Archive for the ‘Civil society’ Category

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Mass Games in the KCNA News

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Developing Background Stand Arts on New Ground
KCNA
2/14/2007

The background stand arts of the mass gymnastic display has broken a new ground in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The background stand arts made its first appearance in the mass gymnastic display “Song of Liberation” in Juche 44 (1955) by displaying a few words with boards. After then, it had made a signal development in the course of creating mass gymnastic displays including “Our Glorious Motherland,” “Holiday of August,” “Era of Workers’ Party” and “Our Brilliant Motherland.”

The mass gymnastic display “Era of Workers’ Party” showed the pictures of flying Chollima (winged horse), fish and torch in combination with words for the first time. And the mass gymnastic display “Under the Flag of Workers’ Party” spread the picture “Arduous March” on the whole of the background, thus showing the content of the work in a persuasive and visual way. They made the background large-sized, rhythmic, symbolic, three-dimensional and scientific.

In particular, the mass gymnastic display “Chollima Korea” registered a signal development in the background stand arts. It successfully reflected on the background such moving pictures as beaming national emblem of the DPRK, red flag of the Paektu forest, beacon, molten iron pouring out of blast furnace, 3,000-ton press, tractor, excavator, fish and patterns of cloth.

The greatest success made in the background stand arts was that it reflected the image of President Kim Il Sung with high graphic depiction for the first time in 1964. Now the background stand arts depict the noble images of the three generals of Mt. Paektu.

In the mass gymnastic and artistic performance “Arirang,” a “Kim Il Sung Prize” laureate, the background stand embossed the ideological and thematic content of the work and realized the intensification and concentration of the depiction, thus breaking a mysterious phase of the visual arts.

The application of laser illumination and large-sized projector adds beauty to each scene.

Even foreigners lavished praises on the ever-changing and largest background which led the audience to ecstasy.

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Posted in Civil society, Mass games, Sports | Comments Closed

Paektusan Cup Sports Contest Opens Pyongyang

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

KCNA
2/6/2007

The Paektusan Cup sports contest was opened. This contest, which is held on the occasion of the February holiday every year [KJI birthday], greatly helps develop the nation’s techniques of physical culture. The participants in the current contest will compete in eight events such as basketball, volleyball, table-tennis, ice-hockey and speed skating in Pyongyang, Samjiyon and other areas. Its opening ceremony took place at the Basketball Gymnasium in Chongchun Street here on Tuesday. Present there were Kim Jung Rin, secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, officials concerned and sportspersons. Mun Jae Dok, chairman of the Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission, made an opening address at the ceremony, which was followed by speeches. The speakers stressed that all the players should give a good account of themselves by fully displaying the sports techniques they have usually practised and thus more significantly celebrate the February holiday. At the end of the ceremony a male basketball game was held between Sobaeksu and Amnokgang sports teams.

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Posted in Central Miltary Committee, Civil society, Sports, Worker's Party | Comments Closed

North Korea Struggles in Winter Sports

Monday, February 5th, 2007

Korea Times
Kang Seung-woo
2/5/2007

Former winter sports power North Korea is sinking, taking no medals at the Winter Asian Games, which ended Sunday.

The Stalinist state has not picked up a gold medal since the Sapporo Winter Asian Games in 1990, when it earned one gold, two silvers and five bronzes.

“Because of the outcome, the mood of the North Koreans is bad,’’ Chung Ki-young, a manager of the South Korean team, said in Changchun, China, where the most recent games were held.

“We were supposed to meet for lunch, but the North called us to cancel the appointment. They said their situation was not good enough to have lunch with the South.’’

On North Korea losing its winter sports competitiveness, Min Byung-chan, the general manager of South Korea’s ice hockey team, said its absence from most international competitions caused the North to find itself in its current position.

“They did not participate in many international events in the 1990s. That makes North Korea struggle now,’’ Min said.

The general manager said a lack of investment in winter sports was another reason for the North’s struggle.

Min said a North Korea skating coach complained that new skates and other ice hockey equipment was too expensive for most North Korean skaters to buy.

