Category: DPRK Government

China North Korean ties as close as lips and teeth

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Prior to his death, Kim Jong Il visited China to introduce his heir apparent, Kim Jong Un, to Chinese senior leaders. And as he had done many times, Kim Jong Il also asked for continued economic and military aid and political support.

China-North Korean ties are so close they are frequently described “as close as lips and teeth.” The the two neighbors were Korean War allies.

Of all the regional powers, Beijing has the greatest potential leverage over Pyongyang. China supplies at least 80% of North Korea’s oil and significant amounts of food, fertilizer and military aid. The two Communist neighbors have frequent political, military and party-to-party exchanges.

Former CNN correspondent, Mike Chinoy, a veteran Korea-watcher who has visited North Korea several times, said: “The Chinese have made it extremely clear that they are not going to let Korea go down the drain. They are going to do whatever they need to do to prop it up.”

Foremost in Beijing’s mind, North Korea serves as a buffer, keeping the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea away from the Chinese border.

 

On North Korea’s economic development push

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Kornelius Purba, Senior Managing Editor of the Jakarta Post, has this to say about North Korea’s economic development push:

North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, has ambitions to revive the country’s collapsed economy as it is the only way to preserve his family’s control over the country. The young leader has apparently realized that he has no choice but to take quick action to rebuild the economy, as it is only a matter of several years before his regime will collapse if nothing is done to get the military-controlled economy back on track.

Kim Jong-un has taken an important preliminary step by reducing the military’s control of the economy. But his ambitions may backfire as the country has been under a military dictatorship for a very long time and the regime has little knowledge about market-based development, the key to China’s economic might today.

North Korea has little experience in opening its market to foreign investors and the few foreign companies allowed in, including those from China, have complained they were cheated.

The continuously increasing number of starving people represents a major potential threat to China’s national security in the event of a regime collapse and a subsequent flood of refugees spilling over the border. The failure to achieve food security in North Korea could destabilize the already fragile Korean Peninsula and the broader East Asia region.

Increasingly friendly relationship between North Korea and Iran

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Kim Yong-nam will attend the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran, Pyonyang’s official news agency said. Yong-nam is the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly and has represented North Korea’s supreme leaders (both the late Kim Jong-Il and now his son, Kim Jong-un) in visits around the world.

The North Korean news agency also reported that an Iranian delegation had visited North Korea in July for “political negotiations and consultations on international developments.” That parley ended with both sides adopting a shared stand against “Western imperialism.”

The high-level relations between North Korea and Iran, both of which are under various international sanctions over their respective nuclear programs, may suggest an increasingly friendly relationship that could pose a grave threat to international security.

Despite the devastating impact on Iran’s economy (for example, its currency has plunged 40 percent since December), the sanctions have not led to any halting of Iran’s uranium enrichment program so far. Similarly, the U.N.’s sanctions on North Korea have also failed to dissuade Pyongyang from relinquishing its nuclear ambitions.

Without firm commitments by North Korea’s trading partners (i.e., China), the effectiveness of Western sanctions will be limited. (China does have incentive in preventing North Korea’s government from collapsing as that would likely trigger a huge influx of refugees across its borders.)

China accounts for 57 percent of North Korea’s total trade and has increased its trade volume with North Korea in 2010, according to Bloomberg. And now Iran also appears to be a major player in North Korea’s economy, to the dismay of U.N. and U.S. officials.

Concerns in the West are that a close relationship between North Korea and Iran would undermine, or at least weaken, sanctions placed upon these nations. And as China continues to build the two economic zones in North Korea, Western sanctions on North Korea could be neutralized.

North Korea’s special economic zone in Rason

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North Korea’s special economic zone in Rason

The road from China to North Korea’s special economic zone in Rason, in the country’s far northeast, is paved, power substations are being built, railway lines are being linked to routes to Siberia, and piers at the harbor expanded. And this week an international trade fair took place, offering foreign investors and visitors from China, Britain, Russia and elsewhere, as well as journalists from The Associated Press, a glimpse at the efforts to turn a long-neglected, remote region into a manufacturing, tourism and transportation hub.

Over the past two years, North Korea’s leadership has made the bid to transform Rason, which encompasses the cities of Rajin and Sonbong, into an international hub a priority, along with drawing much-needed foreign investment. Last week, Jang Song Thaek, a senior official and uncle of leader Kim Jong Un, led a visit to China to discuss joint co-operation on developing economic zones along the border in an indication that the project has the attention of top officials.

North Korea’s economy has languished in sharp contrast to the booming market economies of its neighbors. Pyongyang has not publicly released detailed economic data for decades, but the CIA Factbook estimates its per capita GDP at $1,800. Outside the capital, Pyongyang, much of the country remains poor, with buildings and roads in dire need of repair, and the United Nations says two-thirds of North Koreans face some form of chronic food shortage.

A government directive to seek foreign business partnerships is a shift in a policy away from the insularity of past decades. Still, doing business in North Korea is a challenge. Most foreign visitors cannot travel freely in and out of the country, drive their own cars or communicate with their local counterparts by cellphone — basics for conducting business anywhere else in the world. Ensuring steady electricity, broadband Internet and access to international banking systems has also proven difficult.

