 500 won to 4000 won.” But farmers can also substantially increase their income by selling the produce from their kitchen gardens, and by hillside farming which is done on the steep slopes of the mountains. The latter activity has become common in the North over the past decade. It is formally forbidden but done nonetheless, and it seems that a large part of the hillside produce goes outside the public distribution system.

Unemployment is quite high, but it is hidden. Formally, everybody has a job, but a persistent shortage of raw materials, spare parts, machinery, and power supplies means that few factories actually operate at full capacity. In many cases people come to their factories and offices and sit there idly, spending just a couple of hours a day doing some meaningful work. They still have to come, since otherwise they could lose access to food rations, and this would make their situation impossible, probably even threatening their physical survival.

According to interviews with officials, and other information garnered, the WFP estimated that some 30 percent of the North Korean workers are either permanently or temporarily underemployed or unemployed.

As usual, women are more likely to become unemployed. But perhaps they do not mind. Why? Well, is it possible for a family to survive, even on two salaries, if the official income can merely buy eight kilos of rice to augment the distributed 200 grams? Of course, the answer is “no”, and even in the most difficult circumstances people need more than just rice. Hence, the survival strategy of most families depends heavily on the efforts of their women. While formally seen as “unemployed housewives”, women produce most of the income, ensuring the family’s survival. Indeed, the new-born North Korean capitalism has a female face. But that is another story…

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Agriculture, Civil society, Labor conditions/wages, Political economy, Public Distribiution System (PDS), UN Food and Agriculture Organization | Comments Closed

North Korean Economy Watch