Archive for the ‘Statistics’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Food aid key to N Korea talks

Thursday, February 8th, 2007

BBC
2/7/2007

As six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme resume in Beijing, the BBC’s Penny Spiller considers whether food shortages in the secretive communist state may have an impact on progress. 

Negotiators for the US, North Korea, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia are meeting in Beijing amid signs of a willingness to compromise.

While the last round of talks in December ended in deadlock, bilateral meetings since then have brought unusually positive responses from both North Korea and the US.

Such upbeat noises were unexpected, coming four months after North Korea shocked the world by testing a nuclear bomb.

The test brought international condemnation and UN sanctions, as well as a significant drop in crucial food aid.

South Korea suspended a shipment of 500,000 tonnes of food supplies, while China’s food exports last year were sharply down.

The World Food Programme has struggled to raise even 20% of the funds it requires to feed 1.9 million people it has identified as in immediate need of help.

Aid agencies warned at the time of a humanitarian disaster within months, as the North cannot produce enough food itself to supply its population. It also lost an estimated 100,000 tonnes-worth of crops because of floods in July.

‘Queues for rations’

Kathi Zellweger, of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Pyongyang, said the present food situation in the country was unclear.

No figures are yet available for last year’s harvest, and it was difficult to assess what impact the lack of food aid was having on supplies, she said.

However, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated the country was short of one million tonnes of food – a fifth of the annual requirement to feed its 23 million people.

South Korea-based Father Jerry Hammond said there were signs of shortages – not only in food but also in fuel – when he visited the North with the Catholic charity Caritas in December.

He described seeing long queues for rations, and ordinary people selling goods in the street for money to buy the basics.

“You do expect to see more shortages during the winter time,” the US-born priest, who has visited North Korea dozens of times in the past decade, said.

“But I did see a noticeable difference this time.”

High malnutrition rates

Paul Risley, of the World Food Programme, said people in North Korea may still be cushioned by the November harvest and the pinch will be felt in the coming months.

“We have great concerns,” he said, pointing out that North Korea was now in its second year of food shortages.

He says “stabilising food security” in the country will be very relevant to the talks in Beijing.

“It is certainly the hope of all who are observing the situation in [North Korea] that imports of food can be resumed and returned to prior levels,” he said.

“Malnutrition rates are still the highest in Asia, and we certainly don’t want to see those rates rise any further.”

Father Hammond thinks Pyongyang may be persuaded to consider compromises in Beijing, but is unlikely to do so as a result of any pressure from the people of North Korea.

“People are very cut off from the outside world, and there is constant propaganda about national survival. Even if they go hungry, it will be considered patriotic,” he said.

There have been signs of possible compromise from both sides in the run up to the talks.

Washington has reportedly hinted at flexibility over its offer of aid and security guarantees, as well as showing a willingness to sit down and discuss North Korea’s demands to lift financial sanctions.

Meanwhile, North Korea reportedly recently told visiting US officials it would take the first steps to disband its nuclear programme in return for 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil and other benefits.

And South Korea is keen to resume its shipments of rice and fertiliser aid – if Pyongyang agrees to freeze its nuclear programme, the Choson Ilbo newspaper has reported.

As the nuclear talks resume, all sides will be looking to translate such pressures into progress.

Share

Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture statistics, Arduous March, China, Foreign aid statistics, International Aid, International trade, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, UN, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN World Food Program | Comments Closed

N. Korean Food Program Needs Funds to Continue to 2009, UN Says

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Bloomberg.com
Emma O’Brien
2/2/2007

The United Nations program to feed about a quarter of North Korea’s 24 million people needs funds to operate until 2009, after countries such as the U.S. ended or reduced their support, the head of the World Food Program said.

“We only have 16 percent of the funds needed to do our work in North Korea over the next two years,” James T. Morris said late yesterday in Wellington, New Zealand. “The U.S. used to be our largest donor in North Korea, but we haven’t received any money from them for the past 8 to 9 months.”

More than 1 million people died in North Korea during the 1990s as a result of famine caused by drought, floods and economic mismanagement. North Korea’s international isolation deepened last October when the United Nations Security Council imposed sanctions after the communist country tested its first nuclear bomb.

The North Korea government said in 2005 it no longer needed the UN program that aimed to feed about 6.5 million people because it succeeded in harvesting enough grain. Floods last year reduced grain production by an estimated 90,000 metric tons, almost one-fifth of the minimum harvest needed to feed the population, the WFP said at the time.

“I am very concerned about the situation in North Korea,” Morris said, as the country’s crop deficit is forecast to be 1 million tons this year. “We are not able to do our job unless there is additional support to provide food.”

Morris, who will leave the directorship of the WFP early this year after 5 years at the helm, was in Wellington for talks with New Zealand’s aid agency, NZAID, on food aid to East Timor. His speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs was his last on an international visit.

The WFP and its sister agencies, the UN Development Program and the UN children’s fund Unicef, are the only major non- governmental organizations still active in North Korea.

Government Restrictions

North Korea is the only country in the world where the UN program has to work through the government. The administration chooses all their local workers and all food has to be distributed via government-selected contractors.

“It’s the only place in the world where we don’t have universal access,” Morris said. “The government makes life very difficult for our work.”

The program used to distribute to 183 counties in North Korea. The government now restricts them to 29. Constraints placed on the program by the government are “abhorrent and unacceptable,” he said.

The average 7-year-old North Korean boy is 8 inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than his South Korean counterpart, Morris said, and 40 percent of North Korean women are anemic.

Russia, China

Russia is now the largest contributor to North Korean aid, Morris said. The U.S. provided about 47 percent of all contributions, in both commodities and funds, over the past 10 years. The WFP, the UN’s largest division, had an operating budget of more than $2.8 billion last year, he said.

China and South Korea, which send food directly to North Korea, are also scaling down their aid.

