North Korean agriculture as North Korea would like to see it: green. | Image: KCNA

Tom Morrison’s experience working with aid agencies on the ground in North Korea has taught him one very important lesson about how North Koreans view food security and the current food shortages: the “national food shortages are a source of collective national shame, and serve only to strengthen the DPRK’s resolve to eliminate it.” In part two of a three part series, Matthew Bates, Sino-NK’s Economics and Trade Analyst, continues his discussion with agronomist Tom Morrison on the prospects of food self-sufficiency  in North Korea (read part one). In this installment, Morrison discusses the effectiveness of previous aid and reform efforts (including market liberalization), achievements made thus far towards greater food security, and the prospects of further agricultural reforms. – Steven Denney, Managing Editor

Growth Prospects: Tom Morrison on the Potential for Progress in the DPRK’s Agricultural Sector: Prospects and Achievements

by Matthew Bates

Matthew Bates [MB]: What are the prospects for further and more decisive agricultural reform?

Tom Morrison [TM]: There have been some signs of government enthusiasm for possible future liberalization that might lead to real structural reforms that together have the potential to achieve food security sustainably. They include:

• Some market liberalisation such as farmers markets to allow distribution of vigorous home garden production, mainly small livestock. The 2011 Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (CFSAM) was allowed for the first time to enter a farmers market and to conduct interviews.
• Positive dialogue on the possibility of making sloping land management sustainable (as piloted with assistance from the European Commission and the Swiss). Up to early 2011 sloping land cultivation was “a temporary phenomenon” soon to be obliterated by trees.
• Positive dialogue on greater management autonomy for the sub-work teams on cooperative farms, as piloted with assistance from the European Commission (EC) and evidenced by supplies of lower technology and small sized agricultural equipment, including walk-behind tractors, beginning under the 2005 and 2006 direct aid budgets.
• Enthusiastic endorsement of rural micro-credit (as piloted with assistance from IFAD), though now more or less put in the freezer by DPRK government because it was seen as too successful and threatened to get out of hand. (Bangladesh, the home of micro-credit, has been through a similar experience).
• Enthusiastic endorsement of Conservation Agriculture, as piloted with assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organization and expanded by the European Commission. This last is, in my view, the bedrock of recovery of DPRK’s agriculture.

MB: What has been achieved thus far?

TM: There have been some impressive achievements towards food security, usually achieved with huge civil mobilisation, including:

• Massive realignment of main arterial irrigation canals to reduce the need for pumping. This was a task that a high level FAO Investment Centre mission in the late 1990s, in which I participated, initially held as practically impossible: from both engineering and economic standpoints. We had not factored in the determination of the North Koreans to succeed. None of us on the FAO team had been to the DPRK before. When our economist said in a meeting, towards the end of the mission, that it was not economically feasible, we were given a level look and the answer: “We do not have economics.” No answer to that! The project went ahead with OPEC funding.
• Field consolidation to improve the efficiency of mechanization. Cynics said this had more to do with erasing old field boundaries of pre-1953 private farms. That may also be true. But there is no doubt that when the DPRK finally adopts modern mechanized agriculture this will substantially affect its efficiency.
• Seed improvement (their “seed revolution”), including most recently potato seed (leading to their “potato revolution”).
• Micro-credit for poor rural households, supported by IFAD, as a way of improving the quality of nutrition. Initially fiercely rejected by Ministry of Agriculture on ideological grounds, then later accepted as an unavoidable component in a loan package for mainly high horsepower 4wd tractors, it was perfectly executed by the Central Bank and over an eight year timespan exceeded all targeted outcomes. Inducements, such as high horsepower tractors, are a proven way of furthering acceptance of donor activities that are less palatable to the DPRK’s government. Although it is understandable that the European Commission is staying cool on this issue, at least temporarily.
• Conservation Agriculture (CA), already mentioned, was initially treated with scepticism by the Ministry of Agriculture as being incompatible with the high yields needed for national food security. Now with EC assistance, technically led by FAO, they have adopted it as official policy and the Ministry of Agriculture is keen to expand its reach. This can, and almost certainly will be, the basis for future national food self sufficiency; but it requires, though only for the first two or three years, high investment in farm machinery, lime, fertiliser, and agro-chemicals. After that it’s more or less sustainable and needs lower inputs. Yet Conservation Agriculture produces higher yields.
• Huckbosan compost is a high quality compost adjusted for pH and fortified with artificial fertiliser and micro-nutrients. It requires a lot of (usually urban) labor to the extent that, according to many farm managers, it may not be sustainable—but it works.

“The DPRK can be beautiful…” – Morrison | Image: Tom Morrison

These achievements demonstrate that when the DPRK authorities are convinced of the value of change, they do generally succeed. They also demonstrate the DPRK’s steely resolve to achieve national food security. Outsiders who have seen the apathetic dependence culture built around food and development aid in some countries must not be mistaken here. The national food shortages are a source of collective national shame, and serve only to strengthen the DPRK’s resolve to eliminate it. Eventually, they will succeed, and step by step they are beginning to appreciate that aid donors have something to offer. 

MB: For agricultural reforms to support broader economic development through market mechanisms—in the manner of the Chinese and Vietnamese reforms—it would seem to require not just bare food self-sufficiency but some degree of abundance. What degree of abundance in excess of minimal requirements do you see as realistic and do you envision markets as the most desirable means of distribution?

TM: Abundant food grains are technically within reach, as demonstrated earlier, as well as the diversified diet that is critical for economic growth.

The rest of the world has found that markets are the most efficient means of distribution, and in the DPRK’s rural areas the farmers markets held every 10 days (on the 1st, 11th, and 21st of the month) are vibrant and no longer hidden from or denied to foreigners. But no doubt the government will want to continue with the Public Distribution System (PDS). As a social safety net this is as efficient as any in the world, in my opinion. Though it has failed in recent years, with western aid agencies crowing about its failure, this was only because it had nothing to distribute. The PDS’s organisation is moderately efficient, but its storage facilities are very poor indeed. Probably both the PDS and the market system will co-exist for the foreseeable future, as they have done for the last many years.

“…but most farming areas have become deforested and bare.” Conservation Agriculture aims to promote sustainability through minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotations. “Plus, the importance of trees in the upper catchment, above the farming areas, has really hit home in recent years. All North Koreans are convinced of that.” | Image: Tom Morrison

MB: What has been your experience with the use of micro-finance for projects in the DPRK?

The micro-credit component of the Upland Food Security Project, designed by me and my team, and financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), was perfectly executed by the Central Bank, with huge benefits to individual poor rural families as monitored and evaluated by an independent Italian team. Middle and senior ranking civil servants were enthusiastic and channelled more  of the IFAD’s available funds into it, until it exceeded 20 percent of a $30 million loan. We always knew it was risky ideologically, but we were hopeful it would become conceptually accepted when we learned that a similar scheme had been established in 1954 by Kim Il-sung but had then lapsed due to lack of funds. It’s a very efficient way of relieving the misery of the very poor, but until the DPRK recognises that poverty exists there seems little future for it.

The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) also tried to introduce micro-credit at about the same time as IFAD did, in 2001, but held out for the principle that the government should take the foreign exchange risk, which was refused; the project never got off the ground. SDC’s money was a grant; IFAD’s money was a loan.

Further Readings

Matthew Bates, “Prospects for Food Self-Sufficiency in the DPRK: Interview with Tom Morrison,” Sino-NK, June 1, 2013.

Christopher Green, “6.28 Back on the Docket?: Economic ‘Improvement’ Hints Return,” Sino-NK, May 13, 2013.

“Let’s live in our own way!” True to its word, over the last 20 years North Korea has unwillingly adopted a hybrid economy that defies ready categorization. | Image: Christopher Green

Thankfully, much of the world has caught on to the incontrovertible fact that North Korea is not a communist state, if indeed it ever was. Conversely, however, Pyongyang is doing a rather better job of fostering the illusion that it still operates along command economic lines.

However, the time has come to overturn that misconception, too. As shown in a number of Sino-NK essays and commentaries, what North Korea really has is an economy in which some areas operate in an ad hoc capitalist fashion, but with a complete and utter lack of those institutions and practices that allow other capitalist economies to function effectively: ways of moving information at high speed to where it is most needed, state taxation for the purposes of redistribution and infrastructure development, logistics networks for the free and rapid movement of people and goods, and frameworks for legal redress, etc. The result, perhaps predictably, is unsatisfying to all, and profoundly unhelpful for the ordinary North Korean people.

In his latest piece for Sino-NK, Professor Andrei Lankov reveals more about North Korea’s quixotic brand of “state capitalism.”- Christopher Green, Co-editor

The Limits to Marketization: State and Private in Kimist North Korea

by Andrei Lankov

Stalinist Smokescreen: the Fall of the Command Economy and Rise of the Market | North Korea is frequently described as the last Stalinist state. As a matter of fact, its government works hard to create that impression. Coming to Pyongyang, a tourist is surrounded by Stalinist paraphernalia. More significantly, pretty much all of the economy seems to be state-run—as one would expect in a Stalinist regime. If you were to ask your North Korean minders, they would be sure to tell you that not only shops and restaurants, but also inter-city buses and factories, are managed by the omniscient and omnibenevolent state bureaucracy, whose members surely know how to allocate and distribute production in the most efficient and humane way.

However, such claims have become increasingly misleading. North Korea over the past twenty years has not merely experienced a remarkable growth in private markets, but has also seen the once clear-cut line between state and market blurred to the point of non-existence.

