“Crossing the Line” makes its debut

October 17th, 2006

From the New York Times:
10/17/2006

Even at 64 years old and in failing health, James Dresnok projects an imposing figure. Six-foot-five with a huge frame and giant jowls, he speaks into the camera with a firm, distinct Southern accent. Metal teeth glint as he talks. “I will give you the truth; I’ve never told anyone before,” says Mr. Dresnok, a former soldier, a defector and, for the last 44 years, a resident of Pyongyang, North Korea.

Mr. Dresnok is at the center of Daniel Gordon’s documentary “Crossing the Line,” along with the stories of three other American defectors who crossed the 2.5-mile, landmine-strewn demilitarized zone to live in North Korea. The documentary is Mr. Gordon’s third look inside the secretive Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The first, “The Game of Their Lives,” examined the 1966 World Cup soccer team that defeated the Italian team and made it, against all odds, to the Cup’s quarterfinals. Then “A State of Mind” followed two young girls participating in the North’s overwhelming Mass Games.

The director met his co-producer, Nick Bonner, in 1997 while researching the North Korean soccer team. Mr. Bonner has been working with North Korea from Beijing for 14 years as the director of Koryo Tours, a travel agency. “The Game of Their Lives” made the two men minor celebrities in North Korea. “We have taken an apolitical viewpoint, with interviews from both sides of the spectrum,” Mr. Gordon wrote in an e-mail message. “Our previous films have been shown both in North and South Korea,” a testament to the neutrality of the films, he wrote.

But “Crossing the Line,” which had its world premiere on Monday night at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, explores more political and controversial territory. “This was the story that we thought we could never tell,” Mr. Bonner said in an interview after the film’s premiere. “But we said to the North Koreans, if someone does not make this film soon, you won’t ever have any record.”

Mr. Dresnok was born poor in Norfolk, Va., in 1941. His parents divorced when he was 9. His father then abandoned him, and he ended up bouncing through a series of foster homes. On his 17th birthday he enlisted in the Army. When he returned from service in Germany, his wife wanted a divorce. Even now, decades later, the memory makes him cry. “I’m just thankful we never had any kids, because I swore I would never leave my children,” he says as he breaks down in the film.

Soon after, he re-enlisted and was assigned to South Korea, but his bitterness led him to spend his money on prostitutes and drinking. “I was fed up. If I died or I lived, I didn’t care.” At noon on Aug. 15, 1962, with a court martial looming for forging a pass, Pfc. James Dresnok took the 12-gauge shotgun he was cleaning and, wearing his fatigues, walked across the DMZ in broad daylight.

Once in the North, he joined Pvt. Larry Allen Abshier, who had defected three months earlier. In December 1963, Specialist Jerry Wayne Parrish also defected, and then Sgt. Charles Robert Jenkins in January 1965. Together, the four became propaganda heroes for the North.

After a couple of years in North Korea, though, the cultural differences felt overwhelming, so in 1966 the four fled to the Soviet Embassy in Pyongyang, asking for asylum. But the Russians turned them over to the North Koreans. Mr. Dresnok braced for a horrible punishment. But, he says, none came. They were ordered to undergo more “education,” Mr. Dresnok said, and he decided he would try to fit in. “Man is the master of his life, and little by little I came to understand the Korean people,” he said.

By 1972, Mr. Dresnok was considered rehabilitated and was granted North Korean citizenship. He married an Eastern European woman and had two children. After that wife died, he remarried and had another child. He started appearing in propaganda films in 1978 and acted in more than a dozen over the next decade. Many North Koreans still call him Mr. Arthur, after a character he played in one film.

Mr. Dresnok could barely contain his disgust when he talked about Mr. Jenkins, who left North Korea in 2004 and gave a series of high-profile interviews about the wretched life he endured in his four decades there. Mr. Dresnok calls him a liar and bore. As for Mr. Jenkins’s claim that Mr. Dresnok used to beat him sadistically, Mr. Dresnok responds that they once fought, but there were only two punches: “I hit him and he hit the ground.” After a few minutes he becomes visibly agitated and asks to change the subject.

