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North and South Korea:Cooperation and Conflicts
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Tokyo reported that the ROK officials said Thursday that they have launched an investigation into reports that the woman considered to be DPRK leader Kim Jong Il's most influential wife has died after a long battle with breast cancer. News that Ko Young Hee -- idolized in the DPRK as "the respected mother" of the nation -- apparently succumbed to her illness was first reported Wednesday on the Web site of a leading ROK investigative journalist for the Seoul-based Monthly Chosun magazine.
The Japanese-born Ko, 52, has been viewed as the foremost of at three women considered to be among Kim's wives or consorts -- although it remains unclear whether he officially married any of them. Officials in Seoul said they are still trying to confirm her death. Unconfirmed reports in the ROK media indicated that the DPRK has ordered from France a custom-built coffin for her body. "We are now in the middle of investigating the issue" of her reported death, a ROK intelligence source said Thursday. ("WIFE OF N. KOREAN LEADER REPORTED DEAD", 2004-08-26)
By
Aidan Foster-Carter, Asia Times Online
Our last column (How
'shock and awe' plays in Pyongyang, April 12, 2003) looked at how the
Iraq war, and the fall of Baghdad to US forces in particular, is likely to be
perceived in Pyongyang, focusing mainly on the international dimension and the
nuclear issue.
But those potent TV images - surely hidden from North Korean viewers - of Saddam
Hussein's statues being felled and desecrated, with their echoes of Eastern
Europe 1989, also raise the question: Could it happen here? Will we ever see
joyous and frenzied North Korean mobs meting out the same treatment to statues
of Kim Il-sung, and all the portraits of him and Kim Jong-il? (Come to think of
it, there are few if any actual statues of the Dear Leader. His role is more
that of high priest of his father's cult.)
Let me come at this one sideways. In one of Paul Theroux's travel books, he's on
a ghastly, filthy slow train somewhere in the wilds of Central America. His
fellow passengers are all poor locals, their native faces passive and impassive.
It worries Theroux that they accept this hell on Earth as normal. Finally,
someone spits and says: "This is crap," or something of the sort.
Everyone mutters assent. Theroux is elated: the human spirit is alive, and
judgment unclouded after all. They may be powerless, but not for a minute were
they fooled.
Similarly, I've long wondered how North Koreans really see the state they're in.
Another way to put this is in terms of two great mid-20th-century literary
dystopias, each presciently but differently imagined by English writers. Is
North Korea George Orwell's 1984, or is it Aldous Huxley's Brave New World?
The difference, you may recall, is that in the latter people are programmed to
believe; whereas in Nineteen Eighty-Four everybody knows they live under
a Big Lie. North Korea does a remarkable job of presenting itself as a Brave New
World. All those shiny happy people praising the Leader: grinning lipsticked
munchkins warbling to accordions, or the serried ranks of human cartoons in mass
games like last year's Arirang.
This is quite a contrast from the cynicism that in the old Eastern Europe was
never far below the surface. Forty years ago, an early British visitor to North
Korea, economist Joan Robinson, reckoned that "no deviant thought has a
chance to sprout". A society closed off from the wider world, with
universal nursery education, had an unparalleled opportunity to capture and mold
its citizens' hearts and minds.
Has it worked? I wonder. Especially now, there are contradictions aplenty. For
one thing, even if they don't know how well South Koreans or even Chinese now
live - and I suspect many do know - North Koreans have seen their own living
standards fall catastrophically, from industrialization to famine, just when Kim
Jong-il succeeded his father Kim Il-sung. Don't they make a connection? Or do
they really buy the official excuse, that this is all the fault of cruel nature,
fickle allies, and imperialist blockade?
The famine has undermined the Kim regime's legitimacy in another way too. Where
the state used to provide, now many - maybe most - people must fend for
themselves, buying food in private markets. The state must grudgingly tolerate
these, but it still refuses to give market forces free rein as in China. Add in
last July's half-baked reforms, and it's hard to imagine that most North Koreans
don't harbor criticisms of their rulers' failure to provide (while the elite
live well), even if it's unsafe to speak out.
Another factor is that North Korea classifies everyone into three categories -
loyal, wavering, or hostile - with up to 50 subdivisions. This determines
everything: where you live, what you eat, what job you do, whether you can go to
university, and more. Defectors confirm what is hardly surprising: that this is
hugely resented as grossly unfair, based as it is on ascribed guilt (eg having
grandparents who were landlords, or relatives in South Korea) rather than
anything you yourself have done. With more than half the population classified
as wavering or hostile, why should they be loyal to rulers who mistrust them?
The extreme and arbitrary cruelty of the gulag, where whole families are sent,
similarly breeds hatred.
Will the worm ever turn? Over the years there have been occasional reports of
unrest, usually military, but none has been fully confirmed. If any risings did
occur, they evidently failed: Kim Jong-il is still there. Iraq, after all, has
shown how an unpopular but brutal and well-organized regime can crush resistance
and cling to power. In that poignant and pointed TV image, even pulling down
Saddam's statue, let alone the man himself and his rule, needed a big helping
hand from an American tank.