There are some industries which, for all practical purposes, have been privatized in North Korea for the last two decades. The restaurant industry is an eminent example. It also shows that privatization from the bottom-up is underway. Contrary to what one may believe, Pyongyang has a booming restaurant scene. Most of these fashionable restaurants are actually privately owned. Often a private individual contacts a state agency and suggests that it might be nice to open a restaurant. Officially, such a business is part of the agency in question, but this is a fiction. The private investor buys the necessary equipment and furniture, arranges the interior design, and hires the personnel. Employees are paid salaries well in excess of the usual meager levels—salaries sufficient to make a living. The investor might manage the venture itself, or they may instead hire a full-time manager—the latter being more common when the investor has multiple businesses. Full-time managers are usually given a high degree of autonomy over daily operations.

The government, in exchange for allowing such businesses to operate, expects significant payoffs. It seems that the going rate is between 30-70 percent of net profits. Of course this creates an incentive for creative accounting; thus, the actual share is surely significantly lower. Some of the profit paid to the state is pocketed by state bureaucrats, but much of it seemingly ends up in the state budget itself.

Another fine JVC we’ve gotten ourselves into. | Image: KCNA

A “Bizarre” Relationship: State-Private Enterprises in North Korea | It is interesting that North Koreans themselves appear to be at a loss when it comes to defining these ventures. When confronted with the question of whether the restaurant described above is a private or state enterprise, many give a nonsensical answer, calling it “a state-owned restaurant with a private investor.” This type of bizarre property relations (essentially private property described as state-owned) is remarkably common in North Korea today. For example, many shops are run by private merchants but are registered as state outlets. The owner pays sales clerks, makes sure that the shop is stocked, and makes all managerial decisions. As with restaurants, a significant portion of earnings are supposed to go to the state.

Another area where private capital is common is inter-city transportation. Marketization in North Korea over the last two decades has necessitated the development of cargo and passenger transportation. Many of the old cars that navigate the poorly paved or unpaved roads of North Korea are usually owned by investors in the North. These investors usually buy old vehicles in China and register them with a North Korean government agency. Depending on the agency and the vehicle, costs of registering vary. It costs more to register your vehicle with a more powerful agency, for example.

In some cases, private capital can play a role in more advanced areas, such as mining. I personally know a North Korean who used to run a small gold mine. He bought equipment second-hand from state mines not in operation, hired experienced, skilled labour, and then restarted an old mine. Ostensibly this was all to be part of a foreign currency-earning operation directly managed by the party itself. In practice though, the enterprise followed the aforementioned pattern. The investor/manager, having sent some money to the relevant party agency, as well as some bribes to his supervisors, was free to use the remaining profits as he saw fit.

Generally, foreign currency-earning operations provide good cover for a fusion of state-private enterprises. Unlike most communist countries, North Korea has never had a centralized foreign trade system. Since the 1970s, many government agencies, as well as state enterprises, were given the right to establish their own foreign trade branches. These branches were supposed to sell the goods and products of the organization they were connected to, but things were rarely so simple. Many of the operations were connected to non-economic units, like a local party branch or army unit. To compensate, these organizations were often given a monopoly on locally produced commodities like mushrooms or squid.

However, in order to make sure that the commodities were collected, the relevant agency had to be able to pay producers or gatherers—and by the early 1990s few North Koreans were willing to work for free. This is where private investors came into play. They often made (and continue to make) deals with the foreign currency-earning branches of relevant agencies and then invest the necessary money to buy the commodity. They also use their connections to arrange for logistics: transportation, storage, and sometimes export to China (North Korea’s almost exclusive, sometimes reluctant foreign trading partner). After a fixed amount is paid to their superiors (partially as a bribe and partially as a contribution to the budget) the rest is reserved for the investor as their income.

A New Model: North Korea’s Dual Economy | The system described above is relatively unusual, and has few precedents in the state socialist world—perhaps the closest approximation would be that of Soviet Central Asia in the 1970s, where a significant part of the service industry and small industry was run by private investors who also contributed to the state budget and provided the necessary kick-backs. However the scale of private investment in Central Asia was well below that in North Korea today.

Such a system is essentially a market economy, of course, but unlike the de facto market economy of 1980s China, it is probably unable to generate significant economic growth. It does not help that many of the enterprises described above remain illegal; their owners thus have virtually no legal protection.

Another problem is the lack of infrastructure necessary for stable growth. Even the exchange of basic information is rather complicated in North Korea—in spite of significant progress brought about by the recent and rapid spread of mobile phones. The government itself does not know what to do about these developments. They are afraid of the uncontrolled growth of private entrepreneurialism, and they do what they can to keep these developments at bay. It is telling that in March this year Kim Jong-un delivered a speech about the situation in light industry. In the speech, he admitted that the state of the industry was dire, but also said that the continuing leakage of products and raw materials was one of the main reasons for the ongoing crisis.

In sum, North Korean private business is in a peculiar situation. It makes a significant contribution towards the survival (and even the modest growth) of the North Korean economy. However, due to government suppression and the absence of property rights, it is unlikely to ever produce the economic breakthrough that North Korean desperately needs.

Further Readings

Daily NK, Border Cities Love Chinese Yuan, Daily NK, April 17, 2013. (Or via Facebook.)

Christopher Green, Barriers to Entry: Cellular Telephony in the Digital DPRK, Sino-NK, November 25, 2012.

Christopher Green, In Mao we trust: the increasing use of Yuan in North Korea, NK News Pro, May 14, 2013.

Christopher Green, Yuanization Writ Large: Daily NK Confirms the Rush to RMB, Sino-NK, April 19, 2013.

Jang Jin-sung, The Market Shall Set North Korea Free, New York Times, April 26, 2013.

Andrei Lankov and Kim Seok-hyang, “North Korean Market Vendors: The Rise of Grassroots Capitalists in a Post-Stalinist Society,” Pacific Affairs 81, no. 1.

New Focus, A Rising Trend in the North Korean “Financial Industry,” New Focus International, June 5, 2013.

Korean Children’s Union delegates arrive for the 2012 rally | Image: KCNA

In reviewing the official handbook of the Boy Scouts of America, John Atherton writes, “The connection between a society’s view of its past and the world it creates for its youth has always been a close one.” If youth is, indeed, “a period of recuperation of outmoded forms of behavior,” then we might view the North Korean Children’s Union’s (KCU) revival over the past year as more than just an insight into the ways in which the youngest members of North Korea are mobilized in service of the Songun state. Looking at the structure, ritual, and uniforms (down to the signature red neckerchief) at last week’s congress for the Korean Children’s Union, Christopher Richardson, doctoral candidate at the University of Sydney, delves into the renewed significance of the organization just as the nation marches onward in the second year under its young leader. – Darcie Draudt, Assistant Editor

by Christopher Richardson

On June 6, 2013, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) celebrated the Seventh Congress of the Korean Children’s Union (KCU) in Pyongyang. A feature of North Korean civic life since the organization’s inception in 1946, the Children’s Union (조선소년단) has experienced a revival under the leadership of Kim Jong-un. This year repeated the mass spectacle of 2012, as delegates from across North Korea arrived in Pyongyang for a week of celebrations, publicly re-consecrating the commitment of Kim Jong-un to his youngest constituency, and binding children to the political aims of the state. Moreover, whilst the Union continues to engage in all its usual activities–singing, dancing, and parading–this is undoubtedly a Children’s Union for the songun era. On June 3, Rodong Sinmun reported that members of the Children’s Union in Hamhung had “donated multiple launch rocket systems” to the Korean People’s Army (KPA), as an example of the Union’s long-tradition of “Do Good” activities. [1] Not your typical Bob-a-Job, then. This post will consider the revival of the Korean Children’s Union under Kim Jong-un, and its continued importance in North Korean civic life.

All Songun, All Dancin’ : Exultation of the Leader through the KCU | Following 2012’s Day of the Sun centenary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, marked by Kim Jong-un’s first public address, and the disappointment of a failed missile launch, it was notable the DPRK chose the 66th Anniversary of the foundation of the Korean Children’s Union as the next focal point for mass public attention. Given the fragility of the economy, the need for agricultural reforms, failure of the Leap Day Agreement with the United States of America, and even fissures in the Sino-North Korean relationship, it could be argued there were more pressing matters than lavishly commemorating the work of the Children’s Union. In fact, the Children’s Union made, and continues to make, an ideal rallying point for a state in political and economic transition.

Korean Children’s Union delegates made the obligatory trek to Mansu Hill in Pyongyang at the 2012 rally | Image: KCNA

Officially, commemoration of last year’s anniversary was an unalloyed triumph. State media covered the story for a fortnight, telling and retelling stories of excited children and their parents, accompanied by images of immaculately attired boys and girls waving, smiling and laughing as they entered Pyongyang from every corner of the country, joining a rolling parade of tours, games, and rallies, culminating in the second public address of Kim Jong-un himself. In his speech on June 6, 2012, Kim celebrated the fact that:

There are in the world no such schoolchildren as those in the DPRK, millions in all, reliably growing to be pillars of the future… treasures more precious than a hundred million tons of gold and silver as they represent hope and future…. There were no such great fathers in the world as the Generalissimos [Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il] who put forward the children as kings of the country and devoted everything to the schoolchildren all their lives, regarding it as the most important affairs of the Party and state to show love for the younger generation.[2]

Continuing Pyongyang’s tradition of rhetorically partnering exultation and love with hate and the redemptive power of ultra-violence, the celebration coincided with an escalation of rhetoric against the Republic of Korea (ROK), culminating in threats to turn Seoul to ashes, following President Lee’s criticism of the April missile launch as a wasted opportunity to spend $850 million dollars on feeding children. The KCNA accused the ROK’s conservative press of defamation for comparing the Union to the Hitler Youth of Nazi Germany, declaring that Lee, “seriously slandered Korean children, misinterpreting everything in the world…a folly that could be done only by Lee, an imbecile and idiot ignorant of what the KCU is like.”[3] Perhaps the North protested too much, simultaneously broadcasting images of primary school children attacking effigies of the South Korean President and American soldiers on national television.