“They intend to reduce their bilateral food and fertilizer assistance,” Morris said, adding China’s toughened stance toward North Korea since the missile test may be behind the move.

China, North Korea’s closest ally, supported the UN sanctions imposed after the nuclear test that ban sales of military equipment and luxury goods to the country. The U.S. imposed financial restrictions on North Korean bank accounts in October 2005 over allegations of money laundering and counterfeiting.

The issue stalled talks between North Korea, the U.S., China, Japan, South Korea and Russia on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program. The forum resumed in December after a 13-month break with North Korea refused to enter discussions within the six-nation forum until the U.S. lifts the sanctions.

The six nations will hold another round of talks in Beijing beginning Feb. 8.

Share

Posted in 1990s Famine, Agriculture, Agriculture statistics, Arduous March, DPRK Policies, International Aid, Russia, Statistics, UN, UN World Food Program, UNICEF | Comments Closed

China makes little investment in N. Korea since October nuclear test

Friday, February 2nd, 2007

Yonhap
2/2/2007

China has made little investment in North Korea since the North conducted its first nuclear device test in October last year, but their two-way trade volume rose 21.6 percent year-on-year over the past few months, informed sources said Friday.

“Over the three months since the October test, China made no investment in the North except in some low-budget mining development. But North Korea’s dependence on China in terms of trade increased sharply,” a senior government official said, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the information.

Another source said from October to November in 2006, the trade volume between North Korea and Japan declined 75 percent year-on-year to US$7.9 million, illustrating the full range of the impact from United Nations sanctions over the North’s surprise nuclear test, they said.

Japan has shown the strongest response to the North’s nuclear test and long-range missile launches last year, banning North Korean goods and citizens from entering the country as well as barring its ships from Japanese ports.

In all of 2006, the trade volume between North Korea and China rose 7.5 percent year-on-year to $1.69 billion, while two-way trade between North Korea and Japan decreased 34 percent to $119 million in the first 11 months of last year, the source said.

“North Korea can make financial dealings only via Russia and a few other countries because it has a lot of trouble in doing financial transactions and wooing investments since the United States imposed financial sanctions on the North in September 2005,” he said.

The U.S. cut off Macau-based Banco Delta Asia’s access to the U.S. financial system, alleging that North Korea used the bank to counterfeit U.S. dollars and engage in other financial wrongdoing.

North Korea boycotted the six-party talks on its nuclear disarmament until December, saying that the U.S. should discuss ways to lift the sanctions on the sidelines of the six-nation talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S. China, Japan and Russia.

Share

Posted in China, Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, International trade, Japan, Statistics, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

North Korea urgently needs food aid

Sunday, January 28th, 2007

UNFAO
10/30/2003

Despite better harvests this year, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) will have another substantial food deficit in 2004, requiring a large amount of external assistance, two United Nations agencies said today.

A combination of insufficient domestic production, the narrow and inadequate diet of much of the population and growing disparities in access to food as the purchasing power of many households declines, means that some 6.5 million vulnerable North Koreans will require assistance next year, according to a joint report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).

The situation remains “especially precarious” for young children, pregnant and nursing women and many elderly people, the Rome-based agencies warned.

The report projected domestic cereal availability in the 2003/04 marketing season (November-October) at 4.16 million tonnes, 4.7 per cent up from the revised 2002/03 estimate of 3.97 million tonnes.

The 2003 rice and maize harvests each rose by an estimated 4.5 per cent over 2002, to 1.48 million tonnes (milled basis) and 1.73 million tonnes respectively. The improvements were attributed to favourable weather, a relatively low incidence of crop pests and diseases, increased application of donated fertilizer andbetter irrigation.

Forecasting total cereal needs – food, animal feed and seeds – for 2003/04 at 5.1 million tonnes, the FAO/WFP report projected an import requirement of 944,000 tonnes. Given anticipated commercial imports of 100,000 tonnes, concessional imports of 300,000 tonnes, and food aid expected to be in stock or to arrive after 1 November, 2003 of 140,000 tonnes, the uncovered gap will be 404,000 tonnes.

Despite evidence of improved nutritional levels in recent years, malnutrition rates remain “alarmingly high”, the report said. Four out of ten young children suffer from chronic malnutrition, or stunting, according to a large-scale, random sample survey conducted in October 2002 by UNICEF and WFP. Continued, targeted food aid interventions are essential to prevent a slippage back towards previous, higher levels of malnutrition, the UN agencies said.

The economic policy adjustment process initiated in July 2002 has led to many factories being unable to pay full wages. Combined with food price increases that were higher than increases in wages, this has caused a further deterioration in the already inadequate purchasing power of many households, especially in urban areas.

Rations from the Public Distribution System (PDS) – a primary source of food for the 70 per cent of North Korea’s 23 million people living in urban areas- are set to decline to no more than 300 grams per person per day in 2004, from 319 grams this year, according to government authorities. The present allocation ensures only half of an individual’s caloric requirements.

Low as the PDS rations may be, industrial workers and elderly people now spend up to 60 per cent of their income on these rations alone. After paying for non-food necessities, they can ill-afford staples such as rice and maize in private markets, where prices are as much as 3.5 times higher, let alone more nutritious foods.

As the situation may worsen in the immediate future, the report recommended that attention also be given to the low-income PDS dependents in urban areas rendered increasingly under-employed by economic adjustment process.

The FAO/WFP report urged that 484,000 tonnes of commodities, including 400,000 tonnes of cereals, be sought as food aid for 2004 for the most vulnerable North Koreans. Three-quarters of the total is earmarked for children in nurseries, kindergartens, primary schools, orphanages and hospitals, pregnant and nursing women and elderly people.

Despite improvements in the operating environment for aid agencies, the report noted that there are still restrictions on access to the needy and to marketsand shops, reducing the scope for monitoring and the timely detection of newly emerging food-insecure groups. But it also says that the North Korean government has been more forthcoming with information needed to assess household food security.

