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ROK denies labor groups’ visit to DPRK

Thursday, April 28th, 2011

According to Yonhap:

South Korea has turned down a request by two umbrella labor unions to visit North Korea for talks with their counterparts, an official said Thursday, attesting to ongoing hostilities between the sides.

South Korea’s two main umbrella unions — the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions — applied for permission earlier this week to send four of their members to the North Korean border town of Kaesong for talks with their northern counterparts. They hoped to discuss possibilities for another general meeting among their members, the last of which was held in 2007 before inter-Korean relations grew tense.

South Korea’s Ministry of Unification, which handles inter-Korean affairs, rejected the visit planned for Thursday, citing a breach of regulations enforced after last year’s deadly sinking of a South Korean warship. Seoul blames Pyongyang for the March torpedo attack that killed 46 South Korean sailors, an allegation that the North vehemently denies.

“Not only is it required by law to apply for permission at least a week in advance, but our nationals are currently prohibited from visiting North Korea” under a set of post-attack measures that also ban cross-border trade, a ministry official said on customary condition of anonymity.

The two labor groups were informed of the decision on Wednesday, he added.

In protest, the KCTU held a rally outside the main government complex in Seoul earlier in the day, saying the ministry denied “the earnest request of workers from the South and North who long for peace on the Korean Peninsula.”

“We will achieve a South-North workers’ general meeting at all costs even if we can’t be together in one place,” the KCTU said in a statement, indicating it may issue a joint statement with its North Korean counterparts after holding separate meetings in Seoul and Pyongyang.

The South Koren government has been allowing some private aid to be delivered to th DPRK.

Read the full story here:
Gov’t rejects labor groups’ request to visit N. Korea
Yonhap
4/28/2011

Posted in Federation of Trade Unions, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, South Korea | Comments Closed

Inter-Korean mining projects suspended

Monday, April 25th, 2011

Pictured above on Google Earth: Ryongyang Mine Ore Dressing Plant (Pre-renovation)

According to the Hankyoreh:

“We invested a lot of money, and now we cannot even find out the present status.”

Korea Resources Corporation (KORES) President Kim Shin-jong let out a deep sigh as he explained about the development status of the Hwangnam graphite mines in North Korea at a forum held by the corporation on Apr. 15. The event was organized amid a sense of profound concern, with a number of North Korean mineral resources development efforts running aground amid worsening inter-Korean relations.

According to accounts Sunday from officials with the Ministry of Unification and KORES, South Korea is currently involved in a total of ten North Korean coal mine development efforts. Investment for seven of these comes from the government, including the ministry and KORES, while the other three involve private sector investments. None of them has followed their original schedule since the Lee Myung-bak administration came into office.

The most representative case is that of the Hwangnam graphite mines. This was the first North Korean resource development effort undertaken as an inter-Korean economic cooperation venture, and progress was quick enough that the graphite produced there was being imported into the South right up until the Lee administration came into office. Now, the situation has changed completely.

A company official conveyed the situation by saying, “Since 2008, the Hwangnam Coal Mine has been forgotten completely.”

The situation is the same for the Komdok, Ryongyang, and Taehung coal mines in the area of Tanchon, South Hamgyong Province, an effort spearhead directly by the Unification Ministry.

An official with the ministry said, “We had already finished the third feasibility examination by February 2008, but since then there has been no further progress as inter-Korean relations have worsened.”

The Ryongyang mine contains large deposits of the rare metal magnesite, a material South Korea does not produce.

Exploration has also been effectively halted at the Ayang mine in Sinwon County, South Hwanghae Province, where KORES completed an on-site investigation following the signing of a September 2007 memorandum of understanding on mineral development with North Korea, and the Pungchon mine in Yonan County, South Hwanghae Province, where the first inter-Korean joint drilling effort was undertaken in October 2008.

The situation has been particularly severe for the privately invested projects.

An official with one company engaged in a fertilizer effort said, “We carried out three rounds of working-level discussions in North Korea and China regarding the mining of apatite, but all of them have been suspended since the current administration took office.”

“If these projects had just gone ahead properly, we would not have had to buy apatite at high prices from faraway places like Nauru,” the official lamented.

Apatite, one of the key ingredients in fertilizer, is one of the mineral resources for which South Korea depends entirely on imports.