Scouting For Boys (and Girls): Rallying the Nation through its Children | Perhaps a less inflammatory, and more useful, analogy might have been made with the Soviet Young Pioneers, or the British scouting movement, the model upon which all subsequent children’s movements were founded.[4] Established in 1946, the Korean Children’s Union combines the civic-minded wholesomeness of Robert Baden-Powell’s scouting movement, with the military-first (songun) ideology of the contemporary North Korean state. The Children’s Union and Scouts even share the same motto, “Be Prepared!” Chapter Nine of Scouting For Boys had been entitled, “Patriotism; or, Our Duties as Citizens.” Opening with a romanticized account of the natural and inevitable evolution of Empire and the moral authority of the British state, Baden-Powell linked the psychological and physical regimentation of the scouting movement to the very survival of these political institutions, and the lives of the scouts themselves. The obligations, and even the pleasures, of scouting, were elevated to existential necessity. In rhetoric today better suited to Sandhurst than the primary schoolyard, Baden-Powell wrote that, “Peace cannot be certain unless we show that we are always fully prepared to defend ourselves…that an invader would only find himself ramming his head against bayonets and well-aimed bullets if he tried landing on our shores. The surest way to keep peace is to be prepared for war.”[5] Yet after the initial publication of Scouting For Boys, Baden-Powell’s exhortation that children, “be prepared to die for your country,” would be excised from subsequent editions of the text, reflecting a waning militarism in British society after the trauma of the Great War. Henceforth, the scouting motto became less a call to defend the British Empire than a call to personal and community responsibility.

The Korean Children’s Union donated multiple launch rocket systems, on view at a parade in Hamheung, South Hamgyeong Province, on June 1, 2013. | Image: Rodong Sinmun

In North Korea, on the other hand, time has not dimmed the patriotism and self-sacrificial militarism of the Children’s Union. Members pledge to “turn out as human bullets and bombs,” should the need arise.[6] To “Be Prepared” is to remain vigilant against the possibility of re-invasion by Japanese imperialists or re-launch of war with the United States and her puppet southern Korean ally, and the motto functions as a warning against the counter-revolutionary creep of anti-state ideology and culture. Thus, Kim Jong-un exhorted children to “become genuine juvenile revolutionaries and guards in the era of songun who safeguard the party like the heroes of the Anti-Japanese Children’s Corps and juvenile guerillas during the Fatherland Liberation War.”

Membership of the Union consists of every able-bodied child from the age of seven to approximately fourteen, the first of several formal associations a North Korean is expected to join, continuing upon graduation in mid-adolescence with entrance to the Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League. An important training ground for future elites, Kim Jong-il’s own path to political prominence began in the Children’s Union, elected to the role of union chairman of the First Pyongyang Middle School, aged thirteen. Organizationally, the Union is divided into various tiers, legislating multiple strata for surveillance, the inculcation of vertical leadership practices, and rehearsal of the state’s communitarian values. These tiers consist of nation-wide, regional, then school-wide administrative areas, dividing further into classroom detachments, and finally into sub-cells of between five and ten children. Ultimate oversight of the Union is controlled by the Party in Pyongyang, via the Science Education Department of the Party’s Central Committee, reflecting the prominence of the Union in the organization of the state’s cultural life.[7]

The Union reflects the performance culture of the North Korean “theatre state,” engaging a child’s desire to belong with a finely choreographed ritual atmosphere. As Andrei Lankov writes, “sonyondan [the Children’s Union] is a deliberately ritualistic organization which skillfully exploits children’s love of ritual, oaths, and parades. The sonyondan induction ceremony is an especially important event in North Korean school life…held in some public place, with the participation of teachers, parents and local officials. A party functionary reads the Solemn Oath, which is repeated by the children, then parents and teachers approach the children and present them with red neckties.”[8] The success of the Union partially resides in the state’s ability to create an organization that simultaneously feels special and apart, distinctively for the child, whilst also an integral organ of the body of state.

Over 3,000 North Korean children celebrated International Children’s day last week at the Mangyongdae Amusement Park on the outskirts of Pyongyang | Image: KCNA

Annually, there are three such induction ceremonies. The first is held on the February 16 birthday of Kim Jong-il, the second on the April 15 birthday of Kim Il-sung, and the third is held on the June 6 anniversary of the Union itself. There are also state prizes to be won. On the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the state distributed prizes to 211 members of the Union, rewarding those children best “equipped with Kim Il-sung’s revolutionary idea, the juche idea … distinguished examples in study, organizational life of the children’s union, socio-political activities and do-good-thing campaign to be reliable heirs to the songun revolutionary cause, knowledgeable, moral and healthy.”[9]

Red Tie, Blood Ties: Another Example of Songbun at Work | In many ways, the 2012 Union Anniversary was an early triumph for Kim Jong-un, generating power through the enchantment of a constituency easy to please, and eager to please. Yet beneath the surface symbolism remain the familiar fault-lines of contemporary North Korean society. The spectacle of mass unity depicted in state media concealed the fact that selection for entry to celebrations operated principally along class lines, with children from elite families competing for privileges. A source in Sinuiju suggested the extent to which biology has become bound to questions of songbun (genealogical status system) in shaping political identity, alleging that children seeking to attend celebrations in Pyongyang were subjected to physical examination, including blood tests.[10] Framing identity this way, the state propagates a notion that the bloodline of the Kims might be tainted by nothing more than the presence of biologically inferior children.

Likewise, those selected to attend were expected to provide their own garments, including the characteristic red tie of the Union. Thus, the celebration highlighted not only ideological and biological distinctions between children, but also related, and rapidly expanding, economic differences. Even amongst those able to attend, the quality of fabric used to sew suits and ties betrayed distinctions. The exacerbation of division and competitiveness amongst children is one of the central paradoxes of life in North Korea. On the one hand, such rivalry betrays the fundamentally non-egalitarian nature of contemporary society, yet on the other hand, such competitiveness fosters an uneasy cohesion, as outsiders yearn and strive to join the inside ranks.

Members of the Korean Children’s Union at the 2012 rally in Pyongyang | Image: KCNA

Despite such divisions, the Korean Children’s Union remains a powerful instrument of state. With its emphasis on discipline, community and a sense of belonging, it represents the most admirable virtues of North Korean culture, as well as its vices. Patriotism and austere civic-mindedness may be antiquated values to modern Western eyes, but often childhood memories remain the most favorable, even amongst defectors. Whilst Kim Jong-un’s youth is counted as weakness in much analysis of the North Korean future, it also brings opportunities to renew the social contract between the state and a generation of children from whom legitimacy must be derived. The Korean Children’s Union will remain a key institution for securing it.

[2] “Kim Jong-un Makes Congratulatory Speech at Joint Meeting of KCU Organizations,” KCNA (Pyongyang), 6 June 2012.

[3] “S. Korean Regime Hit for Defaming Celebrations of KCU Anniversary,” KCNA (Pyongyang), 19 June 2012.

[4] Catriona Kelly, Children’s World: Growing Up In Russia 1890-1991 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 547-555.

[5] Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting For Boys: The Original 1908 Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 277-8.

[6] “Korean Youth, Children Denounce Lee Myung Bak Regime’s Malignant Outbursts,” KCNA (Pyongyang), 5 June 2012.

[7] Min Cho-hee, “Political Life Launched by Chosun Children’s Union,” The Daily NK (Seoul), 7 June 2010. http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk02900&num=6466

[8] Andrei Lankov, North of the DMZ: Essays on Daily Life in North Korea (Jefferson: McFarland, 2007), 203.

[9] “Kim Il-sung Children Honor Prize Goes to Exemplary Children′s Union Members in Pyongyang,” KCNA (Pyongyang), 10 April 2012.

[10] Choi Song-min, “Medical Exams to Meet the Boss,” The Daily NK (Seoul), 6 June 2012. http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=9329

Sino-NK at Oxford: from left, Sabine van Ameijden, Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, Matthew Bates, Dr. Adam Cathcart, Dr. James Lewis, Dr. Robert Wistanley-Chesters, and Christopher Green. Photo Credit: Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

The month of May has been vibrant for the Sino-NK team. The Europe branch gathered at Oxford University to talk at the Engage Korea conference alongside former UK ambassadors, scholars and professionals focusing on the DPRK. Meanwhile, the Seoulites reported on all six panels at the 2013 Asan Plenum “New World Disorder.” Covering an academic spectrum from nuclear strategy to ideological narratives, we hereby brief you on the highlights.

Photo Credit: Engage Korea

CHRISTOPHER GREEN on Marketization and Yuanization | Speaking on the panel “International Roles in Economic Development,” Green parsed the impact of foreign currency on the lives of North Koreans and on regime stability. His essay “In Mao we trust: The increasing use of Yuan in North Korea” on this topic was published by NK News.

Foreign currency access is a crucial tool for the North Korean people not only because inflationary pressures are putting the North Korean Won (KPW) under increasing strain, but also because the North Korean government has demonstrated a readiness when necessary to take the assets of the majority for the benefit of a minority. In the case of North Korea, although other foreign currencies are also used for the purpose of storing value, the prevalence of the phenomenon in towns and cities along the border with China has led me to brand the process “Yuanization.”

There is rising demand for foreign currency in today’s North Korea. The phenomenon has been developing since 2002, and accelerating since 2009. It is clear that the growth in foreign currency usage is a direct outcome of a confiscatory state economic policy.

This is logical. DPRK citizens are inherently self-interested, meaning that when they first encountered evidence that domestic currency could no longer act as a reliable store of value, they began to seek other means of achieving the same end. As such, foreign currency access in the modern DPRK not only represents a positive contribution to human security in the country; now that it has become available to those outside the elite, it is also a very serious threat to the government of Kim Jong-un.