The report recommended that “in addition to providing urgently needed food aid, the international community enter with the government into a policy dialogue to set an enabling framework to mobilise the economic, financial and other assistance needed to promote sustainable food production and overall food security.”

Share

Posted in Foreign aid statistics, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, UN World Food Program | Comments Closed

North Korea’s golden path to security

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Asia Times
Bertil Lintner
1/18/2007

While the West and Japan have targeted North Korea’s overseas bank accounts to curtail its weapons program, Pyongyang has recently turned to more ingenious ways of maintaining its international businesses through substantial exports of gold, silver and other valuable metals.

Pyongyang has apparently found a willing conduit to global buyers through its many business connections in Thailand, which has recently emerged as the isolated state’s third-largest trading partner after China and South Korea. According to official Thai Customs Department statistics, North Korea shipped 500 kilograms of gold worth 398 million baht (US$11 million) to Thailand last April.

The following month, another 800kg of gold worth 635 million baht landed in Thailand courtesy of North Korea. Also, in June, 10 tons of silver worth 148 million baht was sent from North Korea to Thailand, followed by 12 tons worth 166 million baht last October.

In sum, North Korea exported 1.35 billion baht – or nearly $40 million – worth of precious metals to Thailand last year.

That is a substantial figure for North Korea, a country with an estimated gross domestic product of about $22 billion and whose total exports amounted to just over $1 billion, according to official statistics. Thailand is bound by the international sanctions imposed last October against North Korea by the United Nations in response to Pyongyang’s exploding an atomic bomb.

According to official Thai statistics, the gold and first consignment of silver were shipped to Thailand before the UN sanctions were imposed. But there is nothing illegal in North Korea exporting precious metals, unless, of course, the income from the sale can be tied directly to the country’s controversial weapons programs, which anyway would be extremely hard to prove.

Untapped riches
North Korea’s gold and silver mines remain largely untapped. According to Tse Pui-kwan, a Chinese-American chemist who joined the US Bureau of Mines in 1990, North Korea has significant deposits of copper, gold, graphite, iron, lead, magnesite, tungsten and zinc. When the Cold War ended and North Korea lost large amounts of foreign aid from both the Soviet Union and China, its mining industry fell into disrepair and extraction activities sharply declined.

But with new foreign cooperation, production has resumed, which the recent exports to Thailand clearly demonstrate. North Korea’s main gold mine is in Unsan county in North Pyongan province, about 150 kilometers north of Pyongyang. It was originally opened by a US firm in 1896, when Korea was still an independent and unified kingdom, and was later taken over by a Japanese company when the peninsula became a colony ruled by Tokyo in 1910.

Nearly a century later, consultants from Clough Engineering of Australia in 2001 inspected the same mine under the sponsorship of the United Nations Office for Project Services. They estimated that Unsan held 1,000 tons of gold reserves, which if true would make it one of the world’s major gold mines. Silver is also mined in the same area, while iron ore and magnesite are found in North and South Hamgyong provinces in the northeast.

North Korea’s extraction techniques are sometimes controversial. According to witnesses interviewed by the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea for its 2003 report “The Hidden Gulag: Exposing North Korea’s Prison Camps”, there is a gold-mining labor camp near Danchun in South Hamgyong province, where thousands of prisoners are being held and forced to work under abysmal conditions.

In that same report, several witnesses claimed that “some of the mine shafts dated back to the early days of the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 1900s. Accessing the veins of minable gold required descending and, later, ascending a wooden staircase 500 meters in length, using gas lanterns for light. Deaths from mining accidents were a daily occurrence, including multiple deaths from the partial collapse of mine shafts.”

The first attempt to modernize North Korea’s gold-mining industry was made by an Italian financier and former Foreign Ministry official, Carlo Baeli, who traveled to the country in the early 1990s and claims to be the first Westerner to do business with Pyongyang since the Korean War. He later wrote a book called Kim Jong-il and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, which was published in Pyongyang in 1990, obviously with official permission as it was printed by the state-owned Foreign Languages Publishing House.

Apart from painting a flattering portrait of the North Korean leader, the book describes Baeli’s first trip to Pyongyang in 1990, of which he wrote, “We were interested in investing in the mining industry, mainly in the extraction of gold and granite.” Baeli later signed a contract for a loan of $118 million to purchase mining equipment, and the goal was to resurrect no fewer than six gold mines across North Korea. The money was to be provided by international banks such as Midland Bank and the Naples International Bank. He also arranged for the mining equipment to be shipped from Italy.

But heavy flooding in the mid-1990s damaged both the equipment and the mines and, according to a 2006 report in Forbes magazine, Baeli today works as an adviser to the Pyongyang government at a tire-recycling plant. The car and truck tires are imported from Japan, get ground into granulate in North Korea, and are sold to China for road resurfacing, car mats and shoe soles. A lucrative business, perhaps, but not quite the golden dream Baeli had when he first arrived in Pyongyang nearly 17 years ago.

Another unusual partner in North Korea’s gold trade may have been the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In August 2001, the right-wing South Korean newspaper Munhwa Ilbo published a story claiming that Marcos in September 1970 had deposited 940 tons of gold bars at a Swiss bank in the name of the late North Korean dictator, Kim Il-sung. The report came from a former Marcos aide, and Munhwa Ilbo carried a copy of the bank-account certificate on its front page. The alleged gold bars were part of what a Japanese army general had looted from Asia during World War II, Munhwa Ilbo claimed.

That report was never independently confirmed, but it nevertheless reflects the mystique and speculation that still surround North Korea’s gold industry – and how little the outside world actually knows about it.

