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What explains North Korea’s puzzling price stability?

Friday, July 17th, 2020

By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Looking at the latest market price data from North Korea, things do not look like external conditions dictate that they should. Food prices are…low. Very low. In fact, for the July 1st price report, the average rice price for the three North Korean cities was the lowest on record since April 2019. Gasoline prices haven’t been this low since June of 2018. (Click for larger graphs.)

Average rice prices for Pyongyang, Sinuiju, and Hyesan. Data source: Daily NK.

Average gas prices for Pyongyang, Sinuiju, and Hyesan. Data source: Daily NK.

 

By themselves, these prices are not so surprising. Prices generally fluctuate with seasonal variation, in North Korea as everywhere else. Both gas and rice prices tend to drop around this time of year, at least over the past few years.

But there is nothing normal about 2020. In addition to harsh sanctions, Covid-19 has made almost everything more difficult to acquire from abroad, from fertilizer and food, to machine parts for industry. So these lower prices are puzzling, in a way because they would seem to indicate stability and normalcy at a time when there is nothing stabile and normal about the situation.

There are (at least) two possible explanations:

One is that North Korea’s external conditions are indeed steadily improving, and returning to some sort of normalcy. Strong signs suggest that trade between North Korea and China is picking back up, as relations deteriorate between the US and China and the North Korean issue becomes less and less central on the global stage. As Daily NK has reported, North Korea has been importing items such as construction materials and food from China, both in June and July. Gas prices, moreover, may partially be untouched by Covid-19 because much of the trade goes through a pipeline near Dandong.

Another possibility is that prices are going down because people simply cannot afford higher prices. This report on train ticket prices is perhaps instructive. In the words of one source inside North Korea: “Despite the fall in the number of train passengers, [black market vendors] seem to believe that raising prices would [make it harder to sell tickets],” the source said. “In other words, you could say that a ‘market price’ [for tickets] has appeared that train riders are willing to accept.” In other words, if consumers on a given market have a reservation prices – the highest price they’re willing to pay – underneath what sellers would really charge given the supply at hand, sellers can either cut down on their profit or minimize their losses by selling at a lower prices than those dictated by economic conditions.

As always, information is in short supply, and these market prices raise more questions than they answer.

Update, 23/7/2020:

Part of what’s so puzzling about all this is that reports keep suggesting that the regime is cracking down continuously and with growing vigor against cross-border smuggling and the like. According to this report by Daily NK, Pyongyang recently ordered provincial authorities to intensify their border monitoring.

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Posted in Agriculture, Black markets, Economic reform, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), International trade, Market prices, Political economy, Statistics | Comments Closed

North Korea strengthens camera surveillance along the Chinese border

Tuesday, June 30th, 2020

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

This is part of a very interesting trend, of surveillance in North Korea going more high-tech. Border security under Kim Jong-un has been a high priority, resulting in a significant drop in the number of defectors reaching South Korea. Recall, as the article does, that this is but one of several purchase rounds of surveillance equipment from China in recent years. It’s also part of a government drive to strengthen control overall – of economic and social trends and activities:

“The equipment was purchased from China in mid-May and cost approximately RMB 20 million [around USD 2,825,497],” a source based in China told Daily NK on Wednesday.

“The camera system will be set up in areas where smuggling activities are common – not across the entire border,” he continued, adding, “The installation of the system will begin in late June.”

Given that the cameras will only cover a limited area on the border, the high price tag suggests two possibilities: 1) the new system will film in higher definition than existing camera systems; or, 2) the system is so advanced that it can detect even the slightest of movements.

There is the possibility that the installation of the new system is part of preparations to resume trade between China and North Korea, namely by further cracking down on smuggling activities by individuals.

“The purchase of the new system shows that North Korea wants to stamp out these smuggling activities to ensure only [official] Sino-North Korean trade is allowed across the border,” the source speculated.

The source noted that North Korean officials believe that smuggling activities conducted by individuals are a key way information and illicit goods enter and exit the country.

(Source: Mun Dong Hui, “N. Korea to install new surveillance cameras on Sino-NK border,” Daily NK, 26 June, 2020.)