With South Korea’s development projects in North Korea at a standstill, China’s have taken flight. According to KORES figures, Chinese exports of North Korean military, which stood at the $300 million level in 2005, showed a sharp rate of annual increase to reach more than $900 million in 2010. In the space of five years, the amount of North Korean minerals purchased by China rose more than threefold. Industry observers are calling the situation “hoarding” of North Korean minerals by China. Government authorities are known to have determined that even strategic minerals listed as forbidden for overseas export, including uranium, have been going into China since late last year.

The problem is that the situation is becoming more severe as time passes. Because North Korea’s mineral transportation infrastructure of highways and ports is still deficient, the focus has been on developing minerals in areas near the North Korean-Chinese border, but there is a strong chance that China will extend its reach further into the country going ahead.

“China wants to seize North Korea’s mineral resource industry through expanded infrastructure cooperation with North Korea,” said Jeong U-jin, head of the natural resource strategy office at the Energy Development Institute.

Many observers are saying that thawing inter-Korean relations is an urgent priority if South Korea is to take full advantage of the value of North Korean mineral resources. Noting that the potential value of North Korean mineral resources is as much as 7 quadrillion won, a KORES official said, “Suffice it to say that as improvements in inter-Korean relations get put off, North Korean resources will all head overseas.”

According to the North Koreans, production at the mines is up nonetheless!

Read the full story here:
Inter-Korean coal mine projects suspended during Lee administration
Hankyoreh
Ki Kyung-rok
4/25/2011

Posted in Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, Graphite, Mining/Minerals, RoK Ministry of Unification, South Korea | Comments Closed

Remittances from North Korean defectors

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

Andrei Lankov writes in the East Asia Forum:

Until some 10 years ago, defection from North Korea implied that the person’s connections with his or her homeland would be broken for a long time, or perhaps even forever. North Korea was a huge black hole from where almost nothing could get out. But this is not the case anymore.

The number of North Korean defectors in South Korea has increased tremendously. In 2000, there were merely 1,400 North Koreans residing in the ROK. Now, a decade later, their numbers exceed 21,000.

These people are usually described as ‘defectors,’ but this name is misleading since almost none of them were driven by purely political considerations when they decided to leave North Korea. In most cases, they initially move to China, looking for food and better paying jobs. Only later do they usually find ways to move to South Korea, where, as they assume, their lives would be easier and more stable than in China.

To some extent these expectations are proven correct. By South Korean standards, North Korean refugees are not doing too well, their income being roughly half the income of the average South Korean. Nonetheless, even the 1 million won per month, plus subsidised housing and healthcare, are usually seen by refugees as affluence.

However, being Koreans they do not forget about their family members left behind in North Korea. In some cases the refugees save money to pay a professional defection specialist (simply called a broker) to relocate their family members to South Korea. A typical defection costs about 2-3 million won, but in some complex cases (for example, when the family members are old and fragile, very young or live far away from the border), it might cost considerably more.

Not everybody is willing to bring their entire family here and not every North Korean family wants to move to Seoul. Instead, defectors send money to their families back in the North. In recent years these transfers have dramatically increased in scale.

Remittances to the North are, strictly speaking, illegal according to both South and North Korean law. Nonetheless there is no way to stop this activity and, frankly, neither government is really willing to do so.

Last December the Database Centre for North Korean Human Rights conducted a survey of the economic situation of North Korean refugees in South Korea. According to the survey, 49 per cent of refugees regularly send money to their families in the North. The average amount sent by one person is estimated to be about 1 million won per year.

On balance the researchers estimated that about $10 million is sent North by defectors annually. There have been other attempts to estimate the scale of the remittances but those estimates are not much different ― most authorities agree that the annual amount is within the range of $5-$15 million. The $10 million is not a reliable amount for such a poor country as North Korea. After all, the Gaeseong Industrial Complex, often described as a major cash cow for the regime, generates some $20-$35 million a year.

Of course, one cannot make a bank transfer at a Citibank branch somewhere in the North Korean wilderness, and Western Union has yet to open its offices in the North. Remittances are made in cash and handled by the same networks of brokers who also smuggle people, letters and mobile phones to and from North Korea. Usually, money is first paid to a broker or their representative in South Korea and then moved or wired to China. Then the cash is smuggled across the border from China to the North. If the recipient lives near the border, they usually get the money straight from the smuggler. For those who live further south (in Pyongyang for example) the money might be delivered by a courier.