Photo Credit: Engage Korea

MATTHEW BATES on Information and Interpretations of the DPRK Economy | After moderating the panel on economic development, Bates gave an introduction to underlying sources of information on the North Korean economy and understanding the different interpretations of these sources by economists.

In making sense of differences in the interpretations of economists, the final section presented two archetypes of economists of the DPRK, preliminarily labelled the idealist-participant and the realist-analyst respectively. The essential difference is that the former are directly involved in (or at least strong advocates of) efforts to engage state institutions. Both play valid and important public roles.

The idealist-participant will focus on the purported intentions inferred from firsthand experience and official state media; whereas the realist-analyst will tend to focus on realities reported in refugee testimony. A related difference may be the sector of the economy focused on: the idealist-participant focuses mainly on the informal market and normal state economy observable first hand, whilst the realist-analyst was presented as typically giving greater emphasis to the military economy and illicit economic activities often closely related to central government.

Both types are motivated by humanitarian imperatives but the idealist-participant is most concerned with the preserving the humanitarian benefits of initiatives and the safety and well-being of their contacts, whilst the realist-analyst is motivated to give a picture of material conditions in the country as a whole that is true to the data and the testimony of those who they have been in a position to interview. An element of self-censorship may be inferred at least at the level of the questions chosen for consideration in publications. Insofar as this may be the case, such self-censorship should not be stigmatised as such caution reflects real risks to their contacts. This and related North Korean caution over the granting of visas to foreigners, are the key sources of divergence towards the two types.

Photo credit: Engage Korea

ADAM CATHCART on the China-DPRK Relationship | Our Editor-in-Chief was a panelist on North Korea’s foreign relations, addressing recent developments in the DPRK relationship with China. His talk was primarily based on a draft written for the RUSI Journal.

Beijing wants to preserve regional stability and is unable to withdraw from its alliance with North Korea, but was clearly displeased following Pyongyang’s nuclear tests this year. As pressure is put on bilateral ties, China is concerned about the lack of economic reform in North Korea, but also wary of a shifting of North Korea’s regional balancing in the region as well as weapons proliferation.

A recent comment by a prominent Chinese thought leader about North Korea possibly “giving nuclear weapons to the Uighurs” indicates how deep the distrust of the DPRK has become, and the return to a Chinese conception of North Korea as a Koguryo-like entity (the Koguryo had active relations with China’s inner Asian rivals) does not augur well for future relations.

The Chinese leaders have an intuitive understanding of North Korea as many of the top CCP officials have studied in Pyongyang or worked on cross-border trade issues in Liaoning and Jilin provinces. It also remains relatively easy for Chinese to travel to and work in North Korea, although cell phone access for Chinese in DPRK cities like Sinuiju remains a sticking point.

Cathcart’s talk delved into three common misunderstandings about the Sino-DPRK relationship, and the need for these to be clarified.

1) “China does not want to see its borders flooded with refugees.” Documents from Chinese Foreign Ministry archives from the Korean War era indicate that the PRC had established a system whereby it would absorb about 10,000 refugees into Liaoning and another 10,ooo into Jilin in the early 1950s. Moreover, China’s ability to secure its borders has sharpened considerably since then, as recent events on the Myanmar frontier would indicate. Estimates of 2+ million North Korean refugees flooding into the PRC in the event of domestic instability are massively overblown.

2) “Beijing fears North Korea’s collapse.” In some ways, China is much more concerned about North Korean boldness and the drive toward a forced reunification via war moves toward the South. North Korean strength and arrogance is as dangerous as North Korean weakness.

3) “China fears that the DPRK’s military development will stimulate a Japanese military revival.” China’s fears over Japanese rearmament are not inherently related to North Korea’s behaviour, and have been a core CCP point (both in domestic discussion and in external propaganda) since before the founding of the People’s Republic. The notion that the Chinese leaders are pinning their hopes for a peaceful Japan on the DPRK overlooks this history. In some ways, the CCP is just as worried that North Korea would spurn ties with China in favor of an opening to Japan, which Kim Jong-un certainly was flirting with this spring.

Photo Credit: Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

NATHAN BEAUCHAMP-MUSTAFAGA on Bureaucratic Politics and China’s North Korea Policy | In the context of China’s North Korea Policy, Beauchamp-Mustafaga addressed the evolution of the bureaucratic politics that drive policy-making, leverage and the US angle.

China’s policy management structure is increasingly bifurcated – centralized decision-making with decentralized implementation. This has created bureaucratic inertia, which entails that China’s policy will not change in the future despite the third nuclear test.

Chinese leverage over North Korea is separated into two distinct types – absolute leverage, which means China undoubtedly controls the survival of North Korea, and practical leverage, which means that China is unwilling to exert its full leverage thereby making its leverage less intimidating to Kim Jong-un. Chinese pledges and actions on sanctions enforcement might signal a temporary shift towards better enforcement but this is likely not a long-term change and will be a bargaining chip in the US-China relationship.

The US government has used a combination of cooperation and coercion in an attempt to induce a change in China’s policy, but historically coercion has been more successful for forcing a short-term but dramatic shift in China’s policy more in line with US goals on the Peninsula.

Photo Credit: Robert Winstanley-Chesters

ROBERT WINSTANLEY-CHESTERS on Ideology and Production of Landscape in the DPRK | Winstanley-Chesters finished his PhD thesis this spring at the University of Leeds and at this conference presented his research, addressing which role the natural world plays in the ideologically constructed North Korean world view.

This research has demonstrated a clear evolution of thinking about development and the environment in the DPRK, driven in large part by wider changes to the regime’s ideological and political framework. This thesis analysed evidence of an ideological, developmental and institutional approach in the DPRK which asserted that the state was a space of “lived” utopian fulfillment, a condition achieved in part because of a conscious environmental dimension to development policy.

Attention to institutional practice in the DPRK does, indeed, reveal a philosophical approach, derived from “Juché thinking,” which through its radical metaphysical and ‘humanocentric’ conception has tended to include environmental perspectives within its wider narratives of nationalism. This is not to assert that the DPRK’s ideology is cohesive or coherent in a way consistent with other ideological constructions. Brian Myers, for one, has revealed an important void within the DPRK’s ideological superstructure. In part, however, it is the sheer utopianism of the DPRK’s ideological approach which serves to compensate for such voids or failures in cohesion. The ideological orientation of institutional practice within the environmental sector of the DPRK, including the tideland reclamation and forestry sectors, sets practical projects within a framework of nationalism and the regime’s related presentational narrative. Thus the forests and tidelands of the DPRK become part of the wider ideological narrative of the nation as much as any human participant might be.

The specifics of this utopian narrative have been rewritten during the time period covered by this thesis. In the present day the ‘lived’ utopia evident in the DPRK’s presentational narrative is essentially exactly that, the space in which the DPRK currently “lives.” It is a geographic utopia of the everyday, the realised and the possible, rather than grander historical schemes of nature remaking. Landscape has not become a political project, rather, it might be argued, politics itself has become the landscape.

Photo Credit: Engage Korea

SABINE VAN AMEIJDEN on Economic Reform and SEZs | Van Ameijden discussed development in North Korea’s six Special Economic Zones (Mt. Kumgang, Kaesong, Sinuiju, Hwanggumpyong, Wihwa, and Rason) and their relevance for national economic reform.

Why do we not see more action in the SEZs? Beijing is eager to aid its neighbour towards Chinese-style reforms. Firstly, cheap labour, access to the East Sea and natural resources are enough reasons for Chinese businesses to explore investment opportunities in North Korea. Plus, economic development contributes to a more stable North Korea and preserving stability in the region is China’s utmost priority. Secondly, besides regional economic development, Beijing also has an interest in preserving North Korea as a geopolitical buffer zone against South Korea and the United States and therefore invests in its ally. China is not abandoning North Korea, this is supported by the fact that China still does not explicitly criticise North Korea’s provocations or that rising tensions in Korea do not seem to affect trade relations between China and the DPRK.

However, the government in Pyongyang seems to be reluctant to push these capitalist hubs forward. On the one hand, Chines-style reforms are a model to consider for Pyongyang to introduce a free-market economy while maintaining its government structure. On the other hand, the current leadership might fear that capitalist reforms might unleash forces it cannot control. Considering Pyongyang’s reluctance, perhaps these zones are not part of a grand reformist strategy, but merely an illustration of North Korea’s bilateral ties with its neighbours. Kaesong has been directly affected by inter-Korean relations and progress in Rason seems to be thanks to the Chinese efforts, not because North Korea is trying its best to promote itself as the next best investment opportunity.

Sino-NK’s Steven Denney, Darcie Draudt, and Brian Gleason with Escape from Camp 14 author Blaine Harden (second from left). Photo Credit: Steven Denney

ASAN PLENUM 2013 | The Seoul-based members of Sino-NK attended the Asan Institute for Policy Studies 2013 Plenum on April 30-May 1 as rapporteurs. Their session sketches are available on the Asan Institute website:

Steven Denney

• Confronting History in East Asia
• The Impact of Crisis on Asian Capitalism

Darcie Draudt

• Nuclear Northeast Asia
• Stability and Change in Post-Crisis Party Systems

Brian Gleason

• Human Security in North Korea
• The Post-Arab Spring Leadership Deficit

Image: China Daily

Every now and then, stories emerge that discuss the problem of North Korean drug production and international distribution. Many of these tales crop up in South Korean media, sometimes elsewhere, but rarely do any of them contain enough detail to be useful, and they also regularly fudge dates and times, seemingly in order to put the proverbial old wine in new bottles.