Whatever Kim Jong-il's nightmares, somehow I doubt if we shall ever see tanks of
the USFK (United States Forces, Korea) - or even South Korean - rolling down
Pyongyang's broad avenues. But there are other ways to separate a people from
their rulers. Doug Shin, a US-Korean activist, plans to send thousands of tiny
radios by balloon across the Demilitarized Zone from South Korea. Sounds crazy
to some, but hey, why not give it a try?
Two final contrasting stories, both of which fall back on the Confucian paternal
imagery so prevalent in North Korea: an odd fate for a place that started out to
be communist. A pro-North Korean in Japan, shocked by Kim Jong-il's admission
last year of kidnappings from Japan, struggled to stay loyal thus. Your father
may do bad things and come home drunk - but he's still your father, right?
By contrast, two Dickensian urchins who'd crossed into China to beg for a
living, caught on camera in one of Kim Jung-eun's fine documentaries on North
Korean refugees, drew a different conclusion. Relaxing for a moment into a
childhood cut all too short, they sang a song about Our Father (aboji)
Kim Jong-il and how he cares for all the children. Then the penny dropped.
"Pretty crappy dad, huh?"
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in
sociology and modern Korea, Leeds University, England.
By Bruce Klingner, Asia Times On-line
Debate over the extent or even the existence of North Korean economic reform has raged among analysts and policymakers, with conclusions often being drawn along ideological lines. Those that advocate increased engagement with Pyongyang point to signs of meaningful changes in North Korean rhetoric and actions that reflect the initial steps in a strategic shift from a socialist economy toward implementing a "Chinese-style" market system. Conversely, those who espouse isolation of the North Korean regime dismiss any indications of change in the reclusive country.
The reality is that waiting for meaningful economic reform that improves life in North Korea is like "waiting for Godot".
Changes, but for what purpose?
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has, in fact, implemented economic-liberalization measures that, in the case of the 2002 reforms, were surprising in their scope. However, as was the case with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev's far more extensive and widely hailed
perestroika (restructuring) program, the changes were designed to maintain Kim Jong-il's absolute control over the citizenry and do not reflect a change to the character or policies of North Korean regime.
Political origins of North Korean economic reform
In the mid-1990s, Kim realized he could not address the economic devastation of his country, including the deaths of a significant portion of the population from starvation and starvation-related diseases, with his own resources. Faced with a new paradigm after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the increasing parsimony of his ally China, Kim assessed that the only potential sources of aid in sufficient amount to stem the tide were South Korea, Japan and the United States. Pyongyang first appealed for economic aid, publicly overplaying the extent of the impact of natural disasters on the country's harvests, and the outside world responded, to such a degree that North Korea became the largest recipient of US aid in Asia.
Despite the misinterpretation by many analysts, Kim Il-sung's policy of juche (self-reliance) had never meant total isolation from the world and North Korea had, of course, received massive aid from China and the Soviet Union for decades.
By the late 1990s, Kim Jong-il had decided that economic aid was insufficient and it was necessary to acquire the means for economic development to reverse North Korea's rapidly worsening economy. Foreign nations, however, balked at providing large-scale development largess because of suspicions born of North Korea's longtime hostility toward its neighbors. Kim, therefore, in 1999 began a charm offensive of engaging the outside world to alter other nations' perceptions of North Korea. Kim's policy worked, as a lengthening list of nations began to improve and then formalize diplomatic relations. While those nations provided some benefits, the big three (South Korea, Japan and the United States) remained the only means for large-scale advancement.
As a follow-on step, Kim initiated his "coming-out party" of summit meetings with the presidents of China, Russia and, most dramatically, South Korea. The euphoria accompanying the inter-Korean summit led to comparisons to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and some believed unification was imminent. The emotional reunions of families separated since the Korean War, Hyundai's tourist venture to Mount Kumgang in the North, and the dramatic march into the 2000 Sydney Olympics by a unified Korea team under a symbolic single flag, all appeared to provide tangible signs of improving inter-Korean relations.
Yet beneath the surface there were grounds for continued pessimism. Revelations that South Korea "bought" the summit with a payment of US$500 million tarnished then-president Kim Dae-jung's greatest achievement, along with his Nobel Peace Prize. Kim Jong-il to this day has yet to undertake the reciprocal visit to the South promised in the summit declaration. Even the much-vaunted Olympic event required a secret payment from the South, along with Seoul agreeing to purchase the North's uniforms and limiting the number of South Korean marchers to the size of the smaller North Korean contingent, leaving several hundred angry members of the South Korean team fuming outside the stadium.