Financial pressures
When the US took action against Banco Delta Asia in Macau in September 2005, labeling it a “primary money-laundering concern” for North Korean funds, very little evidence to substantiate the charges was ever produced. North Korea lost $24 million when the accounts it held with the bank in the name of a front company, Zokwang Trading, were frozen. Zokwang, which had been operating in Macau for decades, also closed its office and relocated to Zhuhai province across the border in China proper.

The action against Banco Delta Asia, a privately owned bank that the Macau government later had to prop up to prevent it from collapsing, was the second move against North Korea’s assets abroad. In a much less publicized action, North Korea’s only bank located in a foreign country – the Golden Star Bank in Vienna – was forced to suspend its operations in June 2004. The Golden Star was 100% owned by the Korea Daesong Bank, a state enterprise headquartered in Pyongyang, and was allowed to set up a branch in the Austrian capital in 1982.

For more than two decades, Austrian police kept a close eye on the bank, but there was no law that forbade the North Koreans from operating a bank in the country. Nevertheless, Austria’s police intelligence department stated in a 1997 report: “This bank [Golden Star] has been mentioned repeatedly in connection with everything from money-laundering and distribution of fake currency notes to involvement in the illegal trade in radioactive material.”

Eventually the international pressure to close the bank became too strong. Sources in Vienna believe the US played an important behind-the-scenes role in finally shuttering Golden Star’s modest office on 12 Kaiserstrasse in the Austrian capital. Until then, Vienna had been North Korea’s center for financial transactions in Europe and the Middle East. Visitors to North Korea have noted that euro coins in circulation in the country – the US dollar is not welcome in Pyongyang – invariably came from Austria. (Euro notes are the same in all European Union countries, but coins designate individual member countries.)

Last October, in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, Japan froze a dollar-denominated account that North Korea’s Tanchon Commercial Bank held with an unnamed Japanese bank. The account had a balance of $1,000 and had not been active for nearly a decade, so the move was mainly symbolic: to demonstrate to North Korea that it cannot use banks in Japan for any deposits, big or small.

So it is hardly surprising that North Korea is looking for new ways to manage and maintain its international business interests and for new partners when it is increasingly locked out of most foreign countries. That is where Thailand apparently comes into the picture.

In 2004, trade between Thailand and North Korea for the first time overtook trade between Japan and North Korea. Previously, a string of North Korean-controlled front companies, managed by the Chosen Soren, or the Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, had supplied North Korea with computers, electronic goods and other vital items.

In 2003, North Korea’s total trade volume to Japan was just over $265 million and fell even lower in 2004. At the same time, trade between Thailand and North Korea rose to more than $331 million in 2004. Two-way trade between Thailand and North Korea totaled $328 million in 2005, with Thai exports to North Korea amounting to $207 million and North Korean imports to Thailand totaling $121 million.

During January-November 2006 – the latest statistics available from the Thai Customs Department – trade totaled about $345 million, with Thai exports accounting for $200 million and North Korean imports $145 million. Thai imports of gold and silver have pushed those trade figures higher.

North Korea’s trade with Thailand grew mainly under the previous government of Thaksin Shinawatra, who at one point proposed signing a free-trade agreement between the two countries. In August 2005, Thaksin was formally invited by Kim Jong-il to visit Pyongyang. The visit never materialized, and since Thaksin was ousted last year in a military coup, the future of Thai-North Korean relations is very much in doubt.

But gold and silver are highly fungible and North Korea apparently has lots of the commodities. It appears Kim Jong-il has for now found at least one golden path around the international sanctions imposed against his regime’s nuclear tests.

Share

Posted in Chongryun, Copper, Daesong Group, Domestic publication, Gold, Graphite, International trade, Iron Ore, Mining/Minerals, Statistics, Tanchon Commercial Bank, Thailand, Trade Statistics, Zokwang Trading Company | Comments Closed

North Koreans given cause to beef

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Asia Times
Robert Neff
1/18/2007

In a country infamous for famines, it is no wonder that cattle in North Korea are prized so highly and considered “national property”. According to government sources, North Korea had about 575,000 head of cattle in 2002, but considering the recent floods and food shortages this number may have dropped. In addition to the floods and food shortages, North Koreans must contend with the bovine diseases that cause health concerns not only to the cattle, but also for the people.

The most serious incident took place last summer. It began in the North Korean region of Yanggang. A horrible and mysterious disease that the frightened residents called “leprosy” for the impact on victims, causing them to break out in boils and oozing skin that progressed to the point that, as one North Korean defector described it, left its victims looking “like pieces of sliced meat”.

The story was first reported by the North Korea Daily (July 27, 2006), which described the disease as an epidemic, but no one knows just how many victims it has claimed. One defector living in South Korea told a newspaper reporter that he had spoken with some members of his family still in North Korea who informed him the “rotten flesh disease” was spreading throughout the northern provinces.

Many North Korean residents believed that the disease originated from contaminated beef sold in the Jangmadang markets. Apparently there was some truth to their suspicions. According to the North Korea Daily, the sale of beef and the movement of cattle in the region were banned or tightly controlled.

What was the disease? Several veterinarian experts contacted suggested that it was anthrax, a naturally occurring disease among cattle and other hoofed mammals. All agreed that if a person ate the flesh of an anthrax-diseased animal he had a high risk of dying.

But not all of the experts agreed that it was anthrax. Dr Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University conceded that the “oozing skin sores” might well be anthrax cutaneous lesions, but “while it is tempting to suggest ‘anthrax’, I know of no lesions involving peeling skin or people looking like ‘sliced meat’.”

It is almost inconceivable that people would willingly eat the flesh of a possibly diseased animal, but it has happened several times in North Korea. In fact, many North Korean people believe that contaminated meat can be eaten if it is boiled at 100 degrees Celsius or higher.

Last January, farmers in the Tuman River region began to lose cattle to a disease they simply called the “cow disease”. The cattle all displayed the same symptoms: hooves splitting, heavy drooling, and sores in their mouths and on their tongues. Local health officials were called in. They determined that the disease had traveled across the Tuman River from China.