As such, most of us will have glossed over a March 12 report on North Korean drugs carried by China’s Global Times. Thankfully, Nick Miller didn’t. Here he gives the lowdown on that story, with no fudging of dates, just a broad range of sources, some from the South Korean media (so buyer beware!).

Rather than the drugs themselves, which Nick points out are not a new phenomenon, the key point here is this: coming as it did in the midst of a North Korea-China anus horribilis (or six months, at least), Pyongyang won’t have failed to note that China has again taken to talking about drugs in public.- Christopher Green, Co-editor.

High on Comradeship: China Publicizes the DPRK Drugs Issue

by Nick Miller

Drugged by Comrades: Jilin in the Firing Line | A lengthy March 12 article in China’s Global Times, ”Drugged By Comrades“ highlights the ever-present problem of North Korean drugs in China, and particularly at its epicenter, Jilin Province. In 2012, the Chinese government busted 2,400 suspected drug dealers in the area, it explains, and in 2011 more than 262 kilograms (over 577 pounds) of illicit drugs were taken in a Jilin province-wide campaign known as “Strong Wind”.

Nevertheless, Chinese border towns continue to struggle with the inflow of North Korean drugs, whose dealers employ the Tumen River to spread their illicit substances to Hunchun, Longjing, and Helong. Lu Chao, a North Korea expert at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that the problem of North Korean drug trafficking into China is a long-standing problem, but did also reconfirm that, while the issue is never openly discussed, measures are being taken to combat it.

Doped to the Eyeballs: Opium Poppies | Former North Korean spy and internal police force officer Ma Young-ae‘s job focused on tracking down drug smugglers and stopping small time drug dealers, something she did in order to free up space for  North Korean government-supported producers and dealers to dominate the market. At the time, the government was producing opium on a commercial scale but hid its fields from the general population, she said. In the 1980s, opium was apparently the drug of choice for the North Korean government.

Of course, the government’s own involvement runs deep, and even the country’s diplomats have their own history of  involvement in the drug smuggling industry. In 2004 the Turkish authorities arrested two North Korean diplomats there for trafficking 700,000 fenethylline, a synthetic drug, and utilizing their diplomatic number plates to transport the drugs around. Utilizing North Korean diplomats for drug trafficking was nothing new even then, it seems, and it sure isn’t now; in 2013, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo threw out an unverified report that North Korea had sent illegal drugs to its embassies in Eastern Europe in December 2012 to harvest the profits by April 2013. A North Korean defector supposedly claimed that the government had ordered each diplomat to raise $300,000 to prove their loyalty to the state by April 15^th, the birthday of Kim Il-sung.

China’s Constraints: Media as Alternative to Action | The most recent Chinese report is not the first from that country, either. In 2011, Chinese officials announced that they had seized $60 million dollars worth of illegal drugs from North Korea. This was the first time the Chinese government had acknowledged the problem publicly, and it looked a lot like a way to show frustration with the North Korean government and its role in drug trafficking. A diplomatic source told Donga Ilbo that North Korean drug trafficking and its production had incensed the Chinese government.

However, one of the key problems for China is the fact that its policy of aid and assistance to North Korea takes precedence over combating illegal drug production. While Chinese elites are likely keenly aware of the growing problem, their unwillingness to clamp down hard on North Korea for fear of risking its collapse is what keeps it from meeting with more success in its battle to end the drugs scourge. Poignantly,  Dr. Zhang highlights that the problem would likely only grow worse if North Korea took a punt on real economic reform, as trade between the two countries would increase and the volume of illegal drugs that North Korea produced would rise with it.

Rather, Dr. Zhang suggested that China ought to work with and provide technical assistance to the North Korea government to stop drug production. However, this suggestion is unlikely to work, either, as production is so intrinsically linked to North Korean elites. He also suggested that the Chinese government might focus on creating effective countermeasures and joint task forces with Russia, South Korea, Japan, and the US to help combat drug trafficking and strengthen counter-narcotics law enforcement within border provinces.

The spacious living room where all is revealed as per the script. | Image: Korean Central Television screen capture

With the recent repatriation of nine young North Koreans from Laos, the defector issue is once again highly politicized. Human rights groups go on the legal (and discursive) offensive to have defectors in China recognized as “refugees” rather than “economic migrants.” In California, it seemed likely that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was pressured by the US to revisit China’s policy on refoulement of North Korean refugees. Refugee policy is bound to be a key agenda item on South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s trip to Beijing on June 27-30. Against this encirclement, Pyongyang has mounted its own counter-offensive in an effort to redefine the defector narrative completely. By using press conferences by “redefectors” to the DPRK as domestic propaganda, the North portrays life in the capitalist South as Thomas Hobbes would the state of nature: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. In the first installment of “Pyongyang’s Evolving ‘Double Defector’ Propaganda,” Brian Gleason outlined the emergence of the double defector propaganda trope. In this second and final installment, Gleason deconstructs the motivations, symbolism, and significance of double defector press conferences. – Steven Denney, Managing Editor

Press Conference as Discursive Battleground: Pyongyang’s Evolving “Double Defector” Propaganda

by Brian Gleason

Double Defectors and Press Conferences: Pyongyang’s Evolving Strategy | In addition to the consistent themes emphasized in each successive redefection, Pyongyang’s propaganda department has recently expanded the scope of its press conference strategy to incorporate other nefarious influences and threats. The most recent double defector press conference (North Korean television coverage here) featured Kang Kyong-suk (60), Kim Kyong-ok (41), and “serial” redefector Lee Hyeok-chul (26), who reportedly returned to North Korea for the fourth time on April 3 by stealing a fishing boat on Yeonpyeong Island and somehow slipping past the South’s radar. Notwithstanding that Lee visibly forgets his lines multiple times during the press conference, his testimony is full of symbolism.

Supposedly, Lee’s rich elder brother, Lee Sang-chol—who runs a car company in South Korea and owns several cars himself—convinced Lee to defect to the South, only to quickly betray him. The older brother supposedly left Lee Hyeok-chul to sleep in a measly church dormitory while greedily demanding part of his government welfare check as compensation for helping to bring him to South Korea. Here, the elder brother, who should have put family first and look out for his younger sibling, selfishly betrayed his brother in the Machiavellian South.

Covering All Bases: North Korea’s Propaganda Strategy | The themes implicit in this tale of family betrayal are neither unique nor new: No story—real or contrived—or corner of Korean culture is safe from utilization for Pyongyang’s propaganda purposes. Notably, though no explicit reference is made, Lee Hyeok-chul’s story resembles the popular Chosun-era fairy tale (동화) of two brothers, Heungbu and Nolbu (흥부와 놀부). The younger brother, Heungbu, is kind, obedient and filially pious, never betraying the Confucian family hierarchy. Nolbu, the older brother, is selfish and cruel; instead of showing empathy and care for his younger brother, he abuses him. After the death of their parents, Nolbu kicks Heungbu and his family out of the house, greedily keeping the father’s assets for himself and ignoring the younger brother’s pleas for help. However, though the younger brother struggles to get by at first, it is the older brother who ends up begging the younger brother for forgiveness and assistance after finally falling victim to his own greed. Heungbu, being the noble and respectful younger brother, forgives his elder brother of his selfish and cruel behavior and takes him into his home.

Heungbu’s family out in the dark and broken, like many families in a cutthroat capitalist society, according to Pyongyang. | Screenshot from Hangul Animation’s retelling of Heungbu and Nolbu.

Pyongyang’s evolving strategy involves vilifying North Korean refugees in the South as Heungbu-like figures: selfish, greedy, untrustworthy, and thoroughly corrupted by South Korean society. As in the story, though, Pyongyang’s propaganda artists leave the door to redemption open: If you redefect, you will be well received, press conference and all.

Meanwhile, whether Heungbu or Nolbu, another key message is that all North Koreans must beware of evil South Koreans seeking to influence familial destinies. Lee Hyeok-chul’s brother was supposedly lured to the South with the help of pastor Chon Ki-won from Durihana (두리하나 선교회), a Seoul-based Christian organization that seeks to help North Korean escapees resettle in a safe place.

In light of Kenneth Bae’s arrest and recent imprisonment as an alleged Christian missionary spy who planned to carry out a destabilization operation codenamed “Operation Jericho,” the fact that Lee specifically identified the Durihana Mission pastor as a deceptive agent is a clear message to the North Korean people: Christian missionaries in particular cannot be trusted. It is also a clear warning to Christian missionaries that they are now firmly in Pyongyang’s crosshairs.

Even as heavy-handed warnings about missionaries continue, North Korea’s propagandists have demonstrated a keen ability to tailor their criticisms and propaganda to correspond with actual news and events in the South. In Lee Hyeok-chul’s testimony, he claimed that North Korean refugees questioned by the South Korean authorities at the Joint Interrogation Center were insulted and tortured. Though this seems highly unlikely, the timing was perfect: The story gained credence from the fact that the South Korean media reported on a April 27 press conference featuring the sister of the alleged North Korean spy (surnamed Yoo), who was arrested for espionage in January. Yoo’s sister claimed that while she was being questioned at the Joint Interrogation Center, she was subjected to physical abuse, sleep deprivation, and other violations of South Korean law.

Furthermore, as I mentioned in my previous post, the North’s characterizations of a hard knock life for North Korean refugees in the South can have some truth, since many North Korean refugees struggle with education gaps, prejudice, a lack of employment opportunities, financial scams, and emotional trauma, among other problems.[1] Evidently, Pyongyang is increasingly keen on using real information from the outside world so that North Koreans at home and abroad might begin to corroborate its propaganda (however vaguely) and subsequently accept its skewed version of reality.