North Korea's continued belligerence
International hopes for change in the Hermit Kingdom dimmed as Pyongyang maintained its traditional intransigence in negotiations, bellicose military threats, and resistance to economic reform. Kim Jong-il's trips to China, including a highly publicized one to Shanghai where he toured Western-style factories, were interpreted by many as clues of his growing fascination and acceptance of economic reform. Yet despite repeated entreaties from the Chinese leadership, few significant economic changes were implemented in North Korea.
Kim's complimentary comments on China's reforms, a significant change from previous regime condemnations, were interpreted as a harbinger of change in North Korea. Yet the full context of the North Korean leader's statements reflected a perception that such reforms, while effective in China, would still not work within North Korea because of the country's unique characteristics.
Growing criticism in South Korea over Kim Dae-jung's "asymmetric reciprocity" eventually constrained his ability to continue engagement with the North. Declining levels of public support for the South Korean president and his policies continued until overtaken by the anti-Americanism that arose during the 2002 South Korean presidential election. Growing South Korean disenchantment with the polices of US President George W Bush's administration toward Pyongyang, combined with multi-faceted factors resulting from historical trends and a changing society, led the South's populace toward a more benevolent re-evaluation of North Korea.
The impact of reforms
Kaesong Special Economic Zone is another foray by North Korea into "enclave capitalism" in which it creates an encapsulated environment for foreign firms to generate profits for the regime to use to subsidize its failing socialist economy. By literally fencing the areas off from the rest of the country, Pyongyang seeks to avoid the "contamination" of capitalism and its attendant risk of destabilization.
Seoul remains enthusiastic for the project, but the lengthy and complex nature of North Korean regulations that will govern foreign firms indicates that Pyongyang still has not grasped the lessons from its previous unsuccessful ventures in Najin-Songbong, Kumgangsan and Sinuiju, other economic zones that were undermined by excessive government restrictions. South Korea's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy has concluded that the Kaesong industrial zone will likely not be as profitable as previously assessed, which will further discourage South Korean manufacturing firms from participating in the project.
The 2002 economic measures were sweeping and included a partial liberalization of wages and prices, endorsement of private markets, allowing farmers to cultivate abandoned plots, and devaluing the official exchange rate. The result, however, has been devastating on the populace, exacerbating social stratification and creating what United Nations officials deemed a "new class of urban poor".
The World Food (WFP) program reported this month that the 2002 reforms have led to sharply rising food prices, which many could not afford. Richard Ragan, WFP director in Pyongyang, commented, "As the economy shifts from a planned economy to a more market-based economy, there are winners and losers," and he said the country's public distribution system was unable to respond to the ongoing food-shortage crisis. The South Korean Yonhap news agency quoted Chinese diplomatic sources as assessing that the 2002 reforms had led to inflation, skyrocketing commodity prices, a plunging exchange rate, and escalating public anxiety over the prospects of economic reform.
Standard and Poor's warned last November that North Korea's economy was likely to fail, with an accompanying staggering cost to the South - perhaps as high as two to three times its gross domestic product. S&P's reversal from its previous assessment that North Korean economic collapse was "unlikely" was based on its conclusion that "the North Korean leadership lacks the flexibility and the vision to undertake a change" to a market-based system.
Effect on the region
The discovery of a covert North Korean nuclear-weapons program, along with Pyongyang's lack of meaningful economic reforms, seemingly endless appeals for aid, and restrictions on international aid monitors have caused "donor fatigue" among Pyongyang's foreign benefactors. Potential sponsors see few prospects of an end to North Korea's economic problems and, as a result, are more likely to direct constrained resources toward other regions that appear more amenable to change. The bellicosity of North Korea that constrains international largess, however, at the same time forces governments to remain at the negotiating table in hopes of preventing escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
China continues to provide North Korea grain and oil inducements in an attempt to further the six-party talks on defusing Pyongyang's nuclear program, talks that Beijing sees as reflecting its political influence in the region. Japan has pledged an estimated $10 billion in wartime and colonial reparations, eventually, but it first demands satisfaction on the abductee issue and the establishment of diplomatic relations. South Korea, worried about the catastrophe of a collapsing North Korean system, desperately seeks to maintain the momentum of inter-Korean economic projects and negotiations in an attempt to alter North Korean behavior, along with pledges of even greater "comprehensive" benefits if Pyongyang satisfactorily addresses international concerns over its weapons programs. For its part, North Korea's economic initiatives with the South reflect Pyongyang's long-standing policy objective to wean Seoul from its relationship with Washington by emphasizing common interests between the two Koreas.
Bruce Klingner is director of analysis for Intellibridge Corp in Washington, DC. Intellibridge provides customized open-source intelligence analysis for government, corporate and sovereign clients. His areas of expertise are strategic national security, political and military affairs in China, Northeast Asia, Korea and Japan.