The complexity and risk of such an arrangement implies that service fees are expensive. The transaction fee currently fluctuates at 20-30 per cent of the total, so from the $1,000 sent by a refugee from Seoul, only $700-$800 will reach her relatives. Nonetheless, the system is quite reliable and incidents when the money does not reach its intended destination are rare.

Judging by anecdotal evidence, such money seems to be used for investments by North Korean recipients, most of whom run small businesses or workshops.

Politically, these remittances are important. North Koreans nowadays suspect that South Korea is not the destitute American colony the official propaganda used to criticize. These regular remittances make a difference; they reinforce the understanding that South Korea is a very rich place indeed. In the long run the spread of this knowledge does not bode well for the people who are now in control in Pyongyang.

Read the full story here:
Remittances from North Korean defectors
East Asia Forum
2011-4-21

Posted in Banking, Black markets, Emigration, Finance, South Korea | Comments Closed

DPRK owes ROK appx $1billion

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Korea owes South Korea more than W1 trillion in terms of food and other loans, it emerged Tuesday (US$1=W1,092). The North has to start repaying the debt from June next year, but given its economic difficulties and strained inter-Korean relations it is unlikely that Seoul will see a penny.

According to the Unification Ministry, the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations gave the North 2.4 million tons of rice and 200,000 tons of corn from 2000 to 2007 on condition of repayment over a period of 20 years with a 10-year grace period at a 1 percent annual interest. The loans amount to US$720.04 million, with the interest reaching $155.28 million.

The South Korean government also spent W585.2 billion from the Inter-Korean Cooperation Fund to re-link cross-border railways and roads from 2002 to 2008. Of the total, W149.4 billion worth of materials and equipment for construction on the North Korean side are also loans to be repaid on the same conditions.

Besides, Seoul lent the North $80 million worth of raw materials for production of textile, footwear, and soap in 2007 and 2008. At the time, the North paid back 3 percent of the loan with 1,005 tons of zinc ingots worth $2.4 million, leaving a $77.6 million balance.

All told, the principal on these loans amounts to W1.02 trillion and the total debt including interest to over W1.2 trillion.

The first repayment of $5.83 million for the food loans provided between October 2000 and March 2001 is due on June 7 next year.

A ministry official said, “The amount has already been included in next year’s revenue plan, on the assumption that it will be paid back. If the North fails to pay, it will be deemed outstanding balance.”

Aside from the food and economic loans, the South also lent the North W1.37 trillion through the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization from 1998 to 2006 for the construction of a light-water nuclear reactor. The money was raised by issuing government bonds. The total amount of all loans adds up to W2.25 trillion, if the accrued interest of W877.2 billion is counted.

But since the KEDO project was scrapped in 2006, there is no way for the South to get the money back. It seems likely that the total amount will be handled as “irredeemable government bonds” that have to be made up for with tax money.

Read the full story here:
Pyongyang Owes Seoul Huge Amounts of Money
Choson Ilbo
2011-4-20

Posted in Banking, Debt, Finance, Fiscal & monetary policy, Food, International trade, Railways, South Korea, Statistics, Trade Statistics, Transportation | Comments Closed

DPRK rescinds Hyundai’s Kumgang contract rights

Monday, April 11th, 2011

UPDATE 2 (2011-4-11): South Korea has declared the move illegal. According to the AFP:

South Korea Monday criticised North Korea’s threat to strip a Seoul firm of its exclusive right to run tours to a mountain resort in the communist state, calling the move illegal and unacceptable.

The North said Saturday it may deprive Hyundai Asan of its monopoly over tours to scenic Mount Kumgang, where the firm has invested millions of dollars and has a 50-year agreement reached in 2000.

“The North’s claim… is in violation of agreements made at business and government levels as well as international customs,” said Chun Hae-Sung, a spokesman for the South’s unification ministry that handles cross-border affairs.

“The decision is absolutely illegal, illegitimate and unacceptable and should be withdrawn immediately,” Chun said.

UPDATE 1 (2011-4-11): The DPRK has formally ended Hyundai’s contract. According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Korea has unilaterally ended a long-standing agreement that gave South Korea’s Hyundai Asan the sole rights to operate package tours to Mt. Kumgang. The tours have long been suspended, but Hyundai Asan has put a significant amount of money into accommodation and other infrastructure in the scenic resort.

In a statement on Friday night, the North’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee said, “We’re invalidating the clause on the exclusive right given to Hyundai in the agreement on Mt. Kumgang tourism that we concluded with the company.” It said Hyundai Asan may continue to operate tours from the South Korean side, but the committee “will take care of the tours arranged through the North Korean side.”

