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North Korean Economy Watch

News and analysis of the North Korean economy

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North Korea’s construction boom

May 21st, 2009

Using Google Earth’s feature which allows users to view the same location at different points in time, we can see that Pyongyang has experienced quite a construction boom in the 21st century, particularly in the southern Rakrang District.  Below I have posted some of the more interesting discoveries (dates are in the upper right corner of the images). 

Tudan Duck Farm (Pyongyang)
   

Rakrang District
   

   

   

   

Tongil Market (Rakrang)
   

Russian Orthodox Church (Rakrang)
   

Kaesong Industrial Zone
 

Sinuiju market growth
 

 

Many have speculated that the construction boom is related to the DPRK’s plan to achieve a “strong and prosperous state” (Kangsong Taeguk) by 2012—the 100th birthday of the country’s eternal president, Kim il Sung.

Posted in Construction, Farmers markets, Google Earth | 1 Comment »

South Korea’s subversive Choco Pies

May 20th, 2009

Donald Kirk has a must-read article in today’s Asia Times on the subtle ways that the Kaesong Industrial Zone is undermining Pyongyang’s control over the North Korean people.  He points out that the DPRK’s verbal attacks on South Korea, combined with demands for new land, labor, and road use contracts in the Kaesong complex, are an attempt to blame South Korea when Kim Jong-il finally closes the project.

Quoting from the article:

Think Choco Pie, the thick wafer-like confection, all pastry and cream, served in the Kaesong Industrial Complex as a daily dessert for the 40,000 North Koreans who toil for 100 South Korean companies with factories in the complex.

“North Koreans love Choco Pie,” said Ha Tae-keung, president of NK Open Radio, which beams two hours of news daily into North Korea from its base in Seoul. “It’s an invasion of the stomach.”

North Korean workers, and the friends and family members for whom they save their daily treats, may salivate over Choco Pie, but it’s giving a severe stomach ache to senior officials fearful of the infiltration of South Korean culture in all corners of their Hermit Kingdom.

Choco Pie - along with other favorite South Korean cakes and candies as well as instant coffee - has come to symbolize the image of the capitalist South as a multi-tentacle beast that may be impossible to digest.

For Kim Jong-il, suffering from diabetes, recovering from a stroke and hoping to survive a few more years while grooming his neophyte youngest son, in his mid-20s, to succeed him, the best way to deal with the Kaesong complex, 60 kilometers north of Seoul and just above the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, may be to spit it out.

It’s for this reason, said Ha, that North Korea has precipitously scrapped the agreements under which South Korean companies operate in the complex, built and managed by Hyundai Asan, an offshoot of the sprawling South Korean Hyundai empire.

“He’s come to see Kaesong as a burden rather than an asset, and is inclined to shut it down,” said Ha.

While the Kim Jong il government focuses its attention on cultural infiltration from the South, there appears to be little it is doing, or can do, about cultural infiltration from China–the DPRK’s most significant trading and political partner to the north:

When it comes to South Korean cultural infiltration, however, North Korea has far more to fear from the entry of goods from China than from the Kaesong complex. South Korean DVDs and CDs, even soft-core porn movies made in the South, are now distributed surreptitiously throughout North Korea. Electronic gadgetry, MP3 and MP4 players, TV sets, radios and rice cookers, also shipped via China, are also available for those with the money to pay for them.

Read the full article here:
Pyongyang chokes on sweet capitalism
Asia Times
Donald Kirk
5/21/2009

Posted in Black markets, China, Civil society, Farmers markets, Foreign direct investment, International trade, Kaesong industrial park, Labor conditions/wages, South Korea, Special administrative regions | No Comments »

DPRK 2008 trade hits record USD $3.8billion

May 18th, 2009

According to Yonhap:

North Korean trade with the outside world, excluding South Korea, hit a record US$3.8 billion last year, a report said Monday, despite rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Trade jumped 29.7 percent compared with 2007, the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, a South Korean trade agency, said in the report.