TASS reported that the decision to cut off part of the telephone network in Pyongyang has been made by the National Defense Commission, an formed source close to DPRK political circles told ITAR-TASS today. It was done to prevent undesirable communication by the local population with foreigners living in Pyongyang, the source said. As of 22 August, they cannot phone Korean organizations. "A reorganization of the telephone network is under way in Pyongyang. As a result, only a small number of Korean organizations, for example, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will be able to maintain contacts with the foreign diplomatic corps, representative offices and international organizations. The authorities resorted to this measure in order to stop possible leaks of information and tighten control over foreigners' activities," the source said. "Given a shortage of food in the country, the government fears the possible social consequences and uses all means to prevent them," the source said. ("NORTH KOREA CUTS OFF PHONES TO STOP LOCALS TALKING TO FOREIGNERS", 2004-08-26)
Yonhap reported that telephone services in Pyongyang, reportedly disrupted on Monday by technical problems, have remained normal, US international broadcaster Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported Thursday. Citing officials of the World Health Organization's branch office in Pyongyang, the RFA said international calls between Pyongyang and other countries and local calls in the DPRK capital are operating normally as of Wednesday morning. ("TELEPHONE SERVICE NORMALIZED IN PYONGYANG: U.S. RADIO", 2004-08-26)
29.07.2004
"Даешь массовое движение по засеванию всей Кореи коноплей!" с таким призывом на первой полосе вышла 25 августа газета "Родон Синмун"
(Rodong Sinmun), являющаяся официальным печатным органом правящей в КНДР Трудовой партии, сообщает сайт южнокорейской газеты "Чосон ильбо" (The Chosun
Ilbo).
В редакционной статье "Родон Симун" говорится: "патриот это тот, кто стремится выполнить национальный план по выращиванию конопли. Каждый кореец должен вырастить 10, а лучше 100 кустов конопли". "Родон Синмун", называет механизацию выращивания конопли "национальным проектом" и призывает сеять коноплю не только в колхозах, но также на фабриках и в школах.
В передовой статье "Родон Синмун" также говорится, что выполнение плана выращивания конопли священная обязанность корейского народа. Конопля может стать сырьем для нескольких отраслей легкой промышленности, поэтому ни одна часть этого ценного растения не должна быть бесцельно выброшена.
Кроме того, "Родон Синмун" назвала коноплю главной любовью солнцеподобного Ким Чен Ира, а "План выращивания конопли" был помещен рядом с "Революционным планом выращивания картошки" и "Вторым революционным планом урожая", которые являются основами сельскохозяйственной политики КНДР.
Ранее в "Родон Синмун" были опубликованы статьи с сообщениями о том, что в Корее выведены новые сорта конопли и разработаны новые технологии ее выращивания. По мнению южнокорейской газеты "Чосон Ильбо", все это делается в соответствии с указаниями лидера Северной Кореи Ким Чен Ира (Kim
Jong-il), и свидетельствует о том, что повсеместное выращивание конопли не будет одноразовой акцией.
Tass reported that the activities of many organizations in Pyongyang were paralyzed on Tuesday as a result of the breakdown of the Pyongyang telephone exchange. Repairs are going ahead, the telephone exchange will operate normally by Wednesday, Itar-Tass was told by a source from the city municipality. However, a well-informed source close to the DPRK communications ministry believes that the telephones will be cut off permanently. A number of foreign organizations in Pyongyang have already been notified that telephone services have been terminated, the source said. Presumably, the city authorities have not cut off all telephones altogether, but merely blockaded the telephone numbers given to foreigners, the source said, with no reference to any official source.
("NORTH KOREAN SOURCE SAYS BELIEVES PHONES WILL BE CUT OFF PERMANENTLY", 2004-08-24)
Donga Ilbo, Seoul, 24 August
Chinese companies are starting to invest in North Korea in full swing. The North Korean authority has asked for bold economic cooperation from the outside world since taking measures to improve economic management on July 1, 2002. Chinese companies are showing interest in securing an early mover advantage in the future North Korean market. Nanjing-based Panda Electronics Group Company established a joint venture with North Korea in September 2002 and has won a contract to supply computers to North Korean government organizations. After an affiliated enterprise of Shenyang-based Wujin Group jointly established a car lubricant factory with a North Korean company, it monopolized the North Korean lubricant market. Pyongyang First Department Store, the largest in North Korea, has recently been leased to Shenyang Zhongxu Group for 10 years. Chinese companies have proactively invested in other industries in the North, including transportation, textile, and service.
What these Chinese companies, which rush into the North Korean market, have in common is that they pursue opening a new market in the long-term rather than gaining short-term profits. Participating in the international product fair held in Pyongyang last May, Chief Executive Jin Ding of China's Huaao Yalu River Beer Co. Ltd. said that his company did not earn much from the North Korean business at the moment, but it has set up a plan to create a brand and enter into the market first and then to make money. In its part, the North Korean authorities have provided various incentives to attract more investment from Chinese companies.