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Posted in China, Communications, Political economy, Statistics, Surveillance | Comments Closed

The North Korean economy is doing badly, but keep some perspective

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Sanctions and Covid-19 have fused together to put the North Korean economy in what can only reasonably be described as an awful situation. Trade first plummeted through sanctions, and then even further because of North Korea’s and China’s anti-Covid19 measures. And the fall continues, as these figures in Hankyoreh show:

Figures from the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) and Chinese customs authorities reviewed on June 18 show a major drop in the value of North Korean goods being exported to the Chinese market: US$10.7 million in January and February (-71.7% year on year), US$600,000 in March (-96.2%), and US$2.2 million in April (-90%). The value of North Korean exports to China, which stood at US$2.63 billion in 2016, has fallen since economic sanctions were toughened, decreasing to US$1.65 billion (-37.3%) in 2017 and US$195 million in 2018 (-88.2%). Exports rebounded in 2019, to US$285 million, but that was still less than a tenth of the value of exports in 2016.

But how bad are things?

Bloomberg ran an article yesterday with the angle that the North Korean economy is the “worst” in two decades, and that this is why the country is lashing out against South Korea with renewed vigor. To support the former claim, it cites figures claiming that the country’s economy will contract by a total of 6 percent this year due to the combination of sanctions and Covid-19.

But how reasonable is this take?

There is no doubting that things are bad, but some context is badly needed. One of course cannot equate an economic contraction with the overall situation. (Never mind that any number on this will be qualified guesswork at best.) A contraction is only the economy shrinking, and it means nothing if we don’t know what the starting point is. In 1997, North Korea was perhaps at the height of a devastating famine, after the economy crumbled following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and China vastly scaling back support.

Today, North Korea may be in an economic crisis of sorts. But it entered it on the back of several years of steadily increasing exports to China. These exports, in fact, grew by more than a factor of ten between 1998 and the record year of 2013. So the situation is so different that a comparison is hardly meaningful.

This is also true for the food situation. According to numbers from the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization, whose data is questionable but highly valuable, food production stood at 3.3 million tonnes in 2008, not an unusually low figure for the time. Contrast this with the projection that this year’s harvest will be 4.6 million tonnes. Not great, lower than it should be, lower than a few years ago, yes. But still not nearly the level of the disaster years.

Also, it is crucial to remember that even in ordinary times, a not insignificant proportion of trade with China occurs off the books. Throw an increasingly lower Chinese sense of caring what the US thinks about its sanctions implementation into the mix and you’ve got, well, likely a lot more trade happening under the radar. This is what news reports from inside North Korea have been saying for quite a while.

Not that things aren’t bad, or that North Korea’s recent actions have to do with sanctions (they almost certainly do). But don’t forget about context or proportions.

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Posted in Agriculture, China, International trade, Political economy, South Korea, Statistics | Comments Closed

April 1st, 2020: Latest market prices in North Korea

Wednesday, April 1st, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

In the past few days, Daily NK updated their market price index. The latest price data was sourced on March 20th, but posted at least a couple of weeks later. A few quick observations:

In general, rice prices continue to decline, although not by very much. The average rice price went down by 1.4 percent from the previous price observation, on March 7th. This is hardly enough to be truly significant. As I wrote on 38North recently, the price drop may not be caused by an increase in supply only, but also by increasing enforcement of price controls by the government.

Foreign exchange rates have appreciate significantly since before the coronavirus border closure, and continue to climb still. The RMB has, interestingly, appreciate much more than the US dollar. The dollar climbed by 1.4 percent in the last price observation compared with late December last year, while the RMB went up by almost ten percent during the same time period. Between March 7th and March 20th, the USD appreciate by 0.55 percent, and the RMB by 1.2 percent. North Korea thereby goes counter to the international trend, where the dollar has appreciated significantly over the RMB. This makes sense, however, since the border closure has cut the supply of Chinese goods drastically, thereby raising their price. A significant share of trade in these goods occurs in RMB, and it is only logical that the price would go up.