In December 2005, China reported several outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in the interior provinces, but it was suspected that the disease had also spread to Heilongjang province, one of China’s key cattle raising areas located along the North Korean border, and possibly into neighboring Russia.

Dr Peter Roeder of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Dr Hugh-Jones agree that the symptoms appear to be indicative of foot-and-mouth disease. Roeder stated, “I did not have information that it had got into North Korea but I am not surprised.”

At least one region was quarantined to prevent the spread of the disease. Cattle that displayed any of the symptoms were quickly killed and buried in deep pits in a further effort to prevent the spread of the disease. Despite the North Korean officials’ precautions to ensure that the cattle carcasses were buried, it was soon discovered that two of the infected cows were missing. Someone had dug them up.

The local officials warned the people that eating the contaminated meat could kill children under the age of five. Roeder insisted that foot-and-mouth disease did not affect humans, and Hugh-Jones supported him by adding, “Eating such a carcass should not of itself be dangerous other than the usual dangers from eating meat from sick and moribund animals.”

Did contaminated meat cause the strange leprosy-like disease that allegedly plagued Yanggang? Were diseased cattle carcasses dug up from pits, butchered, sold and eaten by hungry or greedy residents? Both doctors agreed that North Korea is a black hole for disease information and that in such countries nasty diseases will be politically unattractive and therefore official reports will be played down and minimal.

Both doctors were again in agreement when they observed that defectors and refugees have a poor record of reliability in what they say and write. Exaggeration is the commonest characteristic, they said.

But not all possibly contaminated meat originated in North Korea.

In 2001, during the height of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow disease) scare in Europe, many countries slaughtered hundreds of thousands of head of cattle in an effort to check the disease. Famine-stricken North Korea agreed to accept some of the possibly contaminated beef from Germany and Switzerland (see German meat may be North Korean poison, Asia Times Online, February 23, 2001).

As retired veterinarian Patricia Doyle noted, “It is a very nasty stunt to pass on infected cattle to any people, regardless of their ideology. It is the government who may have political differences not the people.”

But if a government would be desperate enough to feed its citizens meat possibly contaminated with a fatal disease, how far are starving people willing to go to satisfy, if only for a short time, the hunger in their bellies? Further, it seems, than most of us would like to acknowledge.

Share

Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture statistics, Epidemics, General markets (FMR: Farmers Market), Health care | Comments Closed

WFP reports slight rise in N.K. aid but still wide gap with target amount

Monday, January 15th, 2007

Yonhap
1/15/2007

International aid for North Korea has increased over the past few months, but is still far behind the amount needed to help the country in its recovery efforts, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) said Monday.

A tally as of Sunday showed the relief agency received slightly more than US$16.25 million in assistance from donor nations, up from $12.7 million in November. But the total accounts for only 15.9 percent of the $102 million the WFP says it needs for its protracted relief and recovery operation (PRRO) in North Korea.

In November, the WFP received 12.43 percent of the target amount.

Russia remained the biggest nation donor with $5 million, putting up 4.9 percent of the desired aid.

Switzerland increased its offer to $2.57 million from $2.2 million in November, and Ireland to $640,000 from $319,000.

The collected assistance includes $2.3 million carried over from the previous operation.

Private donations stayed the same at $8,470, while multilateral donation increased from $1.2 million to $1.9 million.

The WFP has been the main organizer of food aid to North Korea who, for the last decade, have depended on international handouts to feed its people. Pyongyang asked the relief agency to leave at the end of 2005, so the WFP now maintains a low-scale presence and has switched its efforts from food to development and reconstruction projects.

South Korean civic organizations and informed sources say there is now a contagion of infectious diseases like scarlet fever and typhoid in North Korea.

Share

Posted in Agriculture statistics, Foreign aid statistics, International Aid, Russia, Switzerland, UN World Food Program | Comments Closed

Filling North Korea’s bare shelves

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

Asia Times
1/10/2007
Ting-I Tsai

North Korea’s nuclear test has been a hot topic among analysts around the world. But inside the isolated Stalinist state, getting a hold of a pair of running shoes, a bicycle or a television set is still what most excites ordinary citizens.

And Chinese businesses continue to cash in on these material desires by selling goods manufactured at home or in North Korea at prices higher than their quality justifies, sparking much criticism.

When Pyongyang publicized its intention to initiate economic reforms in July 2002, most people had doubts about how far the policy would be taken. Four years later, the regime is still struggling to implement its reforms, but it has at least partly satisfied some of the daily demands of citizens by allowing more Chinese products to be manufactured in North Korea and more Chinese goods to be imported.

Shoes, bicycles, TV sets, beverages and clothes made in China or by Chinese companies in North Korea are helping to satisfy demand, but some disreputable Chinese companies are ruining their country’s reputation by dumping factory seconds and damaged goods on the market.

Over decades of isolation, North Koreans have been suffering not just from food shortages, but from a scarcity of basic consumer goods. In past years, Pyongyang has reportedly asked the South Korean government to donate thousands of tons of soap and clothes, as well as material for the production of 60 million pairs of shoes. In a visit to Pyongyang in November, products such as Colgate toothbrushes, toothpaste and a Japanese facial cleaner were carefully displayed in glass cases bearing price tags equivalent to US$2.60-$5.90, well beyond the financial reach of all but a few North Koreans.

After years of studying China’s experiences, Pyongyang is now gearing up to solicit foreign investment and advanced technologies to modernize its decades-old manufacturing base.

Supply and demand
“Because the supply can’t satisfy the demand, prices of most of the Chinese products simply soar in the North Korean market,” said Su Xiangzhong, chairman of a Tianjin company that founded a beverage-manufacturing joint venture, Lungjin, with a North Korean.

Trade between the two countries increased by 35.4% in 2004, followed by a 35.2% increase in 2005. By the end of October 2006, bilateral trade had reached $1.38 billion, a 4% increase over 2005.