In the case of Pyongyang First Department Store, the investing company receives exceptional tax incentives of only five percent import tariff, five percent income tax, and nothing else. A Chinese businessman from Dandong who runs restaurants, sauna facilities, and karaoke joints, said, "The North Korean authority even takes the responsibility of tax payment." The Chinese government's initiative in entering North Korea is another factor that encourages the private sector. The Chao Hua You Lian Culture Exchange Corporation, which inaugurated last February in Beijing, is a de facto public corporation for trade with North Korea. The government-led corporation will send 3,000 business people to North Korea yearly, and last month, 100 people went to North Korea. Meanwhile, 40 Chinese government delegates went to China to discuss North Korea investment and joint projects.
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN, Published: August 24, 2004
A double feature about North Korea appears tonight on the History Channel. The films are inescapably camp. For all their solemn warnings that Kim Jong Il has America in his nuclear sights and we'd better get ready, it's hard not to be distracted by Kim's batty dictator pomp and the sweeping film of his old Busby Berkeley stadium spectacle, staged in 2000 for Madeleine K. Albright, then the Secretary of State, in which thousands of majorettes in feathers came to resemble a stadium-sized garden of multicolored human poppies, rippled by a perfect breeze.
The nation's songs, too, are always diverting. "We are children of the Great Leader/ Let's beat the hateful Yankees." And a classic: "Shoot, shoot, shoot well/ Let's hit the chest of every Yankee."But seriously, how should we take North Korean bluster? The propaganda is fruity, but it's not entirely laughable. And it's not informative, either. Its resemblance to past fascist and Communist display should not lead us to conclude that we know what it augurs.Wisely, then, these two decent movies don't force the propaganda scenes - or the routine complaints about how hard it is to penetrate North Korea - to tell the whole story.
"Inside North Korea" instead risks pedantry in supplying ordinary details of North Korean existence, lives spent without electricity, fuel, mobility, medicine, education, information or sufficient food. And "The Real Dr. Evil" endeavors to gauge whether it's possible to negotiate with Kim Jong Il. In 1995, when floods left half a million North Koreans homeless, Mr. Kim's government encouraged people to eat grass. Some turned to tree bark, according to "Inside North Korea"; others to cannibalism. Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor who went into the country as part of a rare relief mission in 1999, reports that he found no working hospitals in North Korea. He could do little to improve medical infrastructure, but he made detailed notes about what he saw, and "Inside North Korea" relies on his descriptions.
In one of the nation's gulags, a defector named Jih Hae Nam, imprisoned for singing a South Korean pop song, demolished and ate a plastic sink in an effort to kill herself. She tells her story on camera here, along with several other defectors. "The Real Dr. Evil," which originally appeared on BBC, succumbs somewhat more to the cartoon temptation, beginning with its title. Still, while giving generous time to Kim Jong Il's off-kilter vision of himself as an artist - and the strange 1978 case of his abduction of a South Korean director and movie star, who were forced to make action films for him - it also focuses on something called Room 35, Mr. Kim's intelligence outfit. It was Room 35 spies, according to the film that carried out the bombing in Rangoon, the Burmese capital, which killed 21 people in 1983. (Mr. Kim's father, Kim Il Sung, was the North Korean leader then.) Four years later, the group planted a bomb on a South Korean passenger jet and killed 115 people.
"The Real Dr. Evil" doesn't mince words on nuclear matters, either, even while showing camp clips of "Runaway," the goofball action film on which Mr. Kim served as executive producer. Certainly nothing in world history has yet suggested that a daft aesthetic can't go hand in hand with a murderous foreign policy. Kim Duk Hong, a former Central Committee worker who gives the most relevant interview, concludes of Kim Jong Il: "The nuclear program is his survival strategy. He'll never give it up. If he says he will and invites the inspectors to watch him destroy his facilities, he will be lying."
INSIDE NORTH KOREAHISTORY, tonight at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.Margeret G. Kim, executive producer for the History Channel; Bill Brummel, executive producer; Greg Dehart, producer; Frank Sesno, narrator; Bill Brummel and Greg Dehart, writers; Paul Freedman and Jane McCord, editors; Richard Pendleton, director of photography; Scott Nickoley and Jamie Dunlap, music; Patrick F. McCarthy, associate producer. Produced for the History Channel by Bill Brummel Productions.
THE REAL DR. EVILHISTORY, tonight at 9:30, Eastern and Pacific times; 8:30, Central time.Margeret G. Kim, executive producer for the History Channel; Gary Mavers, narrator; Jung-Eun Kim, co-producer; Malcolm Crowe, film editor; David Belton, deputy editor; produced and directed by Rob Lemkin. An Old Street Films production for the BBC.