Last year, North Korea’s exports rose 23 percent to $1.13 billion with imports climbing 32.7 percent to $2.69 billion, the report said. The country still posted a trade deficit of $1.56 billion for the year.

The report also showed that China’s influence on North Korea’s moribund economy is rising quickly.

The communist nation exported $750 million worth of goods to China and imported $2.03 billion last year.

“North Korea’s trade with China hit a record last year and keeps growing,” the report said.

“In the face of the global economic slump and the North’s rocket launch, North Korea’s external trade is expected to shrink this year. But, China’s influence on the North Korean economy is likely to grow further,” it noted.

According to the CIA World Fact Book, South Korea’s 2008 exports totaled $419 billion.

Read the full article here:
N. Korea’s 2008 trade hits record US$3.8 bln: report
Yonhap
5/18/2009

Posted in International trade, Statistics, Trade Statistics | No Comments »

South Korea wants EBRD to finance DPRK economic transition

May 18th, 2009

No doubt the potential costs of North Korea’s economic transition occasionally keep South Korea’s finance minister awake at night…particularly when the international credit rating agencies review South Korea’s sovereign debt rating.  So it is only rational that South Korea would seek to spread these potential costs as widely as they can. 

Last week South Korea made a small pitch to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to facilitate the DPRK’s transition :

“I strongly recommend North Korea as a next candidate to become a recipient country, once it decides to transform itself into a market economy,” Young Geol Lee, vice minister of strategy and finance, said in a speech. “Please bear in mind that North Korea has great potentials as a future client of the EBRD.”

Read more here.

Posted in EU | 2 Comments »

On the North Korean legal system

May 18th, 2009

From Slate (regarding the upcoming trial of Euna Lee and Laura Ling):

We do have some basic understanding about how the North Korean justice system is organized. The journalists will be tried by the Central Court, the nation’s highest judicial body. Usually, the Central Court only hears appeals cases from the lower, provincial courts, but for grievous cases against the state, it has initial jurisdiction. The Central Court is staffed by judges elected by the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s one-party parliament. The North Korean Constitution stipulates that each trial is to be conducted by one judge and two “people’s assessors”—i.e., lay judges—though special cases may be heard by a three-judge panel. (Appeals cases usually get the panel.) Legal education or experience is not an official prerequisite for becoming a judge, and rulings from the Central Court are not subject to appeal.

North Korean law does recognize the right of the accused to defend herself and to be represented by an attorney. According to the country’s penal code, either the defendant, her family, or her “organizational representatives” may select the defense attorney. As the two arrested journalists were not allowed access to any counsel during pretrial investigation, however, there are doubts that they will actually be allowed to select their own counsel. According to the U.S. State Department, there is “no indication that independent, nongovernmental defense lawyers [exist]” in North Korea in the first place.

The proceedings will be conducted in Korean, but the North Korean Constitution does grant foreign citizens the right to use their own languages during court proceedings. Trials are supposed to be open to the public, unless they might expose state secrets or otherwise have a negative effect on society. According to testimony from North Korean defectors, though, trials are often closed in practice. Announcements of the court’s findings and executions of sentences are often carried out in public as a means of educating the citizenry.

Thursday’s announcement from North Korea’s news agency did not specify what crime the two journalists are being charged with, though Pyongyang has previously accused them of “hostile acts” and illegal entry into the country. If they were prosecuted under a law regarding foreigners who “abuse” or “provoke national difficulty in order to antagonize” the North Korean people, they would face five to 10 years of “re-education” in a labor camp. Illegal entry carries a sentence of two to three years.

Previously, prisoners could be sentenced to death for a number of vague crimes, such as “ideological divergence” or “opposing socialism.” But subsequent to the enactment of a new penal code in 2004, the death penalty is reserved for four crimes: participating in a coup or a plot to overthrow the state, terrorism, treason, or “suppressing the people’s movement for national liberation.” In practice these four crimes seem to cover a wide range of activities, including, in one reported case from 2007, the making of international phone calls. Judicial proceedings are apparently not required for executions to be carried out.