More on this during the weeks to come…

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Posted in China, Economic reform, Epidemics, Health care, International trade, Statistics | Comments Closed

North Korean ships not stopping in Chinese ports

Sunday, March 29th, 2020

Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

The New York Times reports that North Korean ships that would usually transport goods to Chinese ports are now idle in Nampo:

The Royal United Services Institute satellite analysis shows that on March 3, 139 ships were idled in the Nampo area, which includes the anchorage and several ports, up from 50 ships a month earlier.

The fleet includes vessels previously implicated in sanctions evasion operations, which are often tracked through satellite imagery and aerial or ground surveillance by other states, independent research groups and the United Nations.

The institute’s analysis said the idled ships included some of the “most active and scrutinized oil tankers” used for the illicit import of refined petroleum products such as fuel. For example, the oil tanker New Regent, which had been spotted making unreported deliveries as recently as January 2020, and twice in 2019, according to the United Nations, was seen in Nampo in multiple satellite images. Other ships, too, have been floating unused for weeks, according to satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs, an earth-imaging company in San Francisco, and Maxar Technologies Inc., a space technology company in Westminster, Colo.

(Source: Christopher Koettl, “Coronavirus Is Idling North Korea’s Ships, Achieving What Sanctions Did Not,” New York Times, March 26, 2020.)

As the article points out, coronavirus really is doing what sanctions never fully could. It seems that the only fully confirmed mode of goods transportation between North Korea and China right now are trains (judging by the Rodong pictures of Corona prevention activities), and we don’t know how often they run.

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Posted in China, Coronavirus, Epidemics, Health care, International trade, Statistics | Comments Closed

Of price controls and panic: North Korean market prices under Corona

Friday, March 27th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

(Note: the graphs in this piece are from a shortly forthcoming article on 38 North.)

It’s almost like those mandatory disclaimers that often follow advertisements in the United States, but the statement that all information from inside North Korea is uncertain can sometimes not be repeated often enough. This is especially true in a situation like the current one, where the country’s borders are virtually shuttered, and global anxiety is high to begin with.

With that, let’s take a look at some numbers…

With North Korea’s border closing earlier this year, market prices quickly shot up as consumers most likely hoarded goods in anticipation of future shortages. Particularly curious was the fact that prices seemed to differ so widely between cities, as I wrote about here. This suggested that internal restrictions on movement between localities, a measure the state took to control the spread of coronavirus, were working. A few weeks later, however, both market prices and the differences between cities seemed to go down again.

Differences in rice prices, in percentage, between three North Korean cities, until March 7th. Data source: Daily NK.

So did market prices in general. In the latest price data observation from Daily NK, from March 7th, average rice prices are about 25 percent higher than a year ago, and 29 percent higher than in early December, before the border closure. That’ a lot, but somewhat less than the initial 36 percent increase when the border was closed initially. Even the slightly lower price increase would spell severe difficulties for many North Koreans in buying food. Note: the latest price observation is from March 7th, that is, several weeks ago.

Average rice prices in North Korea, until March 7th. Data source: Daily NK.

So, what happened here? There are two possibilities that I think are more likely and realistic than others. One is that markets overreacted in their initial anxiety. Put simply, people may have thought that supply would become much lower than it ended up being. This is a common mechanism in markets in general. People often react more strongly than called for to anticipated, future changes, and then adapt their economic behavior once it’s clearer what actual conditions of supply and demand are. It’s also possible that the government let up on conditions for imports and trade, easing the burden on supply.

But there is another possibility. Both Rimjingang and Chosun Ilbo have reported that the government has instituted price controls to prevent prices from rising. This was only to be expected, as it is one of the few tools the state has at its disposal to control market anxiety. Price controls, however, are rarely (if ever) effective in the long run in countries such as North Korea. Either trade moves to the black market, or sellers run out of goods as they are forced to sell for less than consumers are willing to pay.

Aside from the two aforementioned reports, there are other potential signs that price controls may be in place. The price difference between Hyesan and Pyongyang/Sinuiju went down to a conspicuously low level, one that is actually lower than normal, a very odd coincidence. It got there only over the span of a few weeks, getting close to the 5,000 won-level reported by Chosun as the price ceiling. As far as currently available information can tell, no conditions changed on the ground. It would be reasonable to assume that at some point, the government may let up on restrictions on trade to ease conditions, but we don’t know whether that has happened yet. Reports of harsh measures against smuggling continue, and such measures would signal to the markets that state enforcement of the border closure remains and will remain harsh. So while in theory it makes sense that prices would go down somewhat after the initial spike, conditions on the ground have not changed noticeably, as far as we know.