A Hyundai Asan spokesman said the following day North Korea should withdraw the decision “since no terms of the agreement can be canceled or invalidated unilaterally by either side.”

Unilateral Decision

The two sides signed an agreement in October 1998 giving Hyundai Asan, a subsidiary of the Hyundai Corporation not to be confused with Hyundai Motor Group, the exclusive right to operate the tours.

In 2002, the regime granted Hyundai Asan the right to use of land in the Mt. Kumgang area until 2052, but it confiscated the property after South Korea suspended the tours following the shooting death of a tourist in July 2008.

According to Hyundai Asan, North Korean officials summoned staff to Mt. Kumgang on March 15 and 30 and told them the North would now promote tours on its own. On March 30, the North Korean also proffered a written document to a Hyundai Asan staffer, who refused to accept it saying it contravenes the original agreement.

The decision to cancel the deal nonetheless shows how desperate the North is to earn hard currency, since the apparent aim is to promote tours for Chinese visitors instead or indirectly pressure the South Korean government into resuming the tours.

Seoul says it will not resume the tours until the North allows an investigation of the shooting, gives firm safety guarantees, and promises to prevent similar incidents. There have been talks about their resumption, but the North’s sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan in March last year and shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November effectively strangled them at birth.

Chinese Tourists

It is unlikely that the North can plug the gap with revenues from Chinese tourists. Hyundai Asan says about 1.96 million tourists visited Mt. Kumgang over the past 10-odd years, but a mere 12,000 came from countries other than South Korea.

It remains to be seen whether the North will use the Hyundai-owned facilities to accommodate Chinese visitors.

Hyundai Asan has spent a total of W754.1 billion (US$1=W1,084) on developing nearby land and building facilities such as a power plant and a hotel. Other South Korean agencies and companies, including the Korea Tourism Organization and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, invested W133 billion. After tours were suspended, Hyundai Asan left 16 staffers behind at Mt. Kumgang to look after its properties.

ORIGINAL POST (2011-4-9): According to Yonhap:

Apparently growing impatient with South Korea’s lukewarm response to its dialogue offer, North Korea announced Friday that it could terminate an exclusive contract with a South Korean conglomerate for tourism at Mount Kumgang, a resort along its east coast.

In a statement carried by the official news agency KCNA, the Asia Pacific Peace Committee, a state organ in charge of inter-Korean relations, said, “There is no more prospect of resuming the tour of Mount Kumgang.”

“In this regard it informed the Hyundai side of its stand that it may terminate the validity of the provision of the agreement on tour of Mount Kumgang signed with the Hyundai side which calls for granting it monopoly over the tour,” it said, referring to Hyundai Asan, the South Korean operator of Mount Kumgang tourism program.

The statement also added Hyundai could continue conducting tours for South Koreans but that Pyongyang “may” take charge of tours to Mount Kumgang and elsewhere for North Koreans and also entrust an overseas business professional with such tours.

South Koreans’ tours to Mount Kumgang, once a cash cow for the impoverished North, have been suspended since the summer of 2008, when a female South Korean tourist was shot dead after straying into an off-limits military zone.

Pyongyang has been seeking to resume the joint venture, but Seoul has demanded a formal apology for the killing of the housewife, along with measures to prevent a recurrence of such an incident and a guarantee of tourists’ safety.

Friday’s announcement was viewed as aimed at putting pressure on the South to restart the tourism business.

Hyundai Asan said it was working to identify North Korea’s true intentions.

“The company is working to find out at the earliest possible date what the North’s true intentions are,” a Hyundai Asan official said, asking not to be identified.

North Korea froze Hyundai Asan’s assets at Mount Kumgang last year in an apparent attempt to pressure South Korea to resume tours to the mountain, a spiritual destination for Koreans on both sides of the border.

After years of threats and provocative acts, highlighted by two deadly attacks in 2010, Pyongyang has been appealing to Seoul for talks. Conservatives here say the North wants aid from the South and a dialogue with the United States.

Here you can see more of Seoul’s demands for resuming Kumgang tours.

Here and here you can find more information on Seoul’s demands for resuming Kumgang Tours.

Previous posts about the Kumgang Resort can be found here.