As supplemental material, I have posted numerous DPRK statutes on this web page.  To see the full list, scroll down the menu to “DPRK policies,” under which you can see them all.  Of course, the DPRK is not a “rule of law” country, so the statutes themselves and even the constitution are not worth that much in terms of defining the “rules of the game” or defining/predicting the scope of “legitimate” government activity. 

There have been several foreign law firms that have attempted to set up shop in the DPRK.  Currently the only firms with legal offices or a periodic presence are: Hay, Kalb, and Associates, Kelvin Chia Partnership, and Chiomenti  of Italy (formerly Birindelli e Associati ).

Read the full article below:
Objection, Dear Leader!
Slate.com
Nina Shen Rastogi
5/14/2009

Posted in Central Court, DPRK Policies, Uncategorized | No Comments »

DPRK cancels Kaesong contracts

May 16th, 2009

In what is certainly not good news for foreign investors, the North Korean government has announced that it is unilaterally canceling agreements with the South Koreans regarding the Kaesong Industrial Zone.

According to the Korea Times:

North Korea announced Friday the nullification of all contracts on rent, salaries and taxes at the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, asking the South to empty the industrial estate unless it honors the North’s wishes to amend related laws and rules.

The notification came about five hours after the two Koreas were unable to set a date for talks due to their wrangling over the release of a Southern worker detained by the North.

The North continued, “We are nullifying contracts and benefits on rent, salaries and taxes that we have offered in the Gaeseong complex in accordance with the June 15 Joint Declaration.”

The report added that the North will begin to adjust laws and rules to meet with the current situation.

“South Korean companies and officials must accept the notification, if not, they can evacuate from the complex,” it said.

In the article, Andrei Lonkov makes the following comment:

“North Koreans are clearly looking for some leverage over the South, and it they come to see the park as a hostage project, they will it use to put forward escalating demands,” he said.

He predicted, “If the South Korean government bows to the pressure and makes concessions, there is no doubt that in weeks or months Pyongyang manipulators will make new demands, probably more outrageous.”

“One can hope that the project will survive. Nonetheless, it will become dangerous if Seoul, in trying to save this important project, starts to succumb to Pyongyang’s blackmail. So, the project should be supported, at a cost to South Korean taxpayers, but not at the cost of unprincipled political concessions,” he added.

This has been a rough year for the Kaesong Zone.  I have kept a running timeline of events in the zone which you can see here.

UPDATES:

1. According to the Choson Ilbo: “North Korea earns some US$33.52 million a year from the Kaesong Industrial Complex, making the inter-Korean joint venture a significant cash cow for the impoverished country.”

2. According to Reuters:

News late on Friday that North Korea was cancelling all wage, rent and tax agreements with South Korea on the joint Kaesong factory park just north of their heavily armed border weighed on stocks in companies that have production units in the factory park, but had a limited impact on the broader market.

“Seoul market participants have become quite immune to North Korea-related news and tend not to react sensitively unless the development has a scale of impact that may affect South Korea’s sovereign rating,” Lee said.

3. NK pointman on South Korea, Choe Sung Chol, allegedly executed.  According to Bloomberg:

North Korea executed a former official in charge of inter-Korean relations, accusing him of allowing the population to develop a favorable image of South Korea, Yonhap News reported.

Choe Sung Chol, who was the point man on South Korea during the Roh Moo Hyun administration that ended in February 2008, was killed last year, the news agency reported last night, citing an unidentified person familiar with North Korean affairs.

While Choe was officially charged with bribery, he was executed for ignoring opponents and pressing ahead with closer ties with South Korea that threatened to make the communist state too dependant on its richer neighbor, Yonhap reported.  