So, what might have happened is that at least around March 7th, the government was still somewhat successful at enforcing its price ceiling, at least in parts of the country. One of Chosun’s sources reports that as of March 18th, rice cost 6,300 won per kg in Hyesan, much closer to the initial price level after the border closure. Price ceilings can usually only be enforced for a limited period of time, particularly when real shortages loom of essential products. Prices either rise beyond the ceiling, goods run out, or a black market arises. If the regime is indeed enforcing a price ceiling, and it continues to do so for a long time, perhaps we will see an increase in back-alley markets and other type of economic activity that the government has been relatively successful at curbing by integrating the markets into the official economic system over the past decade and a half or so.

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Posted in Black markets, China, Coronavirus, Economic reform, Health care, Political economy, Price liberalization, Statistics | Comments Closed

Weekly update, March 6th: the coronavirus and the North Korean economy

Thursday, March 5th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

The coronavirus continues to dominate the news cycle and everyday life developments of people around the world, and North Korea is no exception.

The government is taking very, very serious measures to protect the country. Chinese residing in areas along the North Korean borders have been warned not to get too close, or risk being shot at by North Korean border guards. I cannot recall anything similar to this in the past few decades of Sino-Korean relations and border conditions. Reuters:

Residents of the Chinese cities of Jian and Baishan were warned that people who get too close to the border might be shot, according to three people who received the notice, which was reviewed by Reuters.

“We’re told that we may get killed if we get too close to the border area,” said one restaurant owner in Jian, which is separated from North Korea by the Yalu River, declining to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

Residents are prohibited from fishing, grazing livestock or throwing rubbish near the river, according to the notice issued this week.

Strict controls are in force domestically as well. I wrote about price divergences between cities a few days ago, a potential sign that North Korea’s internal controls are severely limiting movement between provinces in the country. While this is likely a good thing from a virus prevention point of view, it’s very problematic for North Korean consumers. It may even be a bigger one than the closure of many of the goods transport routes over the Chinese border.

Aside from goods from different provinces not reaching markets in other localities and limiting supply, there’s a broader question looming. What happens with these goods? In China, as restaurants see demand drop to catastrophic lows, ingredients lay idle and rot. North Korea has limited electricity supply and refrigeration is not common in homes, and likely not with market traders in large parts of the country either. When people stock up on goods, they most likely choose those that will not perish easily, such as rice. And what happens with unsold, fresh goods? Are they sold at below-market value, causing losses for farmers down the supply chain, or perhaps in some cases not sold at all because they can’t be transported to the right markets?

North Korea’s quarantine situation is also interesting. State media has said that 7,000 people are under “medical monitoring”, whatever that means, and 3,920 under quarantine. For the quarantine figure, that’s 0.00015 persons per capita (assuming a population of 25 million). By comparison, Denmark has 0.00004 people per capita under quarantine. This is perhaps not surprising as Denmark is a wealthy country, far away from China with good testing  and monitoring capacities. Still, it underscores the point that 3,920 people under quarantine is certainly not nothing. To some extent, authorities may be over-vigilant, but there’s likely a foundation there somewhere.

More to come next week, surely.

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Posted in China, Coronavirus, Health care, International trade, Statistics, Uncategorized | Comments Closed

The UNCTAD claim on North Korea’s GDP-growth in 2019

Saturday, January 18th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that North Korea saw a real-GDP growth of 1.8 percent in 2019. Marcus Noland once wrote that one should not “[…] trust any datum on North Korea that comes with a decimal point attached.” This is perhaps even more true of large-scale, macro figures such as this. For one, you need an estimated inflation rate to calculate real GDP, and I have no idea which number UNCTAD may be using. You can find the figure on p. 178 here, together with a quite optimistic prognosis for 2020 and 2021. Even with that growth, North Korea barely recaps the negative growth of 2018. Let me say again that all of these numbers build on little but more or less qualified guesswork. That’s important to keep in mind since this one line in a UN report graph has made quite a few international headlines already.