NK News has picked up on this shift, highlighting a three-minute video clip published by Uriminzokkiri of former President Lee Myung-bak talking with South Korean citizens about domestic problems such as unemployment, high suicide rates, and a stagnant economy. The NK News article goes on to explain how “the video provides a logical presentation and a carefully phrased selection of slides that portray a convincing argument when compared with North Korea’s propaganda of the past.”

Comfortable Settings and Information Warfare: Elements of the Press Conference | The setting of the most recent press conference is also a key indication of Pyongyang’s evolving strategy. In obvious contrast to the previous conferences—which showcased a big room full of people, bright lights, reporters, cameras and microphones that almost seemed to portray the double defectors confessing their crimes in a courtroom setting—the latest press conference had a marginally more relaxed atmosphere, as if a small group were sitting in an (implausibly spacious) living room having an intimate (if rehearsed) chat.

Interestingly, the “chat” included pointed criticism of young female defectors such as those who appear on the Channel-A variety (예능) show “Now On My Way to Meet You (이제 만나러 갑니다),” which features female North Korean refugees in a relaxed studio atmosphere where they share (often heartbreaking) stories and partake in various activities like singing and dancing. The double defectors claimed the stories in the show are completely fake and scripted by South Korean propagandists, who pay the North Korean refugees on the show to spew their slanderous lies against the North. Once again, Pyongyang’s message disparages as greedy, duplicitous, and thoroughly corrupted these North Korean refugees who are willing to accept money to slander their country.

The broad range of nefarious influences and enemy agents assailed in the double defector press conferences reinforces the notion that Pyongyang views the defector/redefector issue as a prime opportunity to intensify its information warfare on multiple fronts. Kim Kyong-ok recalled that she was taken to South Korea “due to threat and appeasement made by Kim Kwang-chol, specialist in buying and tempting people wandering about China’s border area, via refugee camps in China and Thailand.” Here, Pyongyang’s propagandists essentially brand a defection broker/guide as an exploitative human trafficker, which serves to bolster the redefectors’ description of South Korea as “the worst tundra of human rights.”

Furthermore, although the influx of information into North Korea may cause the North Korean people to question human rights abuses and view North Korean refugees empathetically, the recent press conference and subsequent KCNA article aimed to convince the North Korean people that North Korean “refugees” are actually “criminals who fled to the South”[2] and were subsequently paid to participate in a smear campaign against the DPRK by “trumpeting about the human rights record.” Both women at the press conference claimed that the South has been conducting a coordinated campaign to bring more North Koreans to South Korea. Kang Kyong-suk quoted a man who was in charge of her case at the Joint Center for Interrogation of Defectors from the North as saying: “We are trying to increase the ranks of defectors from the north, even spending [a lot of] money in order to win back even a person of the north to our side….”

However, just in case the North Korean people might take away the wrong message —that the South must have a lot of money in order to pay all these defectors and conduct so many anti-North operations—Kim Kyong-ok was there to clarify, quoting a South Korean agent who had questioned her: “We keep bringing people like you to the south not because money is in surplus. It is aimed to disturb the mindset of the north and spread liberal democracy to it.”

In Need of Protection and Support: Societal Divisions Exacerbated by Double Defector Press Conferences | For decades, part of North Korea’s strategy in the battle for legitimacy over the Korean Peninsula has been to garner pro-North support among South Korean citizens, whom Pyongyang counts on to support favorable policies in South Korea’s domestic political debates. South Korea’s foreign-policy towards the DPRK has long been a wedge issue in the South, but in recent years a new debate has begun to emerge over how the South Korean government, and society as a whole, should treat North Korean refugees.

Many North Korean refugees are acutely aware of how they are perceived in the South, and feel a palpable tension with certain members of South Korean society, particularly in the older generations, who may view them suspiciously, criticize them for being a drain on South Korea’s budget (especially the pension system), or treat them with ambivalence or indifference. In one (extreme) example of how the North Korean refugee issue can divide South Korean society, South Korean politician Lim Su-kyung reportedly told a North Korean defector who happened to be dining in the same restaurant as her that he was a “son of a bitch,” a “senseless North Korean defector,” and a “bastard betrayer,” sparking a heated debate among South Korean netizens about North Korea and North Korean refugee issues.

Although the South Korean media coverage of North Korean refugees is generally supportive and sympathetic, Pyongyang’s double defector strategy aims to further inflame tensions by making South Koreans view North Korean refugees as ungrateful freeloaders or seditious spies. Many South Koreans see through Pyongyang’s double defector strategy, but the increasing amount of redefector press conferences will certainly add to the exasperation and outrage felt by some in the South.[3] As the North Korean refugees continue to face a variety of problems on numerous fronts, increasing protection and support from South Koreans and concerned members of the international community is clearly essential.

Further Readings

Brian Gleason, “Overwhelmed by Guilt: Pyongyang’s Evolving ‘Double Defector’ Propaganda,” Sino-NK, May 25, 2013.

Brian Gleason, “Double Defectors: Signifiers of Pyongyang’s Strategic Shift,” Sino-NK, December 6, 2012.

Gianluca Spezza, “What Double-Defection Tells us About the Prospects For Korean Unification,” NK News, August 9, 2012.

Was Choe’s (R) meeting with Liu Yunshan (C) a pre-Xi test? | image: CCTV screen capture

On May 23, Sino-NK analyst Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga provided a detailed and timely readout on the possible impact of KPA General Political Department head Choe Ryong-hae’s trip to Beijing. Channeling the multi-faceted back catalogue of  Stevie Wonder, he wondered whether Choe was merely “dressing up for a dressing down” or could, in fact, be about to perform the kind of diplomatic cartwheels needed to seal the deal on a Beijing summit for Kim Jong-un himself. Now, Nathan takes a look back at the Choe show, the Mandiant Intelligence Center Report, and ponders how Choe’s pseudo-tributary diplomatic outreach might affect the impending Xi-Obama summit in California.- Christopher Green, Co-editor

Salvaging a Misstep? Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae in Beijing

by Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga

Choe in China: A Short Summary of the Trip | Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae’s three-day visit to Beijing was widely seen as the first step in repairing Sino-North Korean relations, but obvious disagreements remain over the future of North Korea’s nuclear program. The highlight of the visit was Choe’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which he gave Xi a handwritten letter from Kim Jong-un.

China did make progress toward enticing the North back to the negotiating table, and there were no public announcements of agreements rewarding the North for this concession. Choe met several high-profile Chinese leaders, including International Liaison Department head Wang Jiarui, Party School President Liu Yunshan, Vice Minister of the Central Military Commission Gen. Fan Changlong and, most importantly, Xi Jinping. China also kept up with past precedent by dragging Choe to an industrial park in Beijing; an obvious, if so far fruitless, attempt to encourage the North to adopt Chinese-style economic reforms.

The two sides signed off the visit in differing tones on the North Korea nuclear issue, in spite of the last moment face-to-face meeting. The Chinese press relayed comments from Choe whereby “The DPRK is willing to make joint efforts with all parties to appropriately resolve related issues through multilateral dialogue and consultations like the Six-Party Talks, and maintain peace and stability on the peninsula.” Choe first signaled a willingness to return to talks in his meeting with Politburo Standing Committee member Liu Yunshan, and followed-up those comments in conversation with Xi the next day. The meeting with Xi was not announced until it was over, suggesting the possibility that the meeting itself was conditional upon a satisfactory performance in earlier meetings with Wang and Liu. If so, Choe’s statement to Liu on talks likely bought him the meeting with Xi. Continuing his strongly worded statements since the North’s third nuclear test, Xi told Choe that “The denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and lasting peace on the peninsula is what the people want and also the trend of the times.”

Stiff-armed handshake: Choe Ryong-hae meets Xi Jinping in his civilian clothes | image: Xinhua

At Their Lowest Ebb: Chinese Academics Explain the Significance of Choe’s Visit | However, this apparently positive step toward the negotiating table seemed to stop at the border, as the North Korean media did not echo the renewed willingness to resume negotiations over the DPRK’s nuclear program. In a sense it was reminiscent of the failed “Leap Day agreement” between the United States and North Korea, when the two nations published differing accounts of the February 29, 2012 agreement to freeze the North’s missile and nuclear programs in exchange for US food aid. Thus, while the comments in the Chinese media are a welcome sign of both positive steps by North Korea and the reappearance of successful Chinese leverage, substantial action by North Korea is needed before we can start writing talking points for the next round of Six-Party Talks.

Chinese academics continue to be skeptical of the North’s goodwill and the sincerity of its offer to return to dialogue. Renmin University Professor Shi Yinhong, following initial reports that Choe would not be meeting with Xi, said that the visit had been “downgraded” and was “primarily aimed at repairing ties which are at their lowest ebb since the Korean War ended in 1953.” Shi’s colleague, Professor Jin Canrong, forecast that China would push for North Korea to return to the negotiating table, which is exactly what happened.

Peking University Professor Zhu Feng did not expect the visit to yield an invite for Kim himself because of China’s firm stance on denuclearization: “A precondition for the [Xi-Kim] summit would be Kim vowing to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons and return to the Six-Party Talks, which he wouldn’t do.” After Choe left Beijing, Professor Zhu said that the visit didn’t even mend relations, and insinuated that China is conditioning Kim Jong-un’s visit on the DPRK actually returning to denuclearization talks.

If true, this will provide a good test for both Kim’s assessment of his need for Beijing in comparison to his need for nuclear weapons, as well as Beijing’s willingness to hold firm on its demands—if North Korea never returns to the Six-Party Talks, will Kim ever be allowed to visit Beijing? Furthermore, the absence of agreements or statements on economic cooperation may reflect China’s continued displeasure at North Korea, and suggests that it will take another high-level visit to finally arrange the new North Korean leader’s long-awaited inaugural visit to Beijing.