As a result, the North asked for support from the Korea Ice Hockey Association. 

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Posted in Civil society, Sports | Comments Closed

North Korea supplies laughs as well as lethal weapons

Monday, February 5th, 2007

AFP (Hat tip DPRK Studies)
Park Chan-Kyong
2/5/2007

Nuclear-armed North Korea is notorious for selling its missiles overseas but the hardline communist state also has a more improbable export — cute cartoon figures.

South Korean experts say the North’s animated movie industry brings the isolated country both precious hard currency and access to global IT expertise.

“Animation is one of the rare sectors where North Korea is following the global trend,” said Lee Kyo-Jung, an executive at the Korea Animation Producers’ Association (KAPA).

“It has been subcontracted to produce animation for North America, Europe and Asia,” Lee told AFP. Among the major clients are studios in France, Italy and China, he added.

Lee has visited the North to discuss the feasibility of the two Koreas jointly producing animated features, with North Koreans providing manpower and the South supplying equipment and finance.

The North for decades has used cartoons to imbue its own children with socialist ethics. Other cartoons screened there also bring some fun into drab everyday life.

“Tom and Jerry” is a prime-time hit in the communist state, Lee said. “They just love it. They see the US in the headstrong cat and North Korea in the wise mouse.”

The centre of North Korea’s animation industry is the April 26 Children’s Film Production House, known to the outside as SEK Studio. Its 1,600 animators have been downsized to 500 with the introduction of computerised equipment.

“SEK is one of the largest hard currency earners in North Korea,” said Nelson Shin, a North Korea-born US producer who worked on “The Simpsons”.

“SEK is a rare North Korean company that can directly engage in foreign trade and deploys representatives overseas,” said Shin, a frequent visitor to the North.

The state-run company worked for Shin’s US-South Korean studio KOAA Films on his 6.5-million-dollar animated feature “Empress Chung,” a Korean equivalent of the Cinderella story.

The movie was screened simultaneously in Seoul and Pyongyang in August 2005, becoming the first feature film jointly produced by the two nations.

“I was taken by surprise at their manual skill. I dare say the North Koreans are better than their peers in the South in terms of their hand skills,” Shin said.

Shin said Disney had subcontracted the TV series made for European viewers of the “Lion King” and “Pocahontas” to SEK.

North Korea’s animation industry began years before South Korea’s own in the mid-1960s. It dates back to the mid-1950s when it sent young artists to what was then Czechoslovakia to learn the craft, according to Lee of KAPA.

But South Korea has come from behind on the strength of its plentiful animators and computer technology. It earned some 120 million dollars through subcontracted work when the subcontract trade was at its peak in 1997.

Latecomers China, Vietnam and India are taking a growing share of the subcontracting market while South Korea is graduating from the labour-intensive work into creative products.

The growth in North Korean animation reflects the patronage of all-powerful leader Kim Jong-Il, a movie buff whose personal archive is said to comprise tens of thousand of films.

The country, becoming priced out of the lower-end work by latecomers, is now seeking to go upmarket to focus more on computer-assisted animation.

“For North Koreans, animation is not only a source of hard currency but also technology from the outside world. They are really keen on obtaining things like graphics technology,” said Kim Jong-Se, marketing director of Iconix Entertainment.

Iconix trained North Koreans in 3D animation when it subcontracted work to a company called Samcholli. The firm produced part of a cartoon series entitled “Pororo the Little Penguin” in 2003 and 2005.

The series turned out to be a big hit, selling in more than 40 countries.

Kim in late 2001 also helped produce “Lazy Cat Dinga,” the first animated series short of a full-length movie co-produced by the two Koreas.

“North Koreans are very good at doing what they are told but they have problems in using creativity,” Kim said.

Iconix Entertainment CEO Choi Jong-Il said both sides could benefit from splitting their roles.

“Joint projects will certainly bring benefits to both sides, with the South doing the overall planning and the North carrying out the main production,” said Choi.