Mr. Dresnok says he is a true believer in the North Korean system. “I wouldn’t trade it for nuthin’,” he states emphatically. He is proud that two of his three sons attend the prestigious Foreign Language School in Pyongyang, saying he could never have afforded such an education in the United States. “I don’t want my sons to be an illiterate old man like me.” But he is a celebrity in North Korea, and although Pyongyang is poor by Western standards, it is the city of the elite for North Koreans. “Anyone living in Pyongyang is privileged,” Mr. Bonner said. “But the main force behind us was human interest.”

But privilege is probably not the answer to understanding why Mr. Dresnok and the other American defectors decided to build their lives in North Korea; belief is. Three of the four American defectors, with the exception of Mr. Jenkins, came from broken homes, with missing or abusive fathers. They made homes in the most extreme totalitarian state in the world, where Kim Il-sung is portrayed at the ultimate father figure for the entire nation. Even though Mr. Dresnok has numerous health problems (mostly related to his smoking and drinking, which he refuses to stop), the North Korean government provides for him and his family.

Which leads into the second time Mr. Dresnok cries in the film. While talking about the North Korean famines of the 1990’s, he says that despite the hundreds of thousands who died, the North Koreans never cut his rations. “Why? Why do they let their own people starve to death to feed an American?” he asks as he tears up. “The Great Leader has given us a special solicitude. The government is going to take care of me until my dying day.”

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Is DPRK preparing for another ‘Arduous March’?

October 17th, 2006

From the Daily NK:
If a Second Tribulation March Arrives?
10/17/2006
Han Young Jin

On the 14th, the Rodong Shinmun, a N. Korean state newspaper, urged “We must take a strong conviction in regards to socialism and go out to fight with faith and optimism.” On the 13th, the Minju Chosun (Democratic Korea), the government organ, claimed “Even if we have to face the second and third ‘Tribulation March,’ you need not worry. Rather we must fight with overt confidence and audacity.”

Ever since the nuke experiments government channels have been using this propaganda This suggests that North Korean authorities were already prepared for sanctions by the international community.

People’s mentality “If you trust the nation, you will die of starvation”

During the first “Tribulation March” in the mid-90’s, about 300,000 people died over a period of 3 years from starvation. What would happen if the second tribulation march was to occur as a result of the U.N. North Korea resolution? How would it differ from the first?

The reason that 300,000 people died from starvation lies in the fundamental man-made disaster, where Kim Jong Il’s political ideology of “government teachings” and development of reform were abandoned after his death to “revival of one’s own strength.”

Beginning with munitions workers, about 50,000 people who trusted and were loyal to the government, including many intellectuals such as scientists and technicians died of starvation.

When comparing the past to the present, the people of the 90’s trusted only in their government as they did not have any other knowledge. Thus they were hit with a sudden blow, however this time it is different, as the North Korean people are already filled with “immunity.”

Above all, North Korean people are now aware of their own existence and are saying “If you trust the nation, you will die from starvation.” At the time, people tacitly in trade knew that they would not die of hunger. Today, high officials have changed their mentality and have abandoned the ideology of being the “People’s emissary” to ‘I must devise a plan to live, while I have the power.’

Since 2000, irrespective of whether or not the nation distributed rations in the fall, people have begun to devise their own ways to live. While city dwellers are living off their trade, villagers are providing their own rations through cultivation and farming off mountains.

After the 7.1 economic measures, capitalism was steadily introduced and the people’s spontaneity increased. Hence, this time it seems that the mass starvation of the mid-90’s may be escaped.

However, as a result of long term malnutrition, it is possible that many deaths will occur from disease and infectious epidemics.

A complete breakdown in industry and infrastructure

According to data from the World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), North Korea’s output of grain in 95~96 was 4,070,000 tons and 2,874,000 tons in 96~97. This is a significantly low figure compared to the necessary amount of 6,400,000 tons.

Even today, little has changed. Last year, the typhoon caused an output of 4,800,000 tons of crop. Hence, the insufficient rations of the 90’s ‘Tribulation March’ period, is similar to this time.

During the first tribulation march, there was no electricity so factories ceased operations and workers began to sell equipment taken from their workplace in trade of rations. What happened was a collapse in the main infrastructure of factories.