However, Professor Zhang Liangui of the Central Party School had possibly the most important statement of all the Chinese academics as he appraised Choe’s visit. He saw it as the North trying to salvage its misstep:

The North’s provocations backfired and have pushed China and the US closer together, resulting in more frequent high-level exchanges between the two countries. So it is trying a new way to sabotage Sino-US ties.

More importantly, Zhang believes that “The former administration always put ensuring the peace and stability of the Korean Peninsula in first place, while the current administration sets the denuclearization of the peninsula first.” This is a strong signal from a party insider that the Xi administration is approaching the North Korea issue with a different set of priorities than the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao administration. Placing denuclearization first on the agenda has long been the US stance and would be a welcome, if unexpected, change in China’s approach, although this would still not amount to China “abandoning” North Korea.

Xi Jinping meets President Obama again later this week, but this time as President Xi | image: White House capture

Engaging North Korea, Cyberattacks Be Damned: China’s Efforts to Get North Korea to the Negotiating Table | The Chinese government’s renewed diplomatic push on North Korea seems tied to Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit to California for his first official meet and greet with President Obama. While we initially expected the Pentagon’s report directly accusing the Chinese government and military of cyberattacks on the United States to stop any Chinese cooperation on the North Korea issue, China’s unexpected response may reveal Beijing’s priorities in the US-China relationship. Further, we predicted China would be indignant over the accusation and seek to exact some revenge on the United States, pinpointing cooperation over North Korea as an easy target for Chinese displeasure. However, evidently this was wrong because China appears to be very forcefully trying to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table.

What explains this unexpected response? One explanation is that the Chinese government was actually not that upset over the cyberattack accusations, while Xi Jinping does have a genuine desire to pressure North Korea towards denuclearization. Another is that China has decided to ignore the Pentagon’s allegations and wants progress on North Korea as a sign of goodwill in improving US-China relations.

A more pessimistic explanation is that the PLA has judged that cyberattacks against the United States as so vital to China’s security that the PLA must continue them. Indeed, the PLA has reportedly restarted the attacks after a lull following the Mandiant report. In order to continue the cyberattacks without damaging overall US-China relations, the Xi administration may have decided to trade progress on North Korea in exchange for the United States turning a blind eye to the cyber issue. The Obama administration will no doubt reject this attempt to use North Korea as a bargaining chip and will press China over the cyber issue. It remains to be seen if the Xi administration’s newfound pressure on North Korea will continue after Xi Jinping’s summit with President Obama, which would indicate a true change in policy, rather than a mere change in bargaining tactics.

Further Reading:

Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, “A Choe in the Land of La La: Reviving China-North Korea Relations,” Sino-NK, May 23, 2013.

Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, “Bargaining Over North Korea,” CHINA-US Focus [online], May 21, 2013.

A Party apparatchik informs workers of the key tenets of the Byungjin line | Image: Rodong Sinmun

At a momentous meeting of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee earlier this year, the “Byungjin line (병진로선)” replaced the “Military-first line (선군로선)” as the main strategic and political organizing principle of the DPRK. As a result of this paradigmatic shift in priorities, the state ceased to be one in which all economic and political affairs were to be subordinate to the needs of the Korean People’s Army as a matter of course. Instead, thanks to complete and irreversible victory in the battle to acquire nuclear arms, it became one able to reduce military expenditure and concomitantly increase the percentage of GDP devoted to cultivating the broader People’s Economy (인민경제).

Or at least, that is what optimism asks that we believe. However, a history of unfulfilled propaganda rhetoric speaks to an alternative hypothesis: that the Byungjin line is little more than another tired, and ultimately tiring, trope in the politics of the DPRK: a foggy notion, vague enough at its core to inspire confusion at home and abroad but ultimately distinct enough to persuade international donors that the Kim government is serious about chasing down economic growth and food self-sufficiency at last.

One thing is clear, however: both these visions of a future DPRK require, nay outright demand, environmental narratology. It won’t have escaped the notice of analyst Robert Winstanley-Chesters that, when he visited the site of a new ski resort being built in Gangwon Province just last week, Supreme Commander Kim Jong-un took time out to emphasize strongly that “마식령스키장을 건설하면서 생태환경을 보존하고 오염시키지 말아야 한다고 강조하시였다,” or, “While you are building the Masik Pass Ski Resort, you must preserve the ecological environment and prevent pollution.”

Here, then, in the first part of a major new research project for Sino-NK, Winstanley-Chesters turns to look in greater detail at “the environment under the Byungjin line.” Forward! – Christopher Green, Co-editor.

Treasured Swords: Environment under the Byungjin Line

Part 1: Filial Inheritance

The “Byungjin line,” not to mention its accompanying “minaturized, lightened, diversified, and precise nukes,” is everywhere these days. And with good reason: ”Byungjin” surely merits examination and reportage, for it marks a vitally important, even definitive, change of emphasis at the dawn of the Kim Jong-un era.

Over the next month I plan to delve deeper into this new strategic line, building a systematic framework for understanding the place of the environment in the new theorization, and the new theorization itself. It is already clear that one key aspect of this is the Sepho Grassland reclamation project. Emblematic of a shift in developmental paradigms of land reclamation and rehabilitation in North Korea, Sepho is essential to the environmental narrative of the byungjinist state. Comprehending and rendering Sepho will be one key to constructing a framework for broader analysis.

But there is work to do beforehand. Just as North Korean narratives are often cohesive and encapsulatory, they can also be  utterly incomprehensible without contextualisation. It would surely be impossible to engage with Sepho and the strategies of land use it may represent without this contextualizing effort. Therefore, this opening essay establishes the context for the framing of the Byungjin developmental and environmental paradigm, the better to understand the place of Sepho in modern byungjinist North Korea later on.

The Rural Theses: Kim Il-sung Prepares the Soil | The arrival on April 27, 2012 of Kim Jong-un’s first published work, “On Effecting a Drastic Turn in Land Management to Meet the Requirements for Building a Thriving Socialist Nation,” brought with it the intriguing notion that a youthful leader would see land management as the ideal focus for his first theoretical output. However, commentators could initially do little more than note the fact of its arrival and their interest in its existence. Writing at NK Economy Watch, Curtis Melvin commented that the text “was not posted[,] but will no doubt be offered for sale to Pyongyang tourists before too long….”

However, this has since changed. It is rare for a full version of such a text to emerge in an accessible way, especially in English translation, but that is the case with this one, courtesy of Dermot Hudson’s Association for the Study of Songun Politics UK. (When KCNA features an article entitled “British organization heralds the publication of Kim Il-sung/Kim Jong-il/Kim Jong-un’s work,” there is no need to read it to establish which organization is responsible.) This allows for something not often possible within analysis of environmental or developmental matters in North Korea: an exercise in comparative review of foundational statements by all three Kims.

Although Kim Il-sung frequently spoke on the management of land and environmental resources, this author holds that his truly key texts come from 1964, the year of the “Rural Theses.” “On Strengthening Land Management” and “Let Us Make Effective Use of Mountains and Rivers” mark perhaps the first cohesive and coherent framing of environmental management issues in North Korea.

A close reading of “On Strengthening Land Management” serves to reinforce the unification of purpose, understanding and approach. Indeed, perhaps a better title would have been “On Strengthening Management of The Land.” Kim Il-sung’s theorization includes all aspects of developmental approach, from the stocking of reservoirs with fish on to road construction and then to the planting of mulberry trees.

Within this framework, nature and the environment are subject to conservation and management, but only as elements and modes of economic possibility and productivity: “Forests are valuable resources of the country. Creation of rich forest resources and their effective protection and management are of great significance in developing the national economy….”[1] Kim Il-sung’s vision of environmental conservation does not allow for non-productive, wild spaces, for nature as a participant element by and of its self. “Let Us Make Effective Use of Mountains and Rivers” is the same, envisaging mountain-scapes as places of developmental necessity and economic capacity: “…Using mountains does not mean only living by them. In order to use them fully it is necessary to create forests of economic value before anything else.…”[2]

Passing the Baton: From Daean to the Three Revolutions |  In the era of the Rural Theses, theoretical developments focused on the environmental aspects of institutional strategy and were, aside from this focus on productivity and output, primarily concerned with the incorporation of “authentic” political and ideological activities into the sector. Management strategies such as the “Daean Work Movement” and the “Three Revolutions Teams” sought to embed Korean Workers’ Party policy and theory within all working activities and structures. Kim Il-sung stated: ”… Daean work system is the best system of economic management. It enables the producer masses to fulfill their responsibility and role as masters and to manage the economy in a scientific and rational….”[3]

I will cover “Daean” and “Three Revolutions” and their utilization to support radical institutional shift during this era in more detail in the next part of this research project, but here there is no time: simply, the Daean plea for rationality led directly to the key developmental text of the Kim Jong-il era.

Kim Jong-il: Throwing Livelihoods into the Mix | Kim Jong-il’s output is notable primarily for its focus on cultural product and production, and as a canon of literature is both less coherent and effusive than that of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il’s assembled works as published by the Foreign Languages Publishing House are missing many volumes in English translation. However, Kim did publish several pamphlets intended to act as key guides to environmental matters: notably, “Land Management” from 1985 and the text which this author regards as the Dear Leader’s fundamental message to the sector: “On Improving Land Management” from 1989.

Although in later years Kim Jong-il would issue utterances that would adopt a more recognisably conservational approach, their deep connection to particular projects casts doubt upon their right to a place within the developing canon. In some ways, “On Improving Land Management” can be regarded as derivative of earlier texts authored by Kim Il-sung, for example “… Forests are a valuable natural resource, and important means of protecting the land…;”[4] however, there are also some new theoretic developments between Father and Son.