4. The Choson Ilbo reports on the productivity of Kaesong’s Northern workers:

The basic monthly salary of North Korean workers at the complex is US$63.4, consisting of $55.1 in wages and $8.3 in social insurance. In addition, overtime work pay amounts to between $11 to 18.3 a month, and a welfare package subsidizing lunches, snacks and transport costs is provided at a range of between $36.6 and 47.9 per month. In total, the monthly salary of a North Korean worker ranges from $110 to 130, which, the companies argue, is comparable to that earned by workers in China and Vietnam.

A survey of some 40 firms operating at the complex was carried out after the first round of talks on April 25 to discover why these firms were having difficulty accepting North Korea’s demands. According to the survey, the productivity of an individual North Korean worker is just 33 percent that of a South Korean worker. In comparison, the productivity of Chinese and Vietnamese workers is 96 and 85 percent that of South Korean workers, respectively.

The companies also argue that it is difficult to accept North Korea’s demand to pay land use fees from next year, considering the fee they paid for building factories there. The fee for building factories in the Kaesong industrial park was $394 per one sq. m of land, compared to $122 in China and $65 in Vietnam.

Read more below:
N. Korea Scraps Gaeseong Contracts
Korea Times
Kim Sue-young
5/15/2009

N. Korea declares inter-Korean contracts on Kaesong venture invalid
Yonhap
5/15/2009

N. Korea scraps contracts with South on joint venture amid tension
Yonhap
Kim Hyun
5/15/2009

Cabinet reshuffle
NKeconWatch.com

N.Korean Kaesong Workers’ Productivity Lags Far Behind S.Korean Workers
Choson Ilbo
5/19/2009

Posted in Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, Kaesong industrial park, Special administrative regions | 1 Comment »

North Korean footballers in Europe

May 16th, 2009

(Big hat tip to Werner who located this information)  For some time now now, DPRK football players have been earning hard currency and training with European pro-football teams.
 
- Choe Myong Ho (in Russian: Tsoi Min Ho) is playing for the Russian Premier League’s team Krylia Sovetov Samara–which has a player from both North and South Korea (read more here)
 
- Hong Yong Jo is playing for Russia’s Rostov:

Hong plays his club football at FC Rostov in the Russian First Division, following a short spell with Serbian outfit FK Bezanija. Unlike those days at his first club April 25 of Pyongyang, for whom he scored 41 goals in four seasons, Hong has had to fight for his place in the European leagues while frequently flying back home to join the national team for their South Africa 2010 qualifiers. The time change and distance has to cover is considerably greater than those of team-mates An Yong Hak or Jong Tae Se, who ply their trade in Korea Republic and Japan respectively.

There has, in fact, been signs of fatigue: Hong was uncharacteristically unimpressive during the UAE game and he was replaced in the 71st minute. His substitute Kim Kum Il made an instant impact with a neat through ball that resulted in Korea DPR’s opening goal. But it took only four days for Hong to redeem himself, winning and converting a crucial penalty against Korea Republic (FIFA.com).

- Pak Chol Ryong and Kim Kuk Jin are playing for FC Concordia Basel (2nd Swiss division).  Read more in German here.
 
Additionally, two DPRK women football players are training with the FFC Turbine Potsdam (a leading German women’s team from Potsdam). The players, Jon Myong Hwa and Kim Un Hyang, are both from the 2008 FIFA women’s championship team.  The managers of the German football club said that they did not actively seek out the North Korean players, but rather they were approached by a North Korean who has been living in Cologne for several years who asked Potsdam to invite the women players to train with them. (Read more in German here).
 