Yonhap reported that the DPRK is suffering from the side effects of its capitalist reform drive, including hefty inflation, PRC diplomatic sources here said Monday. Commodity prices are skyrocketing and its currency is plunging against the US dollar, escalating public anxiety over the prospects of economic reform, the sources said. ("N. KOREAN ECONOMY AILING FROM SIDE EFFECTS OF REFORM DRIVE ", 2004-08-23)
Energy Compass reported that underlining the collapse in the DPRK economy, energy consumption has slumped nearly 35% since 1990, a ROK think tank says. The Korea Energy Economics Institute (KEEI) says the DPRK's primary energy consumption fell from 23.9 million tons of oil equivalent in 1990 to 15.6 million tons in 2002. Comparisons with 1990 show the country is becoming less dependent on crude oil and more dependent on indigenous energy sources such as coal, hydroelectric power, firewood and charcoal. Coal accounted for 70% of energy consumption in 2002, followed by hydroelectric power at 17%, oil at 8%, and firewood and charcoal at 5%. The relative fortunes of the DPRK and ROK can be traced in electricity production. In 1990, KEEI says, the DPRK generated 14 million megawatt hours (MWh) of power to the south's 9.2 million MWh. In 1990, the DPRK produced 27.7 million MWh and the ROK 107.7 million MWh. Twelve years later, DPRK production was 19 million MWh, and ROK's 306.5 million MWh. ("NORTH KOREAN ENERGY USE CRASHES", 2004-08-20)
Tass reported that the DPRK has suspended tourism from the PRC as of August 20. The unexpected step against the citizens of friendly PRC was explained by the DPRK authorities as necessary under the situation that developed in the DPRK. It was not immediately known what that actually implied. The DPRK authorities suspend tourism into the country every year for a period prior and after September 9 when the DPRK cerebrates jubilee dates since the country's foundation and celebrations are held timed to coincide with the jubilee dates. Nevertheless, this year tourists from China have been denied access to the DPRK earlier than usual, the Tokyo Shimbun said on Friday. Many observers believe that some celebrations are coming in Pyongyang that are of great political importance, the newspaper said. ("NORTH KOREA SUSPENDS TOURISTS FROM CHINA ", 2004-08-20)
BBC, 18 August 2004
Changes
in North Korea's economy have led to spiralling food prices which many people
cannot afford, according to the World Food Programme.
"As the economy shifts from a planned economy to a more market-based
economy, there are winners and losers," Richard Ragan, WFP director in
Pyongyang, said. He said that a new class of people now needed food assistance.
Impoverished North Korea remains deadlocked with its neighbours and the US over
its nuclear programme. Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has made
a rare trip to Pyongyang, to urge the DPRK to renounce nuclear weapons. Mr.
Downer said he had asked North Korean officials to remain involved in six-nation
talks on the controversial nuclear programme, after concerns that Pyongyang may
pull out of preparatory meetings for the next round of negotiations.
"I've been, on arriving here, concerned that the six-part talks process was
stalling, and I hope that we've been able to add some substantial momentum to
that process," Mr. Downer said.
Earlier this week he promised Pyongyang "substantial" benefits in aid
and investment if it ended its nuclear activities. The economy in North Korea,
which for years has been beleaguered by natural disasters and Stalinist
planning, is now facing a new set of challenges, Mr. Ragan said.
The country's public distribution system was only providing a fraction of the
food that North Koreans need to live on, he told a press briefing in Beijing. He
said the situation was driving economic, market-oriented reforms in the
Stalinist country, because people were being forced to sell goods to eke out a
living.
"Physically you see more wealth in Pyongyang, more stores, more
restaurants, more automobiles... people seem to have more liquid capital,"
he said. "People are trading... and you see things which indicate that
people have some disposable income," he said. "The bad news is that
prices of food around the country are going up, and salaries are staying pretty
static."
The price of essential items has risen sharply in recent months. The cost of
rice has doubled from this time last year, rising from 130 won ($0.92) per kilo
to 700 won ($5.00), Mr. Ragan said.
"We're finding a new group of vulnerable people, such as factory workers
without land, a new at-risk population who can't afford (the) prices," Mr.
Ragan said. And he said that despite the market reforms, North Korea remained
"a chronically food deficient country".
"We're going to be in this situation for a long time," he added. Mr.
Ragan said that children were even being left at orphanages for a few months at
a time, because their parents could not afford to feed them.
by Cindy Sui, Agence France-Presse English Wire, 18-08-2004
BEIJING, Aug 18 (AFP) - Economic reforms in impoverished North Korea are here to stay but people face increasing difficulties because of price rises and stagnant salaries, a senior United Nations official said Wednesday.
"There's no turning back. ... I don't think it's an experiment at all," Richard Ragan, director of the World Food Programme in North Korea said of economic reforms that were once considered experimental.
"As long as North Korea's industrial sector can't produce goods to provide for its population's needs, then it's going to depend on external sources and they've got to generate currency, they've got to generate cash," said Ragan, who is one of the few foreigners allowed to live in the reclusive country.
North Korean officials have suggested a change in the leadership's mentality, said Ragan, who was speaking to foreign correspondents in Beijing.
He quoted a senior official as telling him: "We'll do anything to make money."
When Pyongyang began reforms a few years ago, it was seen as putting its heavily planned and controlled system through an experiment as a market economy.
The most significant reforms came in July 2002 when prices, wages and exchange rates were freed from central control.