The worker’s riot in 1996 that arose from suppression of operations at the Yellow Sea Iron Works, also originated from workers taking factory materials to trade for food. A defector from ‘September Iron Works’ in Pyongan said “During the tribulation march, everyone took materials from work to trade. If it occurs again, people will most probably dig up the main support.”

The infrastructure collapse of the 90’s was near to impossible to rebuild by North Korea alone. Since 1998, the economy has somewhat stabilized, however full reconstruction has never been acheived and rather only parts of the country has recovered.

The key point will be when China participates in the North Korea sanctions

If the second tribulation march was to occur, the main point will be commerce with China. Last March, Professor Xuwenji of Northeast Asia Research and Development Institute, Jilian University visited North Korea. He said “About 70% of North Korean markets are made up of Chinese products, 20% of products are made in North Korea and the remaining 10% is either Japanese or Russian products.”

Currently, daily necessary products such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, and soap, welding rods and even tires at North Korean markets are all made in China. In the case that the trade of daily necessities is disconnected, this will undoubtedly affect North Korea dramatically. In the end, the key point is to what extent China will compliantly follow the North Korea resolution.

The number of Chinese enterprises trying to evade North Korean investments is also variable. After North Korea’s nuclear experiment, rumors spread that Chinese banks beginning from Dandong had ceased remitting funds to North Korea and that many Chinese businesses had begun to suspend or terminate North Korean investments.

If commerce is suspended between North Korea and China, North Korea will not be able to satisfy all of its necessary daily products by relying on illicit trade.

There are also rumors that barbed wire will be placed bordering the region of the Yalu River, which will further affect smuggling of goods. As official trade between the two countries becomes illegal and daily necessities cannot be supplied from China through smuggling, the North Korean people will experience yet another fatal blow to their lives.

Furthermore, if North Korea does proclaim its second tribulation march and returns to the times of the mid-90’s, the Kim Jong Il regime could be greatly affected.

Above all, as the mentality of the people has changed, no longer will they listen submissively to the government. Rather, they will be more inclined to find ways to sustain their own life existence and make all attempts to defect to China. Amongst these circumstances, there may even be bloodshed between soldiers and the people.

Also, if high ranking military officials and soldiers decide that they cannot possibly live amongst these circumstances, it is possible that they will abandon their barracks. One thing is certain they will not simply sit around and wait to die from starvation. If high ranking military officials and soldiers did withdraw from their barracks on the mass, it is possible that the Kim Jong Il regime will face a threat to destruction.

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Posted in 1990s Famine, Agriculture, Arduous March, China, Economic reform, International trade, UN World Food Program | Comments Closed

Sanctions only hurt those on bottom-no matter where imposed III

October 17th, 2006

From the Korea Herald:
Sanctions will cripple N.K. economy: KIEP
10/17/2006
Kim So-hyun

The international sanctions to be imposed on North Korea will further cut into the country’s moribund trade volume and drag it deeper into recession, a South Korean think tank said in a report released yesterday.

The sanctions – being taken under a U.N. Security Council resolution – will likely reduce the North Korean economy to a state worse than in the mid-1990s when millions died of hunger, the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy said.

“The North Korean economy is expected to contract much more severely than in the so-called ‘marching in torment’ times (in the mid-1990s),” the KIEP report said. “More financial sanctions and a block on foreign capital inflow will deepen the shortage of foreign currency, resulting in a wider gap between market and official exchange rates.”

The official exchange rate of the North Korean currency was 137 won to the U.S. dollar in the first half of 2005. However, the dollar was traded for between 1,900 won and 2,600 won in the market, up to 19 times higher than the official rate.

The prohibition of financial transactions and capital inflow is regarded as the most powerful punitive measure since it has been cited by Pyongyang as one of the main reasons for boycotting six-party talks and pressing ahead with its reported test of a nuclear device.

“Although trade accounts for less than 15 percent of North Korea’s gross domestic production, trade and support from neighboring countries allowed its economy to inch up a bit recently,” said Choi Soo-young of the Korea Institute for National Unification.

“Whereas the North could ask for international help when it suffered natural calamities such as draughts in the mid-1990s, it now has to live without such generous aid.”

