North Korea beginning Chinese style reforms – Part 1

[Excerpts of an opinion piece by Andrei Lankov, professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul]

There is big news coming from North Korea recently, though it has gone largely unnoticed. The so-called “May 30th Measures”, jointly issued early this year by the North Korean cabinet of ministers and the Central Committee of the Korean Worker’s Party, is revolutionary.

It seems that, at long last, North Korea has decided to begin Chinese-style reforms. Kim Jong-un is … attempting to transform his country into a developmental dictatorship, largely similar to present-day Vietnam or China.

This decision did not come out of the blue. Indeed, it agrees very well with what Kim Jong Un and his advisers have quietly been doing over the last three years – albeit the slow-motion transformation of the country has attracted little attention from outside world.

The first significant step was the introduction of the so-called “June 28th Measures”. These measures were introduced in 2012, allowing North Korean farmers to create their own production teams of five or six people, … a signal that individual households should register as “production teams”. Such teams were given a plot of land, the assumption being that they would toil the same area for several consecutive years. The produce would henceforth be split 70:30 between the state and the production team (ie the family). Up until then, North Korean production teams had been much larger, and all produce had to be submitted to the state in exchange for a fixed daily grain ration that was allocated to every farmer.

In essence, this reform marked a seismic shift: It marked the first step towards the reprivatisation of agriculture. The year 2013 (the first year that the reforms were fully in force) brought the best harvest that North Korea has seen in decades. The world media, predictably enough, missed the entire story, but in 2013, North Korea, for the first time since the late 1980s, produced almost enough food to feed itself.

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North Korea beginning Chinese style reforms – Part 2

[Excerpts of an opinion piece by Andrei Lankov, professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul]

From 2015 according to the “May 30th Measures”, North Korean farming households (for ideological purposes still branded “production teams”) will be allocated not 30 percent but 60 percent of the total harvest. Additionally, farming households will be given large plots of land – some 3,300sq m – to act as their kitchen gardens. Until now, North Korea never tolerated private agriculture to any significant degree.

And now the North Korean leadership has set its sights on reforming the moribund and hollowed out state industrial sector. Under the new system, factory directors will have the freedom to decide how, when and where they purchase technologies, raw materials and spare parts necessary for their enterprises. They will also be allowed to decide who to sell to. They are also given the right to hire and fire workers, as well as to decide how much to pay for a particular job. Under the new system, there is a tacit assumption that directors will be able to reward themselves generously for their own work – a feature that makes them virtually indistinguishable from private entrepreneurs in market economies.

There are however serious problems that the North Korean economy will have to overcome in the future, above all, the severe shortage of foreign investment. Due to the remarkably bad track record of North Korean companies in dealing with foreign investors, international sanctions, and the country’s dubious reputation, foreign investors will be wary.

It would also be naive to expect a reforming North Korea to become either significantly more liberal or to jettison its nuclear programme. The North Korean government is only too aware that their people face a highly attractive alternative that is South Korea, right next door. The government is not enthusiastic about an East German-style revolution. Hence, they are likely to remain highly repressive in their domestic policy, and they are also likely to maintain their nuclear potential in order to ward off possibility of humanitarian intervention.

Nonetheless, there are good reasons to believe that the new system will deliver impressive results. North Korean agriculture is already doing better than ever. One should expect that industry will start to catch up once capitalist (or if you prefer, “market”) system is introduced formally into the state sector. At the end of the day, this is good news for everybody in and outside North Korea, though one should not expect an overnight transformation.

[Read full article] 

North Korea threatens more nuclear tests

North Korea responded harshly to a United Nations draft resolution referring the reclusive regime to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, promising that such a move would prompt it to conduct more nuclear tests.

A committee of the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday voted in favor of the draft resolution condemning the country’s human rights record and calling for “targeted sanctions.”

Before the vote, Choe Myong Nam, North Korea’s representative at the U.N., issued a familiar warning, saying that seeking to punish the country on human rights “is compelling us not to refrain any further from conducting nuclear tests.” The North Korean representative told the U.N. gathering Tuesday that the resolution “provoked confrontation” and “failed to reflect the reality on the ground.”

China is likely to use its veto against the resolution. Chinese officials have repeatedly said efforts to send North Korea’s leadership to the ICC “won’t help improve a country’s human rights condition.” North Korea’s longtime ally has never wavered in its support for Pyongyang.

The regime in Pyongyang is known to have conducted three previous tests, all of them believed to be based on plutonium. The most recent one took place in February 2013.

[CNN] 

UN votes to hold North Korea accountable for crimes against humanity

A United Nations human-rights committee voted to hold North Korea accountable for crimes against humanity, spurning a diplomatic campaign waged by the totalitarian regime to protect leader Kim Jong Un from any possibility of prosecution.

The non-binding resolution drafted by the European Union and Japan was adopted with 111 votes in favor, far more than the majority required.

While the text doesn’t single out Kim Jong Un by name, it calls on the Security Council to refer North Korea’s rights situation to the International Criminal Court. China’s diplomats at the UN have said their country would use its veto power on the Security Council to block any referral to the court. North Korea may also be seeking support on the Security Council from Russia.

North Korea has become increasingly active on the diplomatic front in recent weeks as the EU and Japan presented the resolution, based on a 400-page report published in February by an independent UN commission of inquiry. The study documented the regime’s network of political prisons that hold an estimated 120,000 people and cited abuses such as “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence.”

[Bloomberg News]