Beijing-based Winner International Industries Ltd was one of the Chinese companies that foresaw North Korea’s consumption potential in 2000. By then, the company had co-founded a joint-venture running-shoe and clothing-manufacturing presence in North Korea. With advanced machinery from Taiwan, its shoe-manufacturing division is now capable of producing 8 million pairs of running shoes, according to an official from the company, who declined to identify himself. The clothing-manufacturing division, he said, has been a supplier to South Korean and Japanese companies. However, he added that orders from the two countries had recently decreased for unknown reasons.

Leather shoes for soldiers are of high quality, but they are not available to the average person. In Pyongyang shops catering exclusively to foreigners, a pair of leather shoes could cost as much as $326. The North Korean government is still soliciting foreign investment and purchasing shoemaking equipment via Chinese companies.

To get around in a country with underdeveloped public transportation, getting a pair of shoes is not enough. Taking advantage of that situation, Tianjin’s Digital Co started making bicycles in Pyongyang in October 2005, after the North Koreans agreed to let the Chinese take a 51% controlling share in the joint venture, virtually a monopoly, for 20 years.

It is estimated that the nation’s demand for bicycles is about 7 million, according to the Chinese media. The company now manufactures some 40 models and 60,000 bicycles annually, with the most popular model costing $26. In coming years, it plans to produce 300,000 bicycles annually and construct another three bicycle plants.

Aside from daily necessities, there are few entertainment options for North Koreans, which means there is a high demand for TV sets. Nanjing Panda, a TV maker, appeared to be the only Chinese company to foresee the emergence of the North Korean market when it invested $1.3 million there in 2002. After four years of operation, its 17-inch black-and-white and 21-inch color TV sets are reportedly the hottest items available in Pyongyang. With Panda products beginning to dominate the local market, it is becoming increasingly difficult for others to import TV sets into North Korea, according to Chinese business people.

The Panda joint venture is now digging up another potential gold mine by manufacturing personal computers (PCs) in North Korea.

In 2003, Chinese non-financial investments in North Korea amounted to just $1.12 million. That total, however, soared to $14.13 million in 2004, and reportedly reached $53.69 million in 2005. According to the Chinese media, there are now about 200 Chinese investment projects operating in North Korea. A Pyongyang-based foreign businessman described the Chinese investors as “by far the largest group by country doing business there, in all kinds of fields – plus they are from one of the few countries with the protection and representation of a big embassy”.

In March 2005, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao signed an investment-protection agreement with his North Korean counterpart, and the two nations inked five bilateral economic-cooperation agreements between 2002 and 2005.

During North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s visit to China last January, Wen introduced new economic-cooperation guidelines.

Despite these positive moves, controversy over the role of Chinese businesses has emerged. A Pyongyang-based Western businessman suggested that quite a few disreputable companies “go there with the intention of getting rid of old or damaged goods they can’t sell in China, and rip off North Koreans, who have no way to get their money back”.

“Also, a lot of fake goods come from China,” he added.

Still, more and more Chinese business people are rushing to Pyongyang. Su Xiangzhong, chairman of a Tianjin-based company, noted that his firm is creating a new beverage brand, like China’s Wahaha, in Pyongyang. North Koreans are also very interested in cooperating with Chinese enterprises in manufacturing and mining.

Chinese-made clothes for women and children, low-end and generic-brand household products and sundries, color TVs and PCs are popular products in North Korea.

Li Jingke, a Dandong-based Chinese businessman who runs the China-DPR Korea Small Investor Association, suggested that natural-resource exploitation and manufacturing are the best industries for foreigners to invest in, adding that more investment-friendly policies would likely be introduced in April. By then, he said, Chinese business people might need to become more concerned about unprofessional conduct.

“When North Korea introduces more liberalized policies, competent companies from everywhere will enter the market, which would likely eliminate the existence of those Chinese businessmen who don’t have modern commercial ideas in mind,” Li said.

Share

Posted in Bicycles, China, International trade, Television, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

Filling North Korea’s bare shelves

Wednesday, January 10th, 2007

Asia Times
Ting-I Tsai
1/10/2007

North Korea’s nuclear test has been a hot topic among analysts around the world. But inside the isolated Stalinist state, getting a hold of a pair of running shoes, a bicycle or a television set is still what most excites ordinary citizens.

And Chinese businesses continue to cash in on these material desires by selling goods manufactured at home or in North Korea at prices higher than their quality justifies, sparking much criticism.

When Pyongyang publicized its intention to initiate economic reforms in July 2002, most people had doubts about how far the policy would be taken. Four years later, the regime is still struggling to implement its reforms, but it has at least partly satisfied some of the daily demands of citizens by allowing more Chinese products to be manufactured in North Korea and more Chinese goods to be imported.

Shoes, bicycles, TV sets, beverages and clothes made in China or by Chinese companies in North Korea are helping to satisfy demand, but some disreputable Chinese companies are ruining their country’s reputation by dumping factory seconds and damaged goods on the market.

Over decades of isolation, North Koreans have been suffering not just from food shortages, but from a scarcity of basic consumer goods. In past years, Pyongyang has reportedly asked the South Korean government to donate thousands of tons of soap and clothes, as well as material for the production of 60 million pairs of shoes. In a visit to Pyongyang in November, products such as Colgate toothbrushes, toothpaste and a Japanese facial cleaner were carefully displayed in glass cases bearing price tags equivalent to US$2.60-$5.90, well beyond the financial reach of all but a few North Koreans.

After years of studying China’s experiences, Pyongyang is now gearing up to solicit foreign investment and advanced technologies to modernize its decades-old manufacturing base.

Supply and demand
“Because the supply can’t satisfy the demand, prices of most of the Chinese products simply soar in the North Korean market,” said Su Xiangzhong, chairman of a Tianjin company that founded a beverage-manufacturing joint venture, Lungjin, with a North Korean.