Since the U.N. resolution bans direct or indirect supply of weapons or any materials that could contribute to the North’s weapons of mass destruction programs, a reduction in Chinese imports of related materials could trigger stagnation in the nation’s machinery, electronics and chemicals output, the KIEP report said.

“The trade volume between North Korea and China has surged by some 30 percent a year since 1999, and this has accelerated the North’s economic growth by 3.5 percentage points annually,” KIEP researcher Chung Seung-ho said.

China accounts for about 40 percent of North Korea’s relatively small volume of trade. South Korea, Thailand, Russia and Japan each take up 26 percent, 8.1 percent, 5.7 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, according to Chung.

It remains to be seen whether neighboring countries will take individual measures in addition to the sanctions under the U.N. Security Council resolution.

The United States, Japan and Australia are considering harsher measures of their own while South Korea and China seem reluctant to follow suit.

“As China’s involvement in the sanctions is likely to be only symbolic, the level of South Korean participation will determine the degree of the North’s economic decline,” KINU’s Choi said.

China could consider reducing its uncompensated grants to North Korea, which soared 162 percent to $38 million last year, according to KIEP.

“China is expected to partially or entirely stop the trade of machinery and electronics that could be related to weapons of mass destruction in North Korea, but it wouldn’t go as far as forbidding private commercial trade across the border,” the report said.

“Stopping the supply of crude oil, for which North Korea depends entirely on China, is unlikely.”

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Posted in Arduous March, China, Fiscal & monetary policy, International trade, Trade Statistics | Comments Closed

Business as usual in China/DPRK trade

October 17th, 2006

From the Asia Times:
Business as usual across the Yalu
10/17/2006
Ting-I Tsai

Pyongyang’s proclaimed successful nuclear test, which has sparked anger and fear around the world and prompted passage of more UN sanctions, is not deterring Chinese business people living on the border from doing business with North Korea. They are confident that Beijing will not enforce really harsh punishments.

“For North Korea, reform and development is still its goal. It is just a matter of time. We are still keen on doing business there,” said Zeng Chengbiao, chairman of the Zhongxu Group which is based in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province. Zeng has been planning to operate a department store in Pyongyang and is also interested in investing in mining there. Zeng said his company is preparing to announce a major investment after the Chinese Lunar New Year in February.

Zeng is a typical example of the hundreds of Chinese business people who remain enthusiastic about trading with or investing in North Korea, despite the international furor and unconfirmed reports about Pyongyang’s running out of electricity and food while major players in the Security Council debate punishments for North Korea’s nuclear test.

A sense of normality in Pyongyang and continuing routine bilateral interactions with China could be the reasons for these businessmen’s calm. “Everything is the same as usual. Lots of my clients are in town for business [after the test’s announcement],” said an anonymous Beijing-based trader, who has dealt with North Koreans for more than a decade.

In the Chinese city of Dandong on the North Korean border, and even in Pyongyang, Chinese businesspeople and citizens all claim confidence. “I checked with my friends at the customs, and they said that goods are in and out as usual,” said Liu Yen, a church worker from Dandong.

In Pyongyang, Chinese traders are still answering calls made to their North Korean 10-digit mobile phones, hoping to find more sources for soybean oil, sugar, monosodium glutamate and flour. Michel Ji, representative of Jilin Cereals, Oil, Foodstuffs, Import and Export Group in Pyongyang, who has been traveling back and forth between the two nations for four years, said that his company has imported up to10 million tons of sugar, MSG and oil from North Korea. Prices of products from China, he said, are still too high.

“There will definitely be sanctions, but none of them will affect people’s livelihoods,” Ji said.

Since Pyongyang initiated economic reforms in July 2002, Chinese businessmen have crowded into North Korea – perhaps the last virgin territory for capitalism. China’s non-financial direct investment in North Korea was about US$14.37 million in 2005 and $14.1 million in 2004, according to the Chinese Commerce Ministry.

Bilateral trade reached almost $1.4 billion in 2004, and jumped to about $1.6 billion in 2005, while during the first eight months of 2006 it hit $1 billion.