Also, the DPRK men’s national team is attending a training camp in Switzerland right now. (Read more in German here).  Last week they played a friendly match against FC Concordia Basel (2nd division) and lost (Read more in German here)

Posted in Civil society, Football (soccer), Sports | No Comments »

DPRK pride in the Ryugyong Hotel growing

May 14th, 2009

Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES)
NK Brief No. 09-5-13-1
2009-05-13

Once abandoned, considered a failure and an embarrassment, it now appears that North Korea’s tallest building will be completed by 2012. The Ryugyong Hotel is becoming the largest symbol of the North’s plan to construct a ‘Strong and Prosperous Nation’ by the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung. The hotel, on the bank of the Botong River, stands 105 stories tall.

An article in the May 11 copy of the Choson Sinbo proclaimed, “Like a phoenix ceaselessly reaching for the sky, the high-rising Ryugyong Hotel is one emblem of North Korea, which is soundly knocking on the door of [becoming] a Strong and Prosperous Nation.” The North has set 2012 as the year that door will be swung open. The newspaper described the hotel as a “phoenix” after a May 1 celebration, “We Will Triumph!” at which the hotel was used as the background for a fireworks display.

The paper reported on the “brilliant cannon salute” fired from this “super-highrise” at heights “not imaginable” to the spectators, creating a “picturesque view” of Pyongyang” as the fireworks display created a “grand spectacle” centered on the “magnificent 300m-tall building.” This praise is a significant change from the North’s previous practices of removing the hotel from pictures and portraits of the city skyline, leaving if off of city maps, and diverting tourist groups around it.

Construction began on the hotel in 1987, but was halted without completion of interior or exterior surfaces in 1992. Since last year, construction has been underway on 10,000 private residences in Pyongyang as part of its modernization drive, and at the same time, the hotel has been receiving a facelift, with large glass panels being installed on its exterior.

It is also worth mentioning that the Ryugyong was the centerpiece of the DPRK’s (very long) May Day fireworks show. Below are three pictures released by KCNA. These pictures indicate that as of this month, only one of the builing’s three sides is covered in glass.

   
Click above for larger images

Posted in 2012 Goals, Construction, Hoteling | 5 Comments »

North Korea: Unilateral and Multilateral Economic Sanctions and U.S. Department of Treasury Actions 1955-April 2009

May 14th, 2009

The National Committee on North Korea (NCNK) published a paper by Karin Lee and Julia Choi which presents the history of U.S. and UN sanctions against North Korea.   A brief review of phases in US economic policy toward the DPRK is followed by longer sections tracking the major changes in U.S. and UN sanctions over the past six decades. Next, there is a summary of measures taken by other relevant governments, particularly following the missile test and nuclear test in 2006 and the rocket launch in April 2009.  The paper concludes with a summary of U.S. sanctions against North Korea from 2000-April 2009, a timeline listing major events in U.S.-DPRK relations and the imposition and relaxing of U.S. sanctions, and a matrix of luxury items prohibited for export to the DPRK in compliance with UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1718 (2006).

You can download the paper in Word format here, or in PDF here.

Posted in International trade, Statistics, Trade Statistics | No Comments »

Chinese companies in fake North Korea documents scam

May 13th, 2009

by Michael Rank

Chinese traders are using fake documents to export goods to North Korea, the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang warns on its website.

The terse, two-sentence statement dated April 4 gives no details of the forged “[North] Korea export licences” scam, but says the North Korean authorities have confirmed the documents are fake and urges “relevant companies not to be easily deceived.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the Chinese embassy in Pyongyang has a website at all, and a fairly active one at that. It has plenty of links, on Chinese-North Korean economic, cultural and educational ties, speeches by the ambassador and that sort of thing but not a lot of hard news or useful information.

There is no Chinese comment on the recent North Korean missile test, which is perhaps eloquent in itself, though there is a profile of the current ambassador, Liu Xiaoming, who spent much of the 1990s in the Chinese embassy in Washington (he was minister counsellor 1998-2001) and also in the North American section of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

There’s also a list of all Chinese ambassadors to the DPRK since 1950, with photographs and brief biographies.

The Chinese website is here and there’s even an English version though it hasn’t been updated since February.

Posted in China, International trade | 1 Comment »

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