Trade between the two countries increased by 35.4% in 2004, followed by a 35.2% increase in 2005. By the end of October 2006, bilateral trade had reached $1.38 billion, a 4% increase over 2005.

Beijing-based Winner International Industries Ltd was one of the Chinese companies that foresaw North Korea’s consumption potential in 2000. By then, the company had co-founded a joint-venture running-shoe and clothing-manufacturing presence in North Korea. With advanced machinery from Taiwan, its shoe-manufacturing division is now capable of producing 8 million pairs of running shoes, according to an official from the company, who declined to identify himself. The clothing-manufacturing division, he said, has been a supplier to South Korean and Japanese companies. However, he added that orders from the two countries had recently decreased for unknown reasons.

Leather shoes for soldiers are of high quality, but they are not available to the average person. In Pyongyang shops catering exclusively to foreigners, a pair of leather shoes could cost as much as $326. The North Korean government is still soliciting foreign investment and purchasing shoemaking equipment via Chinese companies.

To get around in a country with underdeveloped public transportation, getting a pair of shoes is not enough. Taking advantage of that situation, Tianjin’s Digital Co started making bicycles in Pyongyang in October 2005, after the North Koreans agreed to let the Chinese take a 51% controlling share in the joint venture, virtually a monopoly, for 20 years.

It is estimated that the nation’s demand for bicycles is about 7 million, according to the Chinese media. The company now manufactures some 40 models and 60,000 bicycles annually, with the most popular model costing $26. In coming years, it plans to produce 300,000 bicycles annually and construct another three bicycle plants.

Aside from daily necessities, there are few entertainment options for North Koreans, which means there is a high demand for TV sets. Nanjing Panda, a TV maker, appeared to be the only Chinese company to foresee the emergence of the North Korean market when it invested $1.3 million there in 2002. After four years of operation, its 17-inch black-and-white and 21-inch color TV sets are reportedly the hottest items available in Pyongyang. With Panda products beginning to dominate the local market, it is becoming increasingly difficult for others to import TV sets into North Korea, according to Chinese business people.

The Panda joint venture is now digging up another potential gold mine by manufacturing personal computers (PCs) in North Korea.

In 2003, Chinese non-financial investments in North Korea amounted to just $1.12 million. That total, however, soared to $14.13 million in 2004, and reportedly reached $53.69 million in 2005. According to the Chinese media, there are now about 200 Chinese investment projects operating in North Korea. A Pyongyang-based foreign businessman described the Chinese investors as “by far the largest group by country doing business there, in all kinds of fields – plus they are from one of the few countries with the protection and representation of a big embassy”.

In March 2005, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao signed an investment-protection agreement with his North Korean counterpart, and the two nations inked five bilateral economic-cooperation agreements between 2002 and 2005.

During North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s visit to China last January, Wen introduced new economic-cooperation guidelines.

Despite these positive moves, controversy over the role of Chinese businesses has emerged. A Pyongyang-based Western businessman suggested that quite a few disreputable companies “go there with the intention of getting rid of old or damaged goods they can’t sell in China, and rip off North Koreans, who have no way to get their money back”.

“Also, a lot of fake goods come from China,” he added.

Still, more and more Chinese business people are rushing to Pyongyang. Su Xiangzhong, chairman of a Tianjin-based company, noted that his firm is creating a new beverage brand, like China’s Wahaha, in Pyongyang. North Koreans are also very interested in cooperating with Chinese enterprises in manufacturing and mining.

Chinese-made clothes for women and children, low-end and generic-brand household products and sundries, color TVs and PCs are popular products in North Korea.

Li Jingke, a Dandong-based Chinese businessman who runs the China-DPR Korea Small Investor Association, suggested that natural-resource exploitation and manufacturing are the best industries for foreigners to invest in, adding that more investment-friendly policies would likely be introduced in April. By then, he said, Chinese business people might need to become more concerned about unprofessional conduct.

“When North Korea introduces more liberalized policies, competent companies from everywhere will enter the market, which would likely eliminate the existence of those Chinese businessmen who don’t have modern commercial ideas in mind,” Li said.

Share

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Black markets, China, China-DPR Korea Small Investor Association, Civil society, Computing/IT, Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, International trade, Light Industry, Manufacturing, Mining/Minerals, Price liberalization, Television, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

Luxuries for North’s elite keep on flowing

Monday, December 18th, 2006

Joong Ang Daily
12/19/2006

Despite United Nations sanctions aimed at preventing the North Korean government from buying luxury goods for its ruling class, government sources here said a North Korean trading company is still busy providing Kim Jong-il loyalists with their perquisites.

Tian Ming Trading Company, in the center of this former Portuguese enclave now with the same China-affiliated status as Hong Kong, says its main business line is carpets, and little more. Three office workers said there were no North Koreans at the company and that it has never traded with North Korea. The company’s president was out of town on business, they said.

But a source with close ties to the trading economy here said that Park Su-dok, a 53-year-old North Korean, is in Macao and obtained a visa as an employee of the company.

Another source said, “Tian Ming is a joint venture by North Korean and Hong Kong investors, and its main business is buying luxury goods from Hong Kong for shipment to North Korea.” He added that Tian Ming’s president, a Hong Kong resident, is buying luxury watches, gold products and expensive liquor at North Korea’s request, using a Hong Kong branch office for the purpose.

Other Macao government officials said 18 North Korean firms were registered in Macao as of late November, and 115 North Koreans carry Macao visas as employees. Twenty have become Macao citizens, they added.

Since Washington threatened to impose sanctions on Banco Delta Asia here, allegedly for helping North Korea launder cash from its alleged dubious business lines, some of those companies have shut down. Ten are still in limited operation, however, these government sources said.