Two years later, Ragan said entrepreneurial activities could be seen in many places.
With inadequate food allowances by the government, North Koreans were being forced into selling goods to eke out a living, he said.
The government gives people only about 300 grams of grain per day per head, half the UN-recommended allowance and only about 70 percent of the population receives it.
While the economy is growing, prices, especially for staples, have risen significantly, Ragan said.
The cost of rice has doubled from this time last year, rising from 130 won (0.92 US dollar) per kilo (2.2 pounds) to 700 won (five dollars) now.
Overall, prices in markets have gone up by 10 to 15 percent in just the last two months, Ragan said.
Salaries meanwhile have stayed the same, ranging from 10,000 won per month to as low as 800 won for retirees and others.
"So if you take ... 800 won per month (salary) for a retired pensioner buying one kilo of rice (and) if the (government) is only providing half of what they need, then they're in trouble," Ragan said.
"We're finding a new group of vulnerable people, such as factory workers without land, a new at-risk population who can't afford (the) prices."
Children were being dropped off at orphanages for a few months at a time or longer because their parents could not feed them, he said.
As grim as that sounds, Ragan said the situation was driving further moves towards market-oriented reforms.
"Now markets are a given. They are out there by the roadsides," Ragan said.
People were making things like straw hats and sleeping mats, selling charcoal and setting up little kiosks and stalls.
"You see more wealth in Pyongyang, more stores, more automobiles. People seem to have more liquid capital," Ragan said. "You see things that indicate people have disposable income."
Still, the North remains unable to feed itself. Despite improved harvests in the past three years and expected good harvests this year, the country still relies on international food aid.
"What you've got is a chronic problem. It's a chronically food deficient country ...," Ragan said.
"We're going to be in this situation for a long time." cs/mp/nj NKorea-UN-WFP-China
By Judy Fayard, Rotterdam, Monday, Jul. 12, 2004
For artists in North Korea, self-expression is a dangerously foreign notion. Their mission is to toil as salaried functionaries in dictator Kim Jong Il's propaganda machine. They work in studios that turn out government-commissioned works in government-approved styles. The most famous studio is Mansudae in Pyongyang, a huge enterprise employing hundreds of artists, but studios are also maintained by regional and municipal authoritiesand even the state railroad company. The artists work regular hours, are expected to produce a stipulated quota of works, and are sometimes enlisted in "speed-war" contests that test their ability to pump out patriotic art in volume. Depending on seniority and productivity, an artist can rise from the ranks of "merit artist" to "people's artist" or even "hero."
Their output is seldom sold or shown abroad. But "The World According to Kim Jong Il," an exhibition that will run at Rotterdam's Kunsthal museum until Aug. 29, offers a rare and fascinating look at the captive artists' spin on life in the Hermit Kingdom. The 285 works on display are relatively recent, but they might easily have come from Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao's China. The North Korean art clock seems to have stopped circa 1930-50, and the impression that emerges from the exhibition is of a remote, sad and strangely poignant land.
All of the works come from a singular collection amassed by Dutch philatelist Wim van der Bijl and his associate Ronald de
Groen. As a stamp dealer participating in international fairs, the Utrecht-based Van der Bijl befriended a North Korean dealer who later switched from stamps to art. On a visit to Pyongyang in early 2003, Van der Bijl's contact offered him some souvenir landscapes from around Asia, but the Dutchman turned them down, expressing interest instead in the propaganda posters he had seen around the city. "But I was told those were not for export," recalls Van der
Bijl. The next day, however, he was shown a few North Korean itemsoriginal gouaches for propaganda posters, and some oil paintings in the best tradition of Socialist Realism. After his return to Holland, he received some 200 works on spec, rolled-up and unframed. Van der Bijl put in a request for hundreds more, then waited months for a second export permit. "They were worried that Westerners might make fun" of the works, Van der Bijl explains.
Perhaps it was the prospect of a much-needed influx of foreign currency that changed the authorities' minds. "At first they wanted an awful lot of money," says Van der
Bijl. But he was ultimately able to buy another 300 or so pictures at an acceptable price. Worried that permission to export them might be withdrawn at the last minute, he carted about 85 of them with him on the plane to Holland.
The show begins with two large paintings, produced expressly for this exhibit, that flank the entryway and set the stage for this strange trip into the time-warped world of North Korea. On the right, spiffy, Mao-suited founding father Kim Il Sung surveys a construction site, surrounded by smiling, hard-hatted
laborers; on the left, plump and girlishly handsome son Kim Jong Il stands on the deck of a speedboat, surrounded by marines. Visitors then walk through a series of galleries enclosed within a giant red-walled box set up in the museum's hangar-like exhibit space. "It's like entering the cocoon of North Korean reality for a short time," says Koen De
Ceuster, a professor at Leiden University's center for Japanese and Korean studies, who served as the museum's adviser. "The people live surrounded by this all the time. For them it's total. There's no escaping it."