Most likely, UNCTAD builds their projections upon the somewhat lower decline in exports in 2019 compared with 2018. It’d be interesting to know if they also take into account the seemingly decreased vigilance in sanctions enforcement by China, and how one could possibly quantify this. More on the possible variables here.

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Posted in International trade, Statistics, UNCTAD | Comments Closed

Did North Korea really see its best harvest “on record last year?

Friday, January 17th, 2020

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

As I and Peter Ward discovered some weeks ago, the claim by Kim Jong-un that North Korea had its “best harvest on record” did not make it into the English-language summary of Kim’s plenum speech put out by KCNA. Several media outlets have picked up on this claim, and that is not surprising. Not even a year ago, last spring and summer, both the North Korean government and UN organs sounded the alarm bells that North Korea’s harvest was so disastrous as to suggest a famine might be looming.

So what happened?

First of all, it should be noted, as always, that one must be extremely cautious in studying data on anything related to the North Korean economy. Most people who follow North Korea are well aware of this but especially when it comes to an issue like this, one cannot be cautious enough.

I focus here on the claim by Kim that the harvest was the best “on record”. It may well have been a good harvest, or at least a much better one than anticipated. This seems to be the case. The only attempt I’ve seen at a numerical estimate comes from South Korea’s Rural Development Administration. They estimate that North Korea’s harvest grew by around two percent in 2019 over 2018. This sounds fairly plausible and could perhaps be explained by weather conditions unexpectedly improving, or fertilizer donations from China, and the like. Or the government and FAO’s projections were simply wrong from the beginning.

To understand why it is so unlikely that this year’s harvest would be the best on record, we have to look at what ‘the record” really says. The following graph shows North Korean harvest figures between 1990 and 2017, as recorded by the FAO. These figures are not independently recorded or verified but, to the best of my knowledge, generated by FAO in cooperation with the North Korean government, or provided directly by the government. Usually, that would be a problem, but here, it’s actually quite helpful since it helps us analyze the claim about the “record”.

Graph by NK Econ Watch/Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein. Data source: FAOSTAT.

I downloaded these numbers from the FAO database some months ago. For whatever reason, I’m unable to access the data at their website at this time of writing, and therefore, can’t fill in the data further back. This data also differs somewhat from other data on North Korean harvests from the World Food Program and FAO. Still, they match quite closely with other data the two organizations have published in recent years about North Korean food production. Again, keep in mind that this data is produced and published in concert with the North Korean government. In that sense, these numbers are the “record”.

Over the past few years, estimated harvests have gravitated between four and five million tons in milled rice equivalent.  (You can read more here about what that actually means.) In 1993, North Korea’s record of harvests notes 7.5 million tons. Harvests hovered around 8 million tons in the 1980s – again, to the best of my recollection, as I can’t access the FAO statistics database numbers of North Korea at this time of writing.

Graph by NK Econ Watch/Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein. Data source: WFP/FAO. 2019 is a projected figure.

For Kim’s claim to be true, therefore, this past year’s harvest would have had to go from around five million tons in 2018, to surpassing eight million tons in 2019. I am no agricultural economist, but Kim would likely need something like a miracle of nature for this to happen. I am not aware of North Korea’s landmass suddenly doubling, for example, or the amount of arable land increasing by one third overnight. Therefore, Kim’s claim is most likely, beyond reasonable doubt, simply not true. Note also that outlets such as Daily NK have reported that the government has taken predatory measures against grain trade as a result of what the outlet describes as “poor agricultural yields”.

In other words, there is very little to back up the claim made by Kim (and subsequently by North Korea-affiliated Choson Sinbo). This claim is a break with a pattern over the past few years, where North Korean media has been very frank – often, probably exaggerating – in describing difficulties and damage caused by flooding and inclement weather. There are several reasons why this may have changed with regards to the harvest. For one, food security a very basic need for any country. With bad food security, North Korea appears weak in the face of sanctions. It would hardly be the first time the North Korean government lied for strategic, propaganda purposes. It is also possible that harvests were much better than anticipated, and that Kim’s claim is merely a strong exaggeration. Perhaps “best on record” should be read as a superlative, rhetorical claim rather than a literal one. At the end of the day, we simply don’t know, and the ways of the inefficient North Korean bureaucracy are mysterious.