Posted in Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, Mt. Kumgang Tourist Special Zone, South Korea, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013), Tourism | Comments Closed

CRS report on Kaesong Industrial Complex

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

The Congressional Research Service has published an update to its paper on the Kaesong Industrial Complex.

You can download the paper here (PDF).

You can download other CRS reports on North Korea at my CRS Reports Page.

Below is the paper’s summary:

This purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the role, purposes, and results of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) and examine U.S. interests, policy issues, options, and legislation. The KIC is a six-year old industrial park located in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) just across the demilitarized zone from South Korea. As of the end of 2010, over 120 medium-sized South Korean companies were employing over 47,000 North Korean workers to manufacture products in Kaesong. The facility, which in 2010 produced $323 million in output, has the land and infrastructure to house two to three times as many firms and workers. Products vary widely, and include clothing and textiles (71 firms), kitchen utensils (4 firms), auto parts (4 firms), semiconductor parts (2 firms), and toner cartridges (1 firm).

Despite a rise in tensions between North and South Korea since early 2008, the complex has continued to operate and expand. The KIC was not shut down in 2010 despite two violent incidents between the two Koreas that year: the March sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, which was found to be caused by a North Korean torpedo, and North Korea’s artillery attack on a South Korean island in November. Indeed, the complex has become virtually the last vestige of inter-Korean cooperation. After the Cheonan sinking, South Korea announced it would cut off all inter-Korean economic relations except the Kaesong complex. It also has reduced the number of South Korean workers—primarily government officials and business managers—at the complex because of worries about them being taken hostage by North Korea.

The KIC represents a dilemma for U.S. and South Korean policymakers. On the one hand, the project provides an ongoing revenue stream to the Kim Jong-il regime in Pyongyang, by virtue of the share the government takes from the salaries paid to North Korean workers. South Korean and U.S. officials estimate this revenue stream to be around $20 million per year. On the other hand, the KIC arguably helps maintain stability on the Peninsula and provides a possible beachhead for market reforms in the DPRK that could eventually spill over to areas outside the park and expose tens of thousands of North Koreans to outside influences, market-oriented businesses, and incentives.

The United States has limited direct involvement in the KIC, which the United States has officially supported since its conception. At present, no U.S. companies have invested in the Kaesong complex, though a number of South Korean officials have expressed a desire to attract U.S. investment. U.S. government approval is needed for South Korean firms to ship to the KIC certain U.S.-made equipment currently under U.S. export controls. The Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), which has yet to be submitted to Congress for approval, provides for a Committee on Outward Processing Zones (OPZ) to be formed and to consider whether zones such as the KIC will receive preferential treatment under the FTA. Although the KORUS FTA says that the Executive branch will seek “legislative approval” for any changes to the agreement, Congress’s precise role in accepting or rejecting these changes is not clear.

Another issue raised by the KIC is whether components made in the complex can enter the United States if they are incorporated into products that are manufactured in South Korea and that qualify as originating in South Korea. This possibility is likely to be determined mainly by the KIC’s evolution; the more that is produced in the complex, the more products are likely to enter South Korea’s supply chain.

Posted in Economic reform, Foreign direct investment, Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), South Korea, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013) | Comments Closed

USA Today published a story on the ROK’s transition program for DPRK defectors, Hanawon (하나원). There is not much new information in the story, but I wanted to address some of the criticisms the program receives.

Here is the most salient part of the article:

North Koreans who’ve gone through the program say it is helpful but not enough to prepare one for a Western-oriented society after a life in a Stalinist dictatorship cut off from the outside world.

Gwang Il Jung, who attended the program six years ago and runs an advocacy group, Free NK Gulag, says the courses have good intentions but gloss over too many details.

“They will tell you the basics,” he says. “But what can you really learn in three months? How do you teach someone to use an ATM or ride the metro in a classroom setting? The classes need to be more hands-on.”

He says the requirement that North Koreans remain on the school grounds for three months is unhelpful.

“They just got here in pursuit of freedom. And they’re locked in again. It’s like prison for them. All they think about is getting out. Let them live. They’ll make their share of mistakes, but many are eager and able to learn,” Jung says.

The two Koreas share a common heritage and language, but much has changed since the two countries were divided in 1948 after the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy the country as a trusteeship following the Allied victory in World War II.

The students must complete 130 hours of language courses to get a better grasp of the Southern dialect that has been infiltrated by English and other foreign vocabulary, such as the words “Internet” and “computer,” “chicken” and “phone.”