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Posted in Animation, Art, Civil society, SEK Studio | Comments Closed

Corrupt Transactions

Sunday, February 4th, 2007

Korea Times
Andrei Lankov
2/4/2007

Corruption is elusive. A vast majority of corrupt transactions are done in secret and remain secret forever. No scholar has ever been able to measure the corruption level even though everybody agrees that it varies markedly, depending on place and time.

Nonetheless, there is no way to make an informed judgment on whether or not, say, the Britain of the 1670s was more corrupt than China of the 1820s. Even the oft-cited Global Corruption Reports of Transparency International is based, essentially, on the personal impressions of the people in the know (largely, businesspeople), not on direct measurements.

North Korea is not considered in the Global Corruption Report. However, everyone with first-hand experience of North Korea agree that corruption and bribery are very common there.

It has not always been the case. Indeed, back in the 1950s one of the features that attracted many Koreans to the North was the relative austerity of its ruling elite. The North Korean administration might have been wasteful, indifferent to human suffering, and irrational, but it was clean _ in marked contrast to Syngman Rhee’s regime in the South.

This did not mean that everybody had his or her fair chance.

On the contrary, people with a “bad social origin” were nonstarters by definition, and they formed a significant minority of the population. One’s connections were important, too. In 1957, Yu Sung-hun, the then president of Kim Il-sung University, complained to a Soviet diplomat that every year “queues of cars” waited near his office on the eve of the entrance exams (a car was a sign of extremely privileged social position).

The president, an honest educator and intellectual, felt guilty and upset because he had to accept the scions of top bureaucrats at the expense of gifted people without the right connections. But, one assumes, this was achieved by the application of political pressure alone, with no money involved.

The situation began to deteriorate in the late 1970s. Perhaps, this reflected the slow decline in idealism: Earlier generations sincerely believed that they were constructing a paradise on earth, but people who became adults in the 1970s and 1980s had fewer illusions. They lived in a society that was run by a hereditary elite, where one’s family background comprehensively determined one’s lifestyle, and where the official slogans were increasingly seen as irrelevant or hypocritical. Thus, bribes began to spread.

What did the North Koreans pay bribes for? Generally, for chances of social advancement, or to access to goods and services one would not normally be eligible for. Thus, sale clerks in the shops, despite their meager official salary, became one of the most affluent groups in society.

They used their access to goods to sell better quality stuff outside the official rationing system and at huge premiums.

In the 1980s corruption became ubiquitous at the colleges where one’s chances of being admitted were greatly improved by an envelope given to an influential professor or bureaucrat. There are stories that the right to join the ruling Korean Workers’ Party was sometimes also purchased through a bribe (this right is important since it makes a person eligible for white-collar positions). Finally, it was becoming quite common to pay a superior to ensure a good position.

The bribes were not necessarily paid in money. Quality liquor or imported cigarettes were even better, and good old greenbacks the best of all.

But it was only in the 1990s that bribery truly became ubiquitous.

The breakdown of old systems of control meant that there was less to be afraid of.

There were also fewer rewards available for the “good citizens of the socialist motherland.”

Finally, the collapse of the economy produced a multitude of opportunities for corruption.

Apart from the sales clerks who have always been engaged in small bribery, the drivers, train conductors and the like began to accept money for letting traders travel with their merchandise, as well as looking the other way when people could not produce valid travel permits (in the latter case policemen have also pocketed their share).

But what about the top crust of society? We do not know much about this, but it appears that they have not been touched by these trends yet.

After all, they already have enormous privileges, and in North Korea there is no private business to tempt them with good pay-offs. Probably, this is going to change soon.

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Posted in Black markets, Civil society, Education, Political economy | Comments Closed

Musical Interlude

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

After spending hours each day thinking about the North Korean economy, you sometimes need to take a break and chill.  So, I am introducing the NKeconWatch musical interlude.  This innaugural interlude is dedicated to the Marmot (who provides the link).

The Ryugyong blasts off. 

“Turn on, tune in, drop out.” -T.L.

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Posted in Art, Civil society, Music | Comments Closed

‘Desperate’ North will engage us

Saturday, February 3rd, 2007

Joong Ang Daily
Jo Dong Ho
2/3/2007

The New Year editorial is a frank admission of failure by Pyongyang.

After Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, issued his first new year’s message, “Announcement to all North Korean people on the occasion of the New Year,” in 1946, those New Year’s Day messages have been an annual event in North Korea. Before the death of Kim Il Sung, they were messages of hope to the people, delivered by the Great Leader live on the achievements of the past year and plans for the new one.

So on New Year’s Day, North Koreans used to gather in front of radios or later, televisions, to participate in the “sacred ceremony” of listening to the leader’s message.

After his death, the live New Year message was replaced by a joint editorial of three newspapers, the organs of the North Korean Workers’ Party, the People’s Army and the Youth Vanguard.

That pattern was set only in 1995, but the nature of the message, the “message of hope,” was not changed at all.

But this year’s message has changed; it is gloomy rather than hopeful. Although the title, “With the high spirit of triumph, let’s open the golden days of the military-first Korea,” is colorful, in the text there are paragraphs that frankly admit the poor living conditions of today and give no hope for improvements in the near future. The text also confesses that there are no special means available to solve the many problems facing the isolated nation.

The joint editorial this year highlighted “economic revival” as the most urgent task North Korea is now facing. Departing from the traditional rhetoric of mentioning political ideology first and then going on to military affairs and the national economy, this year’s message referred to the economy first, which is unusual. Especially, this is the first time that the expression “economic development is our desperate need” has been found in a joint editorial since they were first published in 1995.

Unlike in the past, there is no detailed explanation of last year’s economic achievements. To the contrary, the editorial admitted that the economic difficulties, including food shortages, have persisted until now. The editorial says that North Korea has endured “its worst difficulties in the past 10 years” and has to solve the problem of feeding people “as it did in the past.”

That means that the North Korean economy is in very serious difficulty. Actually, there is a possibility that the North’s economy might have have had negative growth last year for the first time in seven years. Inflation is worse than ever, and the juche, or self-reliant, economy has rather crumbled into a U.S. dollar-reliant economy. The economy has deteriorated to the state where most North Korean residents cannot survive if they don’t engage in some sort of business. The focus of economic policy this year is on the improvement of people’s lives. It is unusual for North Korea, but the editorial frankly admitted that North Korea is “in desperate need” of consumer goods and even declared that the improvement of people’s lives was the “ultimate principle” that the North Korean authorities should work on attaining.

But the North Korean authorities have failed to present any practical strategies except the slogan of self-reliant economic revival. Since the beginning of the 2000s, the slogan “self-reliant revival” had disappeared, but it became the key word of the joint editorial. The editorial of the Rodong Shinmun, the organ of the North Korean Workers’ Party, even explained in its Jan. 8 issue that the spirit of this year’s joint editorial could be summed up as “building an economically strong nation and achieving self-reliant economic revival.” It is a message that “everybody should find their own way of living,” since it is not possible for the government to provide assistance to solve the many economic difficulties. But how can North Koreans solve all the economic problems with their own hands if they are not living in a primitive agricultural society? Ultimately, the North Korean authorities will have no other choice but to rely on outside help. There is no alternative but to seek help from South Korea while the North exerts diplomatic efforts of its own to ease economic sanctions.

Therefore, there is a large probability that the resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem through U.S.-North Korea talks and the six-party talks will progress unexpectedly smoothly. The joint editorial’s intensity of criticism against the United States is considerably lower than in past editorials. The U.S. strategy of using both a stick, freezing North Korean accounts at Banco Delta Asia; and a carrot, the possibility of guaranteeing the security of the regime and giving economic aid, was effective.

In order to get economic aid, North Korea will also engage South Korea in talks, a good opportunity for us. I hope we can fix the problems in that cooperation, such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where South Korean companies cannot employ or discharge North Koran workers by themselves or pay wages to workers directly, and rice aid to North Korea that is provided in the form of loans to avoid controversy over unreciprocated aid from Seoul.

*The writer is the head of North Korean Economy Research Team of the Korea Development Institute. Translation by the JoongAng Daily staff.