And even longstanding ties with China haven’t guaranteed smooth sailing. Earlier this month, a Chinese firm, the Xiyang Group, warned other companies against investing in North Korea, calling its four-year experience trying to tap into North Korea’s mining industry “a nightmare.”

Kim Jong Un will reportedly attend Non Aligned Movement Summit

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Kim Jong Un will travel to Iran to attend an international meeting in Tehran next week, his first trip overseas since succeeding his father Kim Jong-Il as leader of North Korea, Arirang News reports.

A Iranian spokesman confirmed that Kim Jong Un will attend the Non Aligned Movement Summit. Several foreign leaders, including Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have already said they will attend the summit, which is being held in Tehran from Aug. 26 to 31. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will also attend despite strong opposition from Israel and Jewish groups.

The Non Aligned Movement was born in 1961 at the height of the Cold War and was intended to be bloc of nations that sided neither with NATO nor the Warsaw Pact.

Will South Korea have a female president?

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Park Geun Hye, whose father ruled South Korea as dictator for 18 years, won the ruling party’s presidential nomination today, bringing her a step closer to her goal of becoming the country’s first female leader.

Park became acting first lady at 22 after her mother was killed in a bungled North Korean assassination attempt on Park Chung Hee.

Her party changed its name in January and announced a less hardline stance on totalitarian North Korea, which has shown no sign of abandoning its nuclear weapons program since Kim Jong Un succeeded his father Kim Jong Il as leader in December. South and North Korea technically remain at war as their 1950-53 conflict ended without a peace treaty.

American detained in North Korea

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An American man has been detained in North Korea, two State Department officials told CNN. Diplomatic sources speaking on condition of not being identified said the man is a Korean-American businessman. One of the sources said the businessman had a visa to enter North Korea.

The State Department is working with the Swedish Embassy in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, the officials said. The United States is urging North Korean authorities, through the Swedes, to release the man on humanitarian grounds.

Sweden represents America’s interests in North Korea because the United States and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations.

North Korea has detained several Americans in recent years, increasing tension levels in what is already a rocky relationship between Pyongyang and Washington.

In 2010, former President Jimmy Carter helped secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a U.S. citizen and Christian activist, who had been fined roughly $600,000 and sentenced to eight years of hard labor for crossing over the Chinese border into North Korea.

Other Christian activists who have been detained in North Korea in recent years include Jun Young-su and Robert Park.

 

North Korea condemns US arms and forces in the region

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Russia’s Pravda reports that “North Korea has strongly condemned the accumulation of United States arms in the region, considering it as an open provocation and a prelude to a regional war.”

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of North Korea was also quoted as referring to a meeting between U.S. and South Korean representatives on the 14th to promote an increase in U.S. armed forces in South Korea, and “turn [South Korea] into a forward base in order to implement the strategy of U.S. domination.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warns of war with South Korea

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In a tactic reminiscent of his father and grandfather, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un urged his troops to be vigilant during upcoming training exercises between South Korea and the United States, saying they should be ready to lead a “sacred war,” state media reported.

The warning followed an announcement by the United States and South Korea that their joint “Ulchi Freedom Guardian” training exercises would begin Monday and conclude by August 31.

Kim’s comments came during a visit on Mu Island with troops who participated in the 2010 shelling of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island, an attack that North Korea at the time said South Korea provoked by holding war games off their shared coast.

The Yeonpyeong attack in November 2010 was the first direct artillery assault on South Korea by North Korea since 1953, when an armistice ending the fighting. Two civilians and two South Korean marines died in the attack, which South Korea’s government at the time called a “definite military provocation” by North Korea.

The sparsely populated Yeonpyeong is located just south of the Northern Limit Line, the line drawn in 1953 by the United Nations at the end of the Korean War. The United Nations drew the line three nautical miles from the North Korean coast and put five islands close to the coast under South Korean control.

China North Korea trade to increase via economic zones

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Chinese investment in North Korea, and business links between the two countries, are expected to increase sharply in the near future, with priority being given first to the development of two special economic zones aimed at attracting foreign investment.

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Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming (right) and Jang Song-thaek mark the start of an administrative committee for economic zones in the North Korea

A director from China’s Ministry of Commerce told China Daily yesterday that work on the two zones in the North Korea had already reached a substantive stage, after ground was first broken at the sites in December.

Although China’s investment in North Korea is still relatively small, the director from the ministry’s Department of Asian Affairs, said it will “gain speed in the future, and the two sides will get closer and closer”. She added that the two economic zones will act as the stimulus for future investment between the two countries, and that it is hoped they will also attract considerable interest too from international investors.

The conference was part of a six-day visit to China by a delegation led by Jang Song-thaek, director of the central administrative department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which started early this week. Jang’s visit was aimed at enhancing bilateral economic relations. The Chinese vice-minister of commerce said, in an article published in the People’s Daily yesterday, that China plans to actively support Chinese companies’ investment in North Korea.