“They may find a job as a waitress, but if they can’t take orders or understand a command like ‘Go get that key from the cabinet,’ it’s just a matter of time before they’re fired,” Youn says.

Personal finance courses, ranging from basic money management skills to the concept of private property ownership, are also mandatory, as many North Koreans are ill-equipped to handle the sudden exposure to welfare and settlement payments the South Korean government provides.

Stories of defectors falling victim to financial scams or bouts of compulsive shopping are common.

Students take lessons on using computers, child-rearing skills and even hairdressing.

First of all, there is no program that is going to suitably address the individual needs of all the defectors that enter the ROK. Individual capacities, experiences, and needs are simply to heterogeneous for a single government program to address. This diversity of needs, however, presents a market opportunity for non-profits and education entrepreneurs. Indeed I can think of a few organizations that offer “continuing education” to former North Koreans as they adjust to life in their new homes. So Hanawon should not be criticized for failing to meet all needs of all defectors, it should be seen as simply the first step.

Hanawon also draws criticism in the article for keeping North Korean defectors isolated on campus for three months. This criticism stems from the fact that Hanawon serves more than one mission. The first mission is to facilitate the transition of North Korean defectors to their new lives in the south. The second mission is to facilitate the gathering of information on the DPRK and to protect South Korea (and the North Korean defector community) from infiltration by North Korean agents. There are now 20,000+ North Korean defectors in the South and some +% of them are active agents. Given the potentially high and visible cost of failing to catch a North Korean agent, South Korean policymakers have a bias toward preventing type 1 errors (allowing DPRK agents to enter the country). They try to reduce this cost by extending the amount of time defectors spend under scrutiny while confined at Hanawon. However, this produces a type 2 error: the unnecessary “holding” of innocent DPRK defectors who just want to get on with their lives. These particular individuals (the vast majority) have every right to feel “mistreated” by this system, but the only politically feasible way to minimize this cost is to improve the ability of the South Korean security services to detect North Korean agents–something few people are able to do anything about.

It is also worth pointing out that there are quite a few North Koreans that don’t go through Hanawon when they come to the South. I wonder why that is?

Previous posts on Hanawon here. Previous posts on North Korean defectors here.

You can read the full USA Today story here.

Posted in Education, Emigration, South Korea | Comments Closed

South Korean entertainment increasingly popular

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

According to the Daily NK:

The names Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok are growing in popularity in urban North Korea now that variety shows hosted by the two South Korean entertainers, KBS show “One Night, Two Days” and MBC’s “Endless Challenge”, are becoming popular there.

One source who trades in Pyongyang said, “I rented ‘X-Men’ (a variety show on another big South Korean station, SBS), the show hosted by Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok, from a CD store; it was really entertaining.”

“One of the popular things with Pyongyang elementary and middle school students is the games they can see in this show,” he added.

He noted, “Parents believe the games in X-Men can develop their children’s brains, so they also try to occasionally show it to them. Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok are really popular here; we laughed until we cried.”

According to the source, people in Pyongyang do not generally purchase CDs of North Korean products, but rent them for around 500 won each, while illegally-produced South Korean dramas and variety shows are generally 2,000 won each, approximately the price of a kilogram of rice.

Another source from Shinuiju said, “The shows with Kang Ho Dong and Yoo Jae Seok, ‘One Night, Two Days’ and ‘Endless Challenge’ are so popular that they sell for 4,800 won.”

The reason why people like ‘One Night, Two Days’, in which a number of South Korean entertainers, led by Kang, take a trip to little-known South Korean places to camp out, mingle with locals and play a range of games, the source said, is “because people can see a lot of the scenery of South Chosun, as if they were sightseeing for real. It gives comfort to those who are in the situation of being unable to so much as dream of a trip to Chosun.”

There is another background reason for their growing popularity: they are also popular among Korean-Chinese people in the border provinces of China, leading to these illegally copied CDs flowing into North Korea.

In Yanji, Dandong, Shenyang and other Chinese cities with big Korean-Chinese populations, internet cafes have their own servers to download South Korean TV shows so that local people can see them easily at a decent speed.

North Korean or Korean-Chinese smugglers then take illegally copied DVDs or CDs containing the shows into North Korea. One smuggler generally carries between 1,000 and 3,000 recordable CDs or DVDs including such shows into North Korea at any one time.

Another defector, Kim Seong Cheol explained, “I can copy thousands of CDs cheaply and send them to North Korea all at once.”

When he crosses the river, Kim says he ends up giving away a few hundred discs in the form of bribes, and wholesales a few hundred to each North Korean trader.

Read the full story here:
South Korean Entertainers Gaining in Popularity
Daily NK
Park Jun Hyeong and Jeong Jae Sung
3/23/2011

Posted in Black markets, South Korea, Television | Comments Closed

ROK Supreme Court rejects ownership claim for property in DPRK

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

According to Arirang News (3/22/2011):

The Supreme Court decided Tuesday that South Korean nationals are not eligible to claim ownership of property in North Korea.

A 56-year-old man surnamed Yoo filed a lawsuit, claiming ownership of six lots in the Yeoncheon district of Gyeonggi Province, which is in North Korea, and demanded the court change the land registration back to his name, based on a deed in his ancestor’s name from the early 1900s.

Two lower courts had previously acknowledged the deed and ruled partially in favor of the plaintiff.

But the Supreme Court annulled the decision, saying it is impossible to verify the ownership of the land, since the original land registration was destroyed in the Korean War, restored in 1980 and then discarded in 1991 because the land is north of the Demilitarized Zone.

I am no lawyer or expert in the field of property rights, but my understanding is that when reunification comes property reconciliation will be a nightmare for both Koreas. Many South Koreans have already prepared the paperwork to reclaim lands confiscated by both the Japanese colonial government and the DPRK government and they are simply waiting to file them. I imagine there are many North Koreans that have done the same. No doubt there will be numerous types of claims and remedies—too voluminous to list here.

At a minimum, this case seems to establish the first of many tests for the validity of land reclamation cases: verification. If a claim cannot be verified in evidence, it will not be honored by the court, and we also have a better idea of what kinds of evidence are not admissible.

Although possessing the right documentation will be important, I can also see all sorts of creative solutions emerging to help establish a claim even for those who lost their land titles long ago–DNA comparisons from family burial plots, to name just one example.

If anyone is aware of any good papers on this topic, please let me know. There is probably a hefty German literature in this area, though I am not sure how comparable the legal systems are particularly when it comes to the disposition of land.

Some other recent South Korean cases:
1. A South Korean court gave North Korean defectors the right to divorce their spouses in the DPRK so they could remarry.

2. The North Korean children of a deceased, wealthy DPRK defector (who died in South Korea) are suing in a South Korean court for their share of his inheritance.

Posted in South Korea | Comments Closed

Kim Jong-il pays respects to memory of Chung Ju-yung

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

Pictured Above: Chung Ju-yung Stadium in Pyongyang
(Google Earth: 39.040093°, 125.735237°)

According to the Korea Herald:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has sent a verbal message to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of a noted South Korean industrialist who pioneered cross-border economic projects, the North’s media said Saturday.

Chung Ju-yung, the then chairman of Hyundai Group, initiated a series of major economic projects in North Korea starting in 1998, including a sightseeing tour to scenic Mount Geumgang on the North’s east coast. He died on March 21, 2001.

In the verbal message, the North Korean leader spoke highly of the South Korean industrialist, saying that he did the right thing to promote national reconciliation, the North’s Korean Central News Agency said in a report.

“Chung Ju-yung paved the way for national reconciliation and cooperation and did really a great job for the development of the inter-Korean relations and the sacred cause of national reunification,” the KCNA quoted the leader as saying in the message.

Kim also expressed hope that everything would go well for the Chung family and Hyundai, the KCNA report said.

The report did not say when and how the North Korean leader’s message was conveyed to the Chung family in Seoul. Chung’s eldest son, Chung Mong-koo, heads the nation’s largest automaker, Hyundai Motor Co.

According to the Choson Ilbo:

North Korea has sent a wreath to Hyundai Group to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the death of Hyundai founder Chung Ju-yung.

The wreath that read “In memory of Chung Ju-yung” was delivered from Pyongyang’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee to Hyundai staffers at the joint-Korean industrial complex in Kaesong.

On Friday North Korean leader Kim Jong-il spoke highly of Chung for his role in paving the way for national reconciliation and cooperation.

Chung initiated various projects with the Stalinist state including the Mt. Kumgang package tours in the North and had sent more than one-thousand cows over the demilitarized zone to North Korea.

The Daily NK also offers some cultural background…

Posted in Google Earth, Mt. Kumgang Tourist Special Zone, Political economy, South Korea, Special Economic Zones (Established before 2013) | Comments Closed

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