Some 40 Chinese companies from Liaoning province alone have just returned from North Korea after attending the second Pyongyang Autumn International Commercial Exhibition. A Pyongyang-Tianjin joint-venture bicycle manufacturing company, which reportedly produces 300,000 bicycles annually, dominates North Korean’s bicycle market, while more companies are waiting for the two governments’ approvals for investing in the slowly opening nation.

Shortly after Pyongyang’s announcement of its nuclear test, Tokyo declared a total ban on North Korean imports and prohibited North Korean-flagged ships from entering Japanese ports. North Korean nationals are also prohibited from entering Japan, with few exceptions.

Over the weekend, the Security Council approved the US-sponsored resolution for imposing punishing sanctions against North Korea. The sanctions demand that the North abandon its nuclear weapons program and orders all countries to prevent North Korea from importing or exporting any material for weapons of mass destruction or ballistic missiles. It orders nations to freeze assets of people or businesses connected to these programs and bans individuals from traveling there.

Furthermore, the resolution calls on all countries to inspect cargo leaving and arriving in North Korea to prevent any illegal trafficking in unconventional weapons or ballistic missiles. The final draft was softened from language authorizing searches, but was still unacceptable to China – the North’s closest ally – which said it would not carry out any searches.

“China will not go too far,” predicted Cui Yingjiu, a Beijing-based retired academic who was Kim Jong-il’s classmate during his studies at Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung University in the early 1960s. Aside from concern about China’s national interests, analysts in Beijing also doubt the significance of any harsh punishment, as they believe the North Korean economy is relatively independent.

“They can still live by simply eating grass. What would these economic sanctions really do?” said Niu Jun, professor at the Peking University’s School of International Relations, who visited North Korea in July.

Shortly after the UN resolution passed, US ambassador to the UN John Bolton told reporters that the next step was to start work on implementing the resolution. But none of the current moves are scaring away Chinese businessmen.

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Posted in Arduous March, China, International trade | Comments Closed

Mount Mantap test site overlay for ‘Google Earth’

October 17th, 2006

test2.JPG 

This is an “after the explosion” satellite image taken from The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

Click here to download it onto your own Google Earth.

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Chinese Banks Restricting Cash Flow to DPRK

October 17th, 2006

From the Choson Ilbo:
Chinese Banks Restricting Cash Flow to N.Korea
10/17/2006

Major Chinese banks are currently stopping or restricting remittances or payments to North Korea after the North’s announcement of what it claims was a nuclear test, it emerged Monday. Chinese banks in Dandong, where cross-border trade is concentrated, recently started restricting banking transactions with North Korea, an official with the South Korean Embassy in China said. The restrictions, in fact, started in March this year, when the U.S. imposed financial sanctions on Macau’s Banco Delta Asia after designating it Pyongyang’s “primary money laundering concern.”

But not all Chinese banks are doing so, each bank and branch having its own policy. Sources say it does not look as if the Chinese government is ordering them to do so; rather banks have started doing so on their own. Rumor is spreading among traders doing business with North Korea in China that all financial accounts with North Korea including those by North Korean traders in China could be frozen.

North Korean workers in China are leaving the country in droves after North’s claimed nuclear test. A businessman operating a sewing factory in Shenyang, China, said, “Some 100 North Korean workers in my factory returned home three days ago because the Chinese authorities didn’t renew their work permit.” Banks in Dandong and Shenyang, where many businesses trading with North Korea have accounts, are seeing an increasing number of them not receive payments for exports to the North. “Since the U.S. froze North Korea’s accounts in the Macau bank, it takes three or four times longer for us to get paid for imports to the North, and this is hurting us badly,” a businessman trading with the North said. “We can’t do business with the North any longer.”

As official trade between the North and China shrinks, smuggling between the two countries is thriving, local people say. An ethnic Korean in Dandong said if a North Korean vessel ships 1,000 tons of iron ore to a port here, it officially reports only 100 ton of them and smuggles the rest. Smuggling covers almost everything from iron ore to bronze, TVs, computers, petrochemical products, antiques and maritime products. That is why many feel how determined the Chinese authorities are in cracking down on smuggling will determine the success of sanctions against the North. Locals say they have not heard of any Chinese crackdown on smuggling to and from the North, nor do they expect one.