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Posted in Agriculture, China, Economic reform, International Aid, Statistics | Comments Closed

What explains North Korea’s exchange rate drop? How significant was it?

Sunday, August 25th, 2019

By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein

Over the past few weeks, both Asia Press and Daily NK have reported the North Korean won depreciating against the dollar on the markets.

According to the figures from Asia Press, it seems the won first fell drastically, but that the initial FX-rise was a so-called “overshoot”, a disproportionately high rise of the exchange rate, but later corrected itself to levels more reflective of actual availability of dollars. The Asia Press index rose from 8,593 won/1$ on July 19th, to 9,463 won/$1 on August 6th, to 8,625 won/$1 on August 21st. Asia Press notes that the reason for the dollar appreciation is unclear, and speculates that it may be related to sanctions. That’s true, but it’s unclear what would have changed so suddenly and drastically in sanctions implementation as to cause a sudden rise of around ten percent. All in all, discounting the sudden and very temporary rise,  the exchange rate rose by not even one percent.

Reporting by Daily NK confirms the exchange rate spike reported earlier by Asia Press:

Daily NK conducted a market survey on August 6 that found the price of US dollars in North Korea was 7,850 KPW in Pyongyang, 7,880 KPW in Sinuiju and 7,900 KPW in Hyesan. The price ballooned some 800 to 900 KPW in just two weeks.

North Korea’s currency rate regularly sees significant volatility, but the last time the rate increased by 900 KPW in just two weeks was in 2015. During the second half of 2015, the North Korean authorities conducted harsh crackdowns on Chinese-made products and heightened international sanctions came into effect. The combination of these two factors caused the exchange rate to skyrocket more than 700 KPW.

There were even areas of the country that temporarily saw a spike to more than 9,000 KPW. In Rason, North Hamgyong Province, the exchange rate rose to 9,740 KPW on August 14 but has since retreated to between 8,500 and 8,700 KPW.

A Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province said that the rising exchange rate may be related to stagnation in North Korea’s domestic markets. “The currency rate changes every day and it rose in August again,” he said. “The spike in the currency rate this year suggests that businesses aren’t doing so well and it may also be due to external factors.”

The source suggested that the external factors include the US-China trade war and China’s recent intentional devaluation of the yuan. For the first time in 11 years, the Chinese yuan broke past seven renminbi to the dollar on August 5.

Source:
USD – North Korean Won exchange rate spikes in North Korea
Kang Mi Jin
Daily NK
2019-08-22

The FX-rate spikes aren’t reported in the Daily NK price index, so it doesn’t even appear in the broader exchange rate graph. The following graph shows the exchange rate from 2015 until Daily NK’s latest report, only a few days ago:

Graph 1. North Korean won/$1, 2015–August 2019. Graph by NK Econ Watch, data from Daily NK price index.

The won has depreciated against the dollar, for sure. Particularly in the short run. The past few weeks have seen slightly more volatility than usual. But still, in the big-picture context, things look fairly stabile.

Graph 2. North Korean won/$1, September 2018–late August 2019. Graph by North Korean Economy Watch. Data source: Daily NK.

A spike such as the one reported earlier in August can happen for many reasons. There is likely so little of US-dollars in circulation in North Korea that fairly minor changes can make a big dent in the market exchange rate. Communications function so poorly in North Korea that rumors spread easily with little possibility for quick confirmations or denials.

I and Peter Ward have previously argued, among other things, that the dollar isn’t a currency of general use in North Korea. The main holders of dollars are, most likely, state-owned corporations and other non-human entities. One move by a major holder could therefore have a significant impact on the market as a whole. The RMB has held completely stabile, so it’s very likely not a matter of any general stress on the markets. Had the source been something related to sanctions implementation, upped pressure, significantly changed expectations, or the like, we should have seen changes in the won-to-RMB-rate as well. As things stand right now, the market exchange rate does not look to be out of its normal range.

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