Equally inescapable, says De Ceuster, is the "numbing sameness" of many of the works. The posters, all from 2002-4, are exhortatory propaganda, illustrating the policy slogans of the moment. Typically displayed everywhere from schools to hospitals, they provide "an image of what the regime is thinking about," says De
Ceuster, "and what policies are being presented to the people as priorities." Graphically, they feature lots of upraised fists, upthrust rifles with bayonets, and shouting leaders rallying the people. A poster celebrating Kim Il Sung's dogma of juche (self reliance or autonomy) depicts a soldier, a worker, a farmer and an intellectual holding the staff of a red banner with the word "Autonomy" written on it in yellow. The poster commands: "Let Us Firmly Maintain the Banner of Independence in Revolution and Construction!"
Many of the posters trumpet Kim Jong Il's "Army First" propaganda that touts the military not only as a fighting force but as a model of devotion and discipline. (Not coincidentally, it is also a key power base for the Dear Leader.) In one poster, a rifle-toting soldier leads a miner, a steelworker, a farmer and a scientist, urging, "Behind the Army First Flag, Forward March!" The backgrounds of posters like this typically feature icons of North Korean modernitymissiles, smokestacks, construction sites, dams, electricity towers, desktop computers and walkie-talkies, which seem to possess the kind of cutting-edge cachet that could only exist in a country where almost no one owns a cell phone.
The posters also push Kim's economic policies, often exulting in the nation's ability to overcome adversity. In one of them, a railway worker carries a walkie-talkie in one hand and a signal flag in the other, beneath the words "Let Us Solve the Strained Railway Transportation Problem!" Another poster shows a young farmer from the county of Daehongdan, where the potato crop has purportedly doubled. It reads, "Following the Example of Daehongdan, More Potatoes for the People!" In a country where at least a million people are believed to have died of starvation under Kim's regime, there is a grim irony to these rousing celebrations of team spirit and bountiful food. One poster, for example, portrays a North Korean youth amid a clutch of baby bunnies, along with the rallying cry "Let Us Breed More Rabbits!"
Other posters attempt to unite North Koreans by arousing their fear of imminent attack by foreign aggressors. In one example, a soldier surging out of a red globe declares, "Our Guns Are Merciless for American and Japanese Invaders!" Apparently produced in response to U.S. President George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech, another poster shows a giant finger pointing at a tiny image of an exploding Pentagon, along with the battle cry "Let Us First Attack the Stronghold of U.S. Imperialism!" There is even a poster that disingenuously suggests South Korea is targeting the North with nukes, along with the plea "Turn the Korean Peninsula into a Nuclear-Free Zone!"
The paintings are less strident, portraying happy workers and farmers in their socialist paradise or honoring heroes of the Japanese occupation and the Korean (or "Fatherland Liberation") War. Meant to be decorative and edifying, they tend to appear in public buildings, hotels and touring art shows. All the women are pretty, all the men handsome, everyone smiles as they harvest crops and build dams. In one of these rousing paintings, the "First Heroine of the Republic, Cho Ok Hee" stands bound and barefoot on a snowy mountaintop, awaiting execution by Japanese troops.
The paintings, like the posters, propagate the myth of a land of joy and plenty. In one, a pair of beaming workers quaff foamy beers beside a table strewn with apples and grapes, while a foundry glows behind them. Others have a Norman Rockwell sweetness to them: an adolescent girl bids farewell to her younger brother as she heads off to military camp; an elderly railway worker strolls along a posy-lined track beside an idyllic stream.
Many of the paintings are technically proficient. But aesthetically as well as politically, North Korean art remains distinctly alien to the average foreign viewer. Says Jane Portal, curator of the Korean Foundation Gallery at the British Museum and author of the forthcoming book Art in North Korea: "Obviously the Social Realist style limits their acceptability to those who judge art from the point of view of mainstream Western aesthetics." Yet it's precisely this alien quality that makes the Rotterdam show so intriguing. As De Ceuster notes, the exhibit doesn't reflect the reality of North Korea: "All it portrays is an ideological image" meant to be stamped on the minds of a downtrodden people. Instead of revealing higher truths, this is the art of distortion, designed to prop up a higher power. From the Jul. 19, 2004 issue of TIME Asia Magazine
By Joseph S. Bermudez Jr.
During the past thirty years the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) has pursued an aggressive ballistic missile development program. Since the late 1970s this program has been assigned a national priority at least equal to that of the nuclear program. Because of this emphasis the ballistic missile program has steadily progressed in spite of some ten years of economic collapse and famine. Today, it possesses one of the largest ballistic missile forces in the Third World and is on the verge of deploying space launch vehicles and intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could threaten the continental U.S. A central element of the DPRK's ballistic missile program has been the Musudan-ri Launch Facility located on the northeast coast of the DPRK. It is from here that all, but one, of the DPRK's known ballistic missile tests have taken place. Despite this importance little has been written concerning its organizational history, capabilities, or activities...