China clearly stated its opposition against military action in the UN resolution against the North over its claimed nuclear test, calling for “an appropriate level” of sanctions. Beijing says the ultimate goal should be getting the North to return to the six-party talks on its nuclear program, not forcing regime collapse. Some expect China to reduce, rather than stop, its supply of oil to the North.

Meanwhile, China is preparing for an emergency in North Korea. It is setting up barbed-wire fences along the border near the Yalu and Tumen rivers where the military units of the provinces there took charge of guarding the area three years ago. The barbed-wire fences are being extended near Changbai County and the Tumen River. A Chinese official said the fences “were put up after consultations with the North because we needed to draw up a clear border between us and North Korea because of the narrowness of the river or newly built roads.” But some say the main goal is to prevent a mass exodus of North Koreans when the regime falls apart. Experts say another reason China is building up its military strength and carrying out more military exercises near the border with the North is to prepare for regime collapse in the north. The new 60-km long road along the Yalu River is also said to serve strategic military purposes.

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Posted in Banking, China, Finance, Fiscal & monetary policy, Foreign direct investment, Iron Ore | Comments Closed

Australia to ban N Korean ships

October 16th, 2006

BBC
10/16/2006

Australia is to ban North Korean ships from entering its ports in response to its claimed nuclear bomb test, the foreign minister has announced.

Alexander Downer told Parliament the move would help Australia make a “quite clear contribution” to other sanctions agreed by the UN on Saturday.

The UN resolution imposes both weapons and financial sanctions on the North, but despite the unanimous vote, disagreements have emerged between the members of the council.

Beijing has indicated that it still has reservations about carrying out the extensive cargo inspections that Washington says are called for in the resolution.

Ship inspections

Australia is one of the few countries to have diplomatic relations with North Korea, but its trade ties are limited. In 2005, imports amounted to A$16m ($12m).

“If we are to ban North Korean vessels from visiting Australian ports then I think that will help Australia make a quite clear contribution to the United Nations sanctions regime.”

Japan, which banned North Korean ships from its ports last week, is looking at whether it can provide logistical support for US vessels if they start trying to inspect cargo ships going to or from North Korea.

The restrictions imposed by Japan’s pacifist constitution may require the government to pass new laws to allow that to happen.

In a further diplomatic drive, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to arrive in Japan on Wednesday.

She reportedly intends to reassure the country that Washington will provide adequate protection in the event that North Korea obtains a viable nuclear weapon – a message she will later take to South Korea.

‘Heavy responsibility’

The UN resolution against North Korea was agreed after lengthy negotiations.

It imposes tough weapons restrictions, targets luxury goods and imposes a travel ban on some North Korean officials.

It also allows the inspection of cargo vessels going in and out of North Korea for banned materials, although the resolution was weakened slightly at China and Russia’s insistence, to make this provision less mandatory.

Beijing’s UN envoy, Wang Guangya, said immediately after the vote that China urged countries to “refrain from taking any provocative steps that may intensify the tension”.

Both Russia and China are concerned that inspections could spark naval confrontations with North Korean boats.

But the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, told American television that China had voted for the sanctions and therefore “China itself now has an obligation to make sure that it complies.”

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Sanctions only hurt those on bottom-no matter where imposed II

October 16th, 2006

From Reuters:
North Korea’s Kim Jong-il can withstand sanctions
10/16/2006
Jonathan Thatcher

North Korea’s elite, from one of the world’s poorest countries, may soon have trouble importing the fine cognac they reportedly favor but they are unlikely to buckle under new U.N. sanctions, analysts said on Monday.

Longer term, the resolution unanimously agreed by the U.N. Security Council on Saturday will pinch an already damaged economy but it is the masses who will likely be most hurt.

“The regime has shown it doesn’t mind if its people feel the pain,” said one diplomat in Seoul of the North Korean government, which is routinely accused of human rights abuses and up to 10 percent of whose population died during famine in the 1990s.

Under the Security Council resolution over Pyongyang’s reported nuclear test, nations can stop cargo going to and from North Korea to check for weapons of mass destruction.