Separately, a South Korean banker in Hong Kong told the Joong-Ang Ilbo that a North Korean businessman had visited him in an attempt to sell gold bars through one of the South Korean bank branches in Hong Kong.

The banker reportedly spurned the overture, although the transaction would not have violated any South Korean laws or regulations on North-South dealings. He said he simply did not want to get involved in such a deal given the international attention being paid to commercial dealings with North Korea. The banker suggested that the offer may have been a sign of the foreign currency problems North Korea is facing because of the UN sanctions and U.S. pressure on financial dealings with North Korea.

Banco Delta Asia has said that between 2003 and 2005, it had sold 9.2 tons of gold bars that it had purchased from the North, where gold production is estimated to be about 25 tons per year, mostly for export.

Wall Street Journal
12/18/2006
Gordon Fairlcough, p.A1

Close-Out Sale: North Korea’s Elite Shop While They Can

A North Korean businesswoman with heavy makeup and a bouffant hairdo studied herself in a mirror as she modeled fur-lined leather coats at a small store in [Dandong, China] this frigid northeast border city.

During a three-day excursion late last month, the woman also tried on shoes and looked at large-screen television sets before buying furniture and fresh fruit and heading home to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital city.

The United Nations has called for a crackdown on luxury-goods shipments to North Korea as a way of pressuring the country to drop its atomic-weapons programs, which came under new fire after an October nuclear test.

If anything, the uncertainty about the flow of fancy goods appears to have whetted the appetites of some privileged North Koreans — whose impoverished country cultivates a Spartan socialist image.

In Dandong, North Koreans, many wearing lapel pins with a picture of North Korea’s founding dictator, Kim Il Sung, stroll through hotels and department stores. Signs are often written in Korean, with storekeepers advertising computers, karaoke machines and the erectile-dysfunction drugs Viagra and Cialis.

A few North Koreans have bought new cars at a Toyota dealership near the Dandong customs checkpoint, according to a salesman. One man paid about $50,000 in cash for a luxury sedan.

Gold is also gaining a following. Wang Xiaoju, a saleswoman at the jewelry counter at Xin Yi Bai Department Store, says North Korean women come in nearly every day, mostly to buy gold chains and other gold jewelry.

Women from the North also are frequent visitors to a riverfront spa, favoring milk baths and massages, according to staff there. A saleswoman at the Xin Yi Bai L’Oreal counter says North Koreans are regular customers. Among the big sellers: body sculpting cream for women who want to look thinner.

In the first 10 months of this year, Chinese exports of fur coats and fake furs to North Korea soared more than sevenfold from the year-earlier period, according to Chinese Customs figures. Exports of televisions and other consumer electronics were up 77%, while perfumes and cosmetics were up 10%.

Some North Koreans are even buying real estate in Dandong. One high-rise building, where three bedroom apartments go for nearly $100,000 each, has sweeping views of a decrepit North Korean village with crumbling cinder-block houses across the border. A North Korean buyer recently purchased one of the units with cash, according to the building’s sales agent.

“Life is quite comfortable” for senior party members, military officers and traders, who have prospered despite widespread shortages of food, fuel and medicine in North Korea, says Pak Yong Ho, a former high-ranking North Korean official who defected to South Korea two years ago.

North Korea’s Communist Party has long had overseas agents in Macau, Switzerland and elsewhere dedicated to maintaining supplies of luxuries for top military and government personnel, according to former North Korean officials. Their jobs, in the wake of the U.N. sanctions, could get much harder.

The U.N. so far has let individual countries decide which high-end products to block. Washington has barred U.S. companies from selling everything from iPods to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. But that move was largely symbolic, as there is very little direct trade between the U.S. and North Korea.

Japan, which has for decades been a source of luxuries for the North Korean ruling class, has banned exports of 24 fancy products from caviar and gems to watches and art.

But the key to whether the sanctions will work is in the hands of China, North Korea’s largest trading partner.

A steel-girder bridge here spans the Yalu River, connecting Dandong to the city of Sinuiju in North Korea. That has helped Dandong, whose name means “Red East,” become a popular shopping destination for North Koreans with money. It is unclear how much that will change because of the sanctions.

So far, China hasn’t disclosed what specific kinds of high-end exports — TVs or luxury automobiles, for instance — it will block. A Chinese foreign-ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, has said the list “should not be allowed to impact normal trade transactions” between the socialist neighbors.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, whose own taste for expensive French cognac and other imported luxuries is well known, uses money and goods liberally in an effort to buy the loyalty of the elite, according to U.S. and South Korean officials. Some of these officials say that depriving the ruling class of its creature comforts could alienate them from Mr. Kim, long known as “Dear Leader.”

But many North Korea watchers and North Korean defectors doubt that the elite would revolt against Mr. Kim’s government, because their fates are so closely tied to his now. “Under this regime, the privileged have had a very good life,” says Kim Dok Hong, the second-highest North Korean official to defect. “If the regime collapses, the people they’ve mistreated will be looking for revenge.”

At the peak of the famine that killed more than a million North Koreans in the mid-1990s, Mr. Pak, the former government official, says his parents weren’t short of food. Their home had three refrigerators regularly replenished with imported provisions by the Communist Party. Mr. Pak uses a pseudonym to protect family members still in the North from government retribution.

“The elites have had more freedom to do their own business” since economic overhauls in 2002, says Yang Chang Seok, a senior official at South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which oversees relations with the North. “People have earned a lot of money from trading.”

These days in Pyongyang, members of the ruling class are ferried around in imported cars and live in well-appointed — and well-guarded — apartment complexes. Their children race around city parks on in-line skates and play American computer games.

Says Mr. Pak: “If you can afford to pay, there’s nothing you can’t get.”

Share

Posted in 2002 Economic reforms, Automobiles, China, Hong Kong, International trade, Political economy, Real estate, Tian Ming Trading Company, Trade Statistics, Transportation | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »