The present economic situation in North Korea

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Grant Montgomery

North Korea is facing severe energy constraints, and its economy has been stagnating since 1990, with annual per capita income, estimated at $1,800, amounting to slightly more than 5% of South Korea’s.

Meanwhile, a food shortage has left 24 million North Koreans suffering from starvation, and more than 25 of every 1,000 infants die each year, compared to four in South Korea. In order to survive, the world’s most centralized and closed economy will have to open up.

A more dynamic and prosperous North Korea – together with peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula – would serve the interests not only of North Korea itself, but also of neighboring countries and the broader international community. After all, North Korea’s sudden collapse or a military conflict on the peninsula would undermine regional security, while burdening neighboring countries with millions of refugees and hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction costs.

This should spur international institutions and North Korea’s neighbors to provide the food aid, technical assistance, and direct investment that the country needs to escape its current predicament and make the transition to a market economy. But there remain significant obstacles to such cooperation – not least the North’s obscure and often-unpredictable politics, exemplified by the recent execution of its leader Kim Jong-un’s once-powerful uncle, Jang Song-thaek.

The good news is that North Korea’s leadership seems to understand that its current troubles stem from its grossly inefficient economic system. In recent speeches, Kim has emphasized the need for economic reform and opening up to develop agriculture and labor-intensive manufacturing industries. [Read full Project Syndicate article]

Read more: Mineral riches a game-changer?

North Korea’s enormous reserves of minerals could be a game-changer

Posted on by Grant Montgomery

According to a recent geological study, North Korea could hold more than twice the known global deposits of rare earths — minerals used in electronics such as smartphones and high definition televisions.

The country’s unexploited mineral deposits are estimated to be worth trillions. As it released the study results in December, U.K.-based private equity firm SRE Minerals also announced that it had signed a 25-year deal to develop a site in Jongju, northwest of Pyongyang, in a joint venture with state-owned Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation.

If the deposits open up, they could prove a game-changer for North Korea, breaking up China’s near-monopoly on the market but posing new challenges for the Pyongyang regime.

“The two conditions of [the North Korean government’s] survival, the constant crisis and the isolation which are needed for the maintenance of the regime, would be jeopardized,” said Leonid Petrov, a Korean studies researcher at the Australian National Studies University’s College of Asia and the Pacific, in an interview with Voice of America.

[TIME/VoA]

Fighting back inside the Secret State of North Korea

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Grant Montgomery

Much of the world sees North Koreans as brainwashed and subservient, bowing down to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. The Frontline documentary “Secret State of North Korea” from public broadcaster PBS shows that for many people in North Korea, just the opposite is true.

“We teamed up with a Japanese journalist, Jiro Ishimaru, who has this incredible network of ordinary North Koreans across the country,” FRONTLINE director James Jones said. “They film secretly using hidden cameras, and then smuggle that footage out across the China border where Jiro waits for them.”

One of the most dramatic pieces of footage is of a woman, who has set up a private bus service using a pickup truck. “This soldier comes and tells her to stop running this private bus service, which is illegal,” Jones said. “And rather than, as you would expect, saying, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and apologizing, she stands up for it – I mean, literally chases him off down the street, smacking him on the back, calling him every name under the sun.”

Victor Cha, who as the former Director of Asian Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council is an expert on North Korea, said that it is often women like her who are starting to open up North Korea. “I love that; that was one of my favorite parts of the documentary,” he told CNN. “The irony is that those markets didn’t grow out of economic reform. They grew out of the failure of the North Korean economy to provide for its people.”

>>> Click to watch the full documentary “Secret State of North Korea” <<<

The documentary also shows cracks in the regime’s information barrier, depicting a complicated and daring system whereby DVDs, laptops, and thumb drives are sneaked into the country across the border with China.

A young woman, who grew up in North Korea but defected to South Korea, says that her exposure to free media was critical. “The more I’ve listened to the radio, the more I’ve thought, ‘What we’ve learned isn’t true,’ I’ve been fooled. It has made me want to become free.”

It breaks the “spell of the regime’s propaganda,” Jones said.

“They’re just cracks right now, just small ones,” Cha said. “But like a dam, once you start getting one crack they start to filter out and you start seeing many, many more.”

[CNN]

Another American in North Korea

Posted on by Grant Montgomery

Besides Dennis Rodman and his basketball buddies, Will Scott is another of the few Americans who can actually say that he’s been to North Korea. A former Google employee and current graduate student at the University of Washington, Will spent last fall teaching courses on Databases and Operating Systems at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. Some insightful highlights from an interview Will did:

Business Insider: Could you talk about the “Supreme Leader” with anyone? Is their stereotypical love for him as displayed in the western media real?

Scott: The leader is certainly loved and revered. People live normal lives for the most part, maybe 5-10% is the stereotype. Like, before meals the students would march to the cafeteria while singing patriotic songs. That’s the stereotype that you’ll see in the media, but then they eat meals and chat normally, and play basketball, and go to class.

Was it possible to discuss politics or other sensitive topics?

Scott: Military stuff did get talked about some, as did some other topics. In the spring the understanding was that they were at war with the US, there were cars driving around with netting to prevent detection from satellites, and the media reported that there was a US intrusion into the country that the army repelled. The students would ask the professors why they were still there when their countries were actively at war.

You mention that bringing up the fact that you’re American was a good way to end a conversation. How often were people able to pick up on that fact before you told them?

Scott: Very rarely. If you were just on the street people would smile and wave at you.

Did you have ‘handlers’ like visitors on organized trips?

Scott: We called them ‘guides’, but yeah, the campus had a pool of representatives from the ministry of education. Foreigners in our group had to be accompanied by one of those guides when we were off campus.

Could you elaborate on what that news was like in North Korea compared to the US?

Scott: There are 3 TV stations, newspaper, and radio as primary means of media distribution. Newspapers got delivered to the campus every morning, and were at the reception desk, and the students when they were free would stop by and you would see huddles of them reading the news. Radio didn’t get used much on campus as far as I could tell, but seemed more used elsewhere in the country. You’d hear it sometimes in the car, or in shops.

Sunday evenings there’s a foreign section on TV, where individual segments taken from other countries news media are played. They learn about foreign affairs largely from this – the selection ranges from almost immediate on items that are good news, to up to a 6 month delay on things that are neutral or negative. Things like the economic issues in Greece took a long time to hit the news here (only this fall), while the satellite reaching the edge of the solar system got reported the same week. The rest ends up being a combination of rebroadcasts of sports games, some Chinese dramas, and local news segments.

Did you accidentally say “Just Google it,” and then realise that it wasn’t available to your students?

Scott: Yeah! A lot of CS education really breaks down without access to the Internet.

South Korean activists send more propaganda-filled balloons into North Korea

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Grant Montgomery

Activists in South Korea, including some North Korean defectors who were soldiers when they lived in the North, sent propaganda-loaded balloons over the border into North Korea on Wednesday, defying Pyongyang’s past threats of retaliation against the launches.

The helium-filled balloons were stuffed with DVDs and leaflets documenting human rights abuses in the North. They also contained 1,000 U.S. $1 bills and small USB drives loaded with the Korean-language version of Wikipedia.

Thor Halvorssen of the U.S.-based Human Rights Foundation, which helped organize the launch, called the balloons “controversial,” but said it is crucial North Koreans be allowed to access information the rest of the world already enjoys.

North Korea has lashed out at previous balloon launches, threatening to shell South Korea in response to such actions, which it calls deliberate provocation by Seoul that could lead to war. Seoul maintains that it has nothing to do with the launches.

>> Click to watch brief video of propaganda balloons being launched into north korea <<

[VoA]

Continuing trend of less North Koreans fleeing their country

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Grant Montgomery

More than 1 500 North Koreans fled to South Korea last year, maintaining a recent fall in the number of escapees that coincided with a clampdown by new leader Kim Jong-Un.

Five years ago the annual number of escapees was close to 3 000, but the number dropped sharply after Kim came to power in December 2011, following the death of his father Kim Jong-Il.

The number of North Koreans fleeing to the South, most of them via China slumped to 1 502 in 2012, while last year the figure was slightly higher at 1 516, Seoul’s unification ministry said.

Under Kim Jong-Un, the isolated state tightened border security and stepped up diplomatic campaigns to have refugees hiding in China repatriated.

The majority of refugees secretly cross the border to China before travelling to a neighboring Southeast Asian country, where they arrange to fly on to Seoul for resettlement.

China, the North’s sole major ally typically considers them illegal economic migrants and repatriates them despite criticisms from human rights groups. Many face severe punishment including, rights monitors say, torture and a term in a prison camp once they are sent back to the North.

[AFP]

Rodman and Kim Jong Un – Ego or diplomacy?

Posted on January 11, 2014 by Grant Montgomery

Two needy men are using each other to maintain their own fantasies about themselves. The fantasy of one of them is that he is justified in his role as the “supreme leader” of a military reign of totalitarian fear over nearly 25 million people. The much less dangerous fantasy of the other is that he’s still a star. Which raises the question: is there a force on earth more strange, sad and frightening than the human ego in full spate?

It’s easy to see what Kim Jong Un is getting out of the relationship. He was obsessed with US basketball as a child, and has been a long-standing admirer of Rodman. The fact that he can persuade this man to visit, to declare to the world that they are friends, to sing him happy birthday, to defend his grisly human rights record, can only be gratifying to his monstrous, childish, grotesquely swollen sense of self. No doubt, he will believe – probably with some justification – that an association with this famous American will only burnish him in the eyes of the population. The state propaganda machine is certainly doing its best to help with that, by supplying fawning headlines describing Rodman’s great admiration and respect for Kim.