It blocks trade with the secretive country in dangerous weapons, heavy conventional weapons and luxury goods. And it asks governments to freeze funds connected with its WMD program.

“The practical effect is questionable,” said Professor Nam Sung-wook of Korea University, an expert on North Korea.

“They (the countries supporting sanctions) are in bed together but they’re all dreaming different dreams,” he said.

Analysts said that the way China — the nearest the isolated North has to an ally — interprets the sanctions will be very different from Japan, which has demanded tough action.

In an interview with Reuters at the weekend, former President Kim Dae-jung and architect of        South Korea’s policy of engagement with the North, said the sanctions would have little effect.

“North Korea is already very familiar with poverty. The country can also get support, at least in order to survive, from countries such as China.”

The U.N. World Food Program’s Asia regional director, Anthony Banbury, said his concern was that the overall environment, including action by the North, was making it more difficult to reach people just as aid needs rise.

“I can guarantee you that right now there are severe food shortages. There is no question that there are large numbers of North Koreans … who are facing quite severe food problems,” he said by telephone from Bangkok.

RISK OF DANGEROUS VACUUM

The diplomat said no one, least of all China or South Korea, wanted a sudden collapse of North Korea’s government that could create an even more dangerous vacuum in a country with one of the world’s largest standing armies.

“In the short-run, I don’t think the sanctions will have a significant impact. They’ll have political and symbolic implications,” said Park Young-ho, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.

But over time there will be a negative impact on the economy and that, Park said, could put North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his government under greater pressure to rattle the world with another test.

Peter Beck, Korea analyst in Seoul with the International Crisis Group, said he doubted the U.N. resolution would have any noticeable impact other than to give the North an excuse to ignore the        United Nations and conduct a second nuclear test.

“I do not think it will have any impact on putting pressure on the regime or increasing the prospects for regime change,” Beck said.

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China builds wall to keep out illegal immigrants

October 16th, 2006

From the Associated Press:
China erects barbed wire fence along border with North Korea
10/16/2006
Alexa Olesen
Jae-soon Chang

China has been building a massive barbed wire and concrete fence along parts of its border with North Korea in the most visible sign of Beijing’s strained ties with its once-cozy communist neighbor.
 
Scores of soldiers have descended on farmland near the border-marking Yalu River to erect concrete barriers 2.5 to 4 meters (8 to 15 feet) tall and string barbed wire between them, farmers and visitors to the area said.
 
Last week, they reached Hushan, a collection of villages 20 kilometers (12 miles) inland from the border port of Dandong.
 
“About 100 People’s Liberation Army soldiers in camouflage started building the fence four days ago and finished it yesterday,” said a farmer, who only gave his surname, Ai. “I assume it was built to prevent smuggling and illegal crossing.”
 
Though the fence-building appears to have picked up in the days following North Korea’s claimed nuclear test last week, experts said the project was approved in 2003. Experts and a local Hushan official, who requested anonymity because of the project’s sensitivity, said the military was in charge of the building.
 
A Defense Ministry spokesman, Ye Xing, declined comment, saying he was not authorized to release information on border security.
 
The fence marks a noticeable change in China’s approach to its North Korean neighbor. In the decades following their shared fight against U.S.-led U.N. forces in the Korean War, China left their border lightly guarded, deploying most of its forces in the northeast toward its enemy, the Soviet Union.
 
But the border became a security concern for Beijing in the past decade, as North Korea’s economy collapsed and social order crumbled in some places. Tens of thousands of refugees began trickling across the border into northeast China, fording the Yalu and Tumen rivers or walking across the ice in winter.
 
Professor Kim Woo-jun at the Institute of East and West Studies in Seoul said China built wire fences on major defection routes along the Tumen River in a project that began in 2003, and since September this year, China has been building wire fences along the Yalu River.
 
“The move is mainly aimed at North Korean defectors,” Kim said. “As the U.N. sanctions are enforced … the number of defectors are likely to increase as the regime can’t take care of its people … I think the wire fence work will likely go on to control this.”
 
But he said he also believes that Beijing wants to firmly mark its border with the North along the two rivers.
 
Kim said China and the North drew their border in a secret treaty. That treaty wasn’t reported to the United Nations and therefore does not apply to a third country, like South Korea. China is concerned that South Korea may claim a different border after absorbing or unifying with the North.
 