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Posted in Economic reform, Kim's New Year Address (Joint editorials), Korea Development Institute | Comments Closed

Weird but Wired

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

the Economist
2/1/2007

Online dating in Pyongyang? Surely not

KIM JONG IL, North Korea’s dictator, has interests in modern technology beyond his dabbling in nuclear weaponry. In 2000 he famously asked Madeleine Albright, then America’s secretary of state, for her e-mail address. Mr Kim believes there are three kinds of fool in the 21st century: smokers, the tone-deaf and the computer-illiterate.

One of his young compatriots is certainly no fool. “Officially, our computers are mainly for educational and scientific purposes,” he says, before claiming: “Chatting on our web, I also met my girlfriend.”

Internet dating is only one of the surprises about the internet in North Korea, a country almost as cut off from the virtual world as it is from the real one. At one of the rare free markets open to foreigners, brand-new computers from China are sold to the local nouveaux riches complete with Windows software. Elsewhere, second-hand ones are available far more cheaply. In most schools, computer courses are now compulsory.

In the heart of the capital, Pyongyang, visitors are supposed to be able to surf freely through the 30m official texts stored at the Grand People’s Study House, the local version of the Library of Congress. The country’s first cyber café opened in 2002 and was soon followed by others, even in the countryside. Some are packed with children playing computer games.

But the world wide web is still largely absent. Web pages of the official news agency, KCNA, said to be produced by the agency’s bureau in Japan, divulge little more than the daily “on the spot guidance” bestowed by Kim Jong Il. No one in Pyongyang has forgotten that glasnost and perestroika—openness and transparency—killed the Soviet Union.

The local ideology being juche, or self-reliance, the country installed a fibre-optic cable network for domestic use, and launched a nationwide intranet in 2000. Known as Kwangmyong (“bright”), it has a browser, an e-mail programme, news groups and a search engine. Only a few thousand people are allowed direct access to the internet. The rest are “protected” (ie, sealed off) by a local version of China’s “great firewall”, controlled by the Korean Computer Centre. As a CIA report puts it, this system limits “the risks of foreign defection or ideological infection”. On the other hand, North Koreans with access to the outer world are supposed to plunder the web to feed Kwangmyong—a clever way to disseminate technical information to research institutes, factories and schools without losing control.

Yet even today, more and more business cards in Pyongyang carry e-mail addresses, albeit usually collective ones. A west European businessman says he is astonished by the speed with which his North Korean counterparts respond to his e-mails, leading him to wonder if teams of people are using the same name. This is, however, North Korea, and sometimes weeks go by in virtual silence.

In some places, North Korea’s internet economy seems to be overheating. Near the northern border, Chinese cell phones—and the prepaid phone cards needed to use them—are a hot black-market item, despite government efforts to ban them. The new web-enabled phones might soon give free access to the Chinese web which, for all its no-go areas, is a paradise of liberty compared with Kwangmyong. In this region, known for its casinos, online gambling sites are said to be increasingly active.

Last summer the police were reported to have cracked down on several illegal internet cafés which offered something more daring than the average chatting and dating. Despite the signs that North Korea’s web culture is ready to take off, internet-juche remains a reassuring form of control in the hermit regime.

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Posted in Black markets, Cell phones, Civil society, Communications, Economic reform, Internet, Korea Computer Center (KCC), Library | Comments Closed

N. Korea’s English-language newspaper distributed in some 100 countries

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Yonhap
2/1/2007

North Korea’s weekly English-language newspaper is distributed in some 100 countries abroad, and its reporters are regularly sent overseas to receive intensive foreign language education, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper based in Japan reported Thursday.

The tabloid eight-page Pyongyang Times, launched in 1965, also runs a Web site featuring both English and French-language editions, reported the Chosun Sinbo, a Korean-language newspaper published by the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan.

“All of its reporters and newsroom staff receive professional language education, and North Korean authorities are eager to send the reporters and translators abroad for hands-on experience,” the newspaper said.