Rodman’s own propaganda is not going so well. Presumably, he enjoys the publicity these trips afford him, even though it’s all negative. One can only assume that Rodman is able to ignore everything except the personal kick he must get from his association with Kim. Rodman, on these trips, is being feted by a world leader and treated as a visitor of immense importance, even if that world leader is despicable. How terrible to have such a craving for personal validation and flattery that you can dismiss in your search for it the suffering of an entire population and the disapprobation of the rest of the world.

There are many reasons why Rodman’s friendship with Kim is laughable, and all of them revolve around the idea of Rodman’s absurdity, as a trusting creature who is proud to have been selected to polish the crocodile’s teeth. Rodman longs for the days when he was at the center of a personality cult, and it has made him vulnerable. It has delivered him into the hands of a man who heads his own, far more sinister personality cult.

This strange relationship, this folie a deux, between a hereditary dictator and a world-famous sportsman, is almost poignant in its revelation of the emptiness and dysfunctionality that is so often at the root of a search for power and acclaim.

[Deborah Orr, writing in The Guardian]

North Korea’s Juche a major world religion

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Grant Montgomery

The website Adherents.com classifies North Korea’s “juche” (self-reliance) ideology as a religion.

“From a sociological viewpoint, juche is clearly a religion”, considering that it is so influential in its adherents’ lives and that it is exclusive of other ideologies, Adherents.com states.

Furthermore, juche ranks in the top ten of the world’s major religions judged on the number of believers. Including the world’s four major religions — Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism — Juche (19 million followers) is number 6, just after Sikhism (23 million).

This means that juche actually outnumbers several better-known religions, including Judaism (14 million), Bahai (7 million), Jainism (4.2 million), Shintoism (4 million), and Zoroastrianism (2.6 million).

Juche has all the necessary religious elements, including a founder (Kim Il-sung), a successor (Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un), a sacred ground (Mangyongdae), an organization (Workers Party and the military), doctrines, and precepts.

A prevailing view in academia likewise considers juche a religion. Rhee Sang-Woo, former president of Hallym University, said, “Juche is in the same vein as a monotheistic religion. North Korea is a strict theocracy.”

North Korea has 10 principles designed to uphold its monolithic one-party system. Article 3, Clause 6 of these 10 principles — a set of guidelines for everyday life — stresses the need to “respectfully care for, and thoroughly protect, the Dear Leader’s portraits, statues, and publications.”

Shin Eun-hee, a professor of religious studies at Simpson College in the U.S., regards juche as a “spiritual force that has sustained the North Korean people since the 1990s.”

Regarding juche as a major religion, we are reminded once again that it is not easy to free the North Korean people spiritually.

[Excerpt of Chosun Ilbo article by Lee Seon-min]

Christian persecution worst in North Korea

Posted on by Grant Montgomery

North Korea remains the world’s most restrictive nation in which to practice Christianity, according to the 2014 World Watch List released by Open Doors, a nonprofit organization helping persecuted Christians worldwide. The hermit kingdom is at the top of the rankings for the 12th consecutive year.

The list is compiled of countries where Christians face the most pressure and violence. In an interview with Fox News, Dr. David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, said in North Korea, “it’s very dangerous to identify yourself as a Christian.”

“In some countries there are some freedoms and violence against Christians is noted in news media … in North Korea the control is total,” said Curry. “Reports that have been getting out that have been identified and confirmed by the U.N. about what is happening to Christians, the kinds of torture that are happening to them … is absolutely inhumane.”

Curry said Kim’s regime might feel threatened by people in North Korea practicing Christianity.

“There’s a weird theocracy that’s been developed over three generations … that’s is especially fearful of any sort of spirituality or personal faith that would run contrary to the fact Kim Jong-Un [and his predecessors] … consider themselves Gods,” said Curry.

[Fox News]

Bros Kim and Rodman

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Grant Montgomery

Dennis Rodman first befriended Kim Jong Un, an avid basketball fan who inherited power from his father, during his first North Korean visit last year and has described the young dictator as a “very good guy.”

On Wednesday, accompanied by his wife, Kim emerged in a stadium in Pyongyang to cheering crowds who for several minutes wished him a long life, stopping only when the leader hushed them. Rodman gave an impromptu speech and then led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to Kim.

After participating in the exhibition basketball game he had organized for about 15 minutes, Rodman got changed and went to sit next to Kim in the audience, where the two spent the rest of the game smoking and laughing together, said Sean Agnew, a tourist who attended the unusual sporting event with Koryo Tours.

“Kim Jong Un really seemed to be enjoying himself,” Agnew said.

The two unlikely comrades appeared to be getting along famously at the game organized for Kim’s birthday. The young leader, whose exact age is unknown, is believed to be in his early 30s.