Reporters who visited the border area in the past week saw about 500 meters (1,640 feet) of newly erected barbed wire fence north of Dandong, mainly along river banks and occasionally broken up by mountain areas or military guard posts.
 
A duck farmer in Hushan, who would only give his surname Han, said that soldiers began putting up the fence near his farm last Monday afternoon — the same day that North Korea claims to have carried out an underground nuclear test.

 

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The Party Is Over

October 15th, 2006

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
10/15/2006

What is happening to the Korean Workers’ Party, once the locus of all power in North Korea? What will be its fate? I suspect that nowadays these questions are asked not only by Pyongyang watchers, but also by many North Koreans. Indeed, something strange has happened to North Korea’s ruling party. Since the inception of the DPRK in 1948, the Korean Workers’ Party has remained the core of its political system. It was a typical specimen of the Stalinist-type Communist Party: highly centralized and subordinated to the will of the god-like “leader”.

On paper, the KWP appears to be quite democratic: for example, its committees are supposedly elected by the respective assemblies of Party representatives. However, quasi-democratic features and regulations bear no relation to the harsh realities. The “elections” meant an obligatory vote in support of the pre-arranged list of candidates, and for decades no party member has been sufficiently insane to use his presumed right to criticize, say, Kim Il Sung or Kim Jong Il.

Nonetheless, the Leninist Party has always been a rather rococo structure grafted onto an otherwise rational design of a Stalinist state. Its functions were not well defined, its interaction with more conventional state bodies was full of controversies, and many of its quasi-democratic conventions were expensive and patently hypocritical. It acted as a sort of central command network which ensured that all parts of the state mechanism were working according to the wish of the leader and/or ruling oligarchy. But it was not very rational, one has to admit.

In the last years of Kim Il Sung’s rule it became clear that the Great Leader was ready to jettison some of the traditions related to the Party. On paper, the KWP was supposed to hold a Congress every five years. In reality, there were only two KWP Congresses convened in the last 40 years: in 1970 and 1980. Kim Il Sung was running the country directly, using the Party bureaucracy as but one of many available tools.

When Kim Jong Il assumed supreme power after his father’s death, this move from the old tradition became more discernible. It was presumed that Kim Jong Il’s elevation would be formally ratified by a large and pompous party convention. It did not happen: Kim Jong Il was elevated through a chain of local party conferences. The meetings of the Central Committee, a convocation of some 230 Party heavyweights, also became rare and irregular under his rule. It appears that since 1993 this once powerful body has met only once, in October 1997, to confirm Kim Jong Il’s elevation to the position of leader of the country.

In recent years celebrations of Party history have been scaled down, and even October 10, the KWP Foundation Day – one of the nation’s major holidays – is no longer marked by pompous ceremonies.

Well, if the Party is going to be downgraded as the major state management tool, what will replace it? The answer is simple: the armed forces. According to official North Korean publications, as early as New Years Day 1995 Kim Jong Il suggested a new strategy, called the “army-first policy”. We do not know how soon it took precedence, but from 1998 references to the “army-first line” became routine in the North Korean press.

Why such a change? There is a great deal of pragmatism in attempts to woo the military top brass. After all, they have real power, and can be potentially dangerous. Before Kim Jong Il ascended to his position, there were speculations that the military was ready to get rid of him once his father died. This did not happen, but there are persistent rumours about an unsuccessful military coup which allegedly took place in the mid-1990s. Thus, flattering the generals by telling them about their special role is a good strategy, especially if sweet words are supported by deeds. Indeed, the army enjoys a great freedom in money-making activities, and many generals are now capitalists-in-the-making.

It is very likely that the “army-first policy” was conceived as an attempt to do away with the disastrously inefficient state socialist model and replace it with some sort of controlled capitalism – one controlled by the Kim family, of course. The generals and chiefs of the political police and intelligence services are probably seen as the best material available from which to produce locally grown capitalists.

But if this is the case, can we describe as “Stalinist” a state without a Leninist party and without a state-run industry? Probably not. I suspect that Stalinism in the North is dead or, at least dying.

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