Choe Chun-sok, editor-in-chief of the Pyongyang Times, said North Korea’s October nuclear device test inspired them to continue to engage in media activities with an eye toward the world. “Recently, we dealt a lot with stories on U.S. policy to stifle and isolate our country, as well as Japan’s crackdown on Koreans living there,” he said.

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N. Korea steps up efforts to prevent spread of S. Korean pop culture

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Yonhap
2/1/2007

North Korea has intensified efforts to stem the spread of South Korean pop culture in the communist state, even as South Korean movies and TV dramas gain popularity there, informed sources said Thursday.

“This year, North Korean authorities waged what they call ‘psychological warfare’ against ‘exotic lifestyles’ by cracking down on South Korean pop culture,” a senior government official said, asking to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of the issue.

According to a survey conducted on recent North Korean defectors to the South, South Korean video tapes and CDs enter North Korea via China. North Koreans having TVs, video players or personal computers at home watch them, and then swap the programs among peers or friends, another source said.

The popularity of South Korean media has been so great that a lead actress’s line in the hit South Korean movie “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance” became a household word in the North, while some North Korean youth are glued to such mega-hit TV dramas as “Fall Fairy Tale” and “Immortal Admiral Yi Sun-shin,” the sources said.

They further explained that the wave of South Korean pop culture does not stop at movies and videos. North Korean youth also enjoy sporting South Korean hairstyles and fashion, preferring tight pants and long front hair.

Since the 1950-53 Korean War, about 9,300 North Koreans have defected to South Korea, including about 1,578 in 2006 alone. The sealed border between the two Koreas has nearly 2 million troops deployed on both sides.

Wave of South Korean Trends in North Korea
Daily NK
Park Hyun Min
2/1/2007

A wave of South Korean actors and trends such as Jang Dong Gun, Bae Yong Joon and Won Bin which has washed throughout China, Japan and Taiwan has finally hit North Korean shores. Consequently, North Korean authorities are racking their brains trying to find a solution to this problem.

This wave of South Korean trends in North Korea comes from an influx of foreign movies and dramas in the form of VCD’s and videos. In particular, the phrase “worry about yourself!” from a Korean movie “Sympathy of Lady Vengeance” has become the latest catchphrase to spread throughout the country.

Regarding this, a South Korean government official said on the 31st “North Korean youths are becoming infatuated with popular South Korean dramas such as “Autumn in my heart” and “General Lee Soon Shin’” and revealed “Defectors say that people who do not watch South Korean dramas are treated as outcasts.”

In fact, according to a survey from Hanawon, an educational training centre for defectors, a growing number of travelers now cross the boarder possessing video tapes and C.D.’s. These goods then circulate amongst families in possession of T.V.’s videos and computers, particularly Pyongyang, where South Korean dramas and music are often heard.

Popular South Korean dramas have gradually infiltrated North Korea since the late 90’s. At the time, dramas such as “The Sandglass” describing the S. Korean Kwangju affair in 1980 and “Asphalt man” gained much popularity and since 2000, dramas such as “Winter Sonata” and “Stairway to heaven” have caught the attention of North Korean youths.

These South Korean movies and dramas do not stop at mere entertainment but rather are influencing the hairstyles and fashion of young North Koreans. Nowadays, many North Korean youth adopt “knife hair,” a hairstyle with thin sharp fringe points and “drainpipe trousers” are also a hit item.

A defector who entered South Korea in 2004 said “If a person is caught circulating any copies of capitalist materials, he or she may be dragged to the political gulags. However, if a person is found to be a viewer, then he or she may receive re-education or sent to the labor training camp or the re-educational camp for 6 months.”

In response to foreign culture which is finding its way into North Korea, authorities are aiming to strengthen public propaganda in order to block foreign ideologies. In particular, North Korean authorities have began considering mobilizing its groups of military youths for rearmament.

North Korea is concerned about the balance of its regime with the demands of the whole society increasingly changing. In preparation for this, it seems that North Korea is actively investing more in the light industry in an effort to stabilize public welfare.

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Posted in Art, Civil society, Film, International trade, South Korea, Television | Comments Closed

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