In particular, Kim posits raising the general standard of living within the environmental realm, stating: “…management of forests will bring about a steady increase in forest resources… and improve the standard of living of the people…” and expresses the desire for greater institutional control over natural resources and a definite separation of urban and rural spacial forms, “…the master plan [for land management]… should be drawn up in the principles of avoiding encroachment of farmland, refraining from enlarging the cities excessively….” However, the functional and “rational” exploitation of environmental resources continues as well, and appears to be the key philosophical theme within “On Improving Land Management.”

Amplified Legacy: Kim Jong-un as Holistic Environmentalist? | Kim Jong-un’s “On Bringing About a Revolutionary Turn in Land Administration with the Requirements of the Building of a Thriving Socialist Country” (“revolutionary” somehow substituted for “drastic” at some point during translation), which was seemingly presented at a meeting of senior Korean Workers Party officials on April 27, 2012, arrived as part of a push to embed the “young Generalissimo’s” authority and authenticity in a framework of posthumous hagiography of both previous leaders. Thus “President Kim Il-sung and General Kim Jong-il, peerless patriots and benevolent fathers of the people, always paid close attention to land administration and devoted painstaking efforts to developing the rivers and mountains of the country in an excellent way.” [5] It is apparent also that key themes from previous developmental eras still guide the text and its underlying approach, as much as the authoritative guidance of the deceased Kims:  ”… Land Administration is a patriotic undertaking of lasting significance for achieving the prosperity of the country and a noble undertaking for creating an excellent base of living for the people….” However, at some 19 pages long the text of Kim Jong-un’s “Land Administration” matches Kim Il-sung’s statements of the 1960s and 1970s for its extent and range, containing space not only for covering purely environmental or agricultural matters such as forest cover or agricultural output, but also reviewing policy direction on diverse issues such as tidal reclamation, road construction and urban planning, railway maintenance and aquatic resources.

What is more intriguing and distinctive about the latest document is the embedding of many of the more conservational and mitigational themes developed during the later years of Kim Jong-il’s reign: for example, “We should make good arrangements to plant trees and conserve forests to cover the country with trees and flowers.” While there are, alas, no calls to commit further to the UNFCCC process or other external environmental agendas, the statement also connects North Korean environmental and developmental efforts with those of the wider world: “In the sector of land administration and environment conservation there are many things to be introduced from among the world trends and foreign countries’ advanced technologies….”

But more than simple restatement of these themes, which in embryonic form have appeared elsewhere in North Korean environmental narratives in recent years, within the text there appears greater evidence of a thematic change within Kim Jong-un’s conception of what nature and the environment might possibly represent or manifest in society itself, and what function it might serve in the institutional framework of a political space focused on economic capacity.

One key difference between developmental approach and theoretics between North Korea and other nations in its neighbourhood is its seeming inability to conceive of environmental or natural space as anything other than a conduit for production and capacity increases, discounting its usage within frameworks of leisure or consumption.

Yet Kim Jong-un appears not merely capable but also willing to internalise the conservational paradigm so that shared environmental space might be used and experienced by citizens and residents on its own simple terms, providing abstract value in its amenity: “… environment and nature conservation is an important and responsible undertaking to make mountains and rivers of the country more beautiful, conserve and increase natural resources, protect peoples’ health and provide them with a better living environment….”

Too Early to Say: Waiting for More Data | We need to see more publications from Kim Jong-un on environmental and developmental matters to come to any realistic conclusions, and only the briefest of reviews of his first published text is possible here. The reader will also be deprived, for the moment, of knowledge of Kim Jong-un’s thoughts on issues of moment such as railway construction or ventilation devices. However, from this brief review of Kim’s potential foundational document in the field of environmental development, I believe it is possible to discern an outline of the Byungjin line developmental-theoretic approach.

Of course, this is in some way an exercise in homage to the strategies of leaders Dear and Great, incorporating many of their principles and conceptions. But at the same time, Kim Jong-un’s text incorporates developments from the conservational paradigm and connects environmental developments in North Korea with those of the wider world. Both of these elements ultimately allow for the conception of environmental or natural resource as a supportive “sword” of state to combine with a mitigative or environmentally protective tendency that it is possible to categorise as a “treasure.”

Will it be institutional capability and practice that ultimately allow for a Byungjin era combination in the environmental/developmental field, beginning a vital disconnection and reconnection of spatial form and relation from the simply productive and exploitive to one determined by experience and incorporation? Is the Sepho Grassland reclamation project the literal geographic space in which such a combination will be physically enacted? To look forward, one must always look back.

To be continued…

Next Post:

“Treasured Swords” Environment under the Byungjin Line, Pt 2: (Re)Construction Time Again–Institutions and the “Rural Theses” of 1964.  The pair of postings which follow will provide the context for developments at Sepho through reviewing institutional approach in the environmental sector at similar moments of strategic shift, the first in 1964 following the presentation and articulation by Kim Il-sung of the ‘Rural Theses on the Solution to the Socialist Rural Question’, and the second in 1980 following the new environmental line articulated by the Fifth Party Congress.

Tom Morrison and his counterpart at the Ministry of Agriculture Kim Chol Hun stand in front of a monument commemorating realignment of major canals for irrigation. Together they worked on the first major canal realignment in 1998 to reduce the need for electric pumping and to use gravity, allowing Pyongyang to preserve electricity for other uses. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation helped design the project, whilst financial assistance was provided by the OPEC Fund | Source: Tom Morrison

The DPRK’s ability to undertake the broad approach to economic reform taken by China and Vietnam has been the subject of some debate. The Chinese government has been very keen to emphasize the relevance of its own experience, gradually liberalizing the economy beginning with the agricultural sector, and initially allowing foreign investment only into Special Economic Zones, thus permitting economic development under authoritarian leadership. Meanwhile, the North Korean government, wary of excessive dependence on a single relationship, has highlighted Vietnam’s broadly similar experience as a model.

But it has often been understood that the DPRK economy, having already undergone far greater industrialisation (however dilapidated) and urbanisation than had China and Vietnam at the start of their reforms, is structurally too different for these specific models to be applicable.

In particular, it has been understood that the DPRK has insufficient arable land to be food self-sufficient, let alone for agricultural reform to support economic take-off in the way that it did in those countries. In order to feed its population, it has therefore been argued, the DPRK ought to adopt a more Eastern European model of socialist transition, boosting its industrial export capacity through foreign direct investment.[1]

But in light of extensive international cooperation with the DPRK on agriculture in the new millennium, are the underlying assumptions about the potential of North Korea’s agricultural capacity still well founded? To explore this vital and most pertinent question I interviewed Tom Morrison, an agriculturist and agronomist with experience in over 40 countries who is of the opinion that the DPRK can indeed achieve food self-sufficiency.

Morrison has to date conducted 13 missions to the DPRK over the last 14 years, most recently in October 2012, working for such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Food Program, as well as the OPEC Fund and the European Commission. This is part one of a three-part interview. – Matthew Bates, Sino-NK Economics and Trade Analyst

Prospects for Food Self-Sufficiency in the DPRK: Interview with Tom Morrison

by Matthew Bates

Matthew Bates [MB]: Please could you explain how you believe that the DPRK can achieve food self-sufficiency? Is there not a shortage of arable land?

Tom Morrison [TM]: About 15 percent of the DPRK is arable land. This is often cited, falsely, as being comparatively low and even the prime cause of the DPRK’s food deficit, but lots of other countries achieve national food self-sufficiency with less. China and Burma also have 15 percent arable land and they are self-sufficient.  Australia is a big food exporter with 6 percent arable land. Indonesia has achieved food security with 11 percent arable.

Taking all the countries of the world, only 10.6 percent of land is arable, so the DPRK’s share is well above average.

When arable land per capita is taken into account, the DPRK also fares quite well at 0.11 hectares[2] per capita (ha/caput), the same as Italy, and well above China at 0.08 ha/caput, and Japan at 0.03 ha/caput. China famously feeds one-fifth of the world’s population with only one-fifteenth of the world’s arable land and in recent history has either exported food or imported relatively little.

So right at the beginning of this answer it is necessary to explain in this tedious detail that the DPRK has more than adequate arable land to achieve national food self-sufficiency.

If one accepts this, then the probable main cause of the DPRK’s food deficit is low crop yields. And they are indeed low: historically, regionally and globally. Average yields of paddy rice, the national staple, in 2011 were 3.9 t/ha compared to about 8 t/ha in the 1980s, but had averaged less than 3 t/ha in the late 90s.

When I explained to the Minister of Agriculture in 2002 that in my opinion yields of 15t/ha were achievable she laughed in disbelief but accepted the challenge that the funds of IFAD (the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development) should be used to send some farm managers on a study tour to northern Italy, which has similar rice-growing conditions to the DPRK. On their return they told her that 15t/ha was indeed being routinely achieved on leading farms, though the Italian national average was about 6t/ha. The national average yield in Australia is 10.8 t/ha. The world average yield was 4.3t/ha in 2010, but is not really comparable because it includes tropical as opposed to Japanese rice.

MB: What is the difference between what agriculturists refer to as “Japanese” rice (as grown in the DPRK) and “tropical” rice?

TM: Japanese rice is the temperate cousin of (more accurately a different sub-species from) tropical rice that is common in much of the rest of east Asia. It is longer growing, higher yielding (potentially by a factor of about three providing it is properly fertilised, unlike tropical rice it has a high response to manuring), and, again by contrast to tropical rice, has only moderate tolerance (as evidenced for example by tillering) to unfavourable conditions. It should not be compared, at least in yield, agronomic,[3] and (outside the DPRK context) international market price terms, to tropical rice.

These agronomic characteristics are mentioned here because, as will be seen, they have relevance to current farming conditions; and the farming conditions and shortage of basic inputs that the DPRK is now experiencing would not have the same impact on food security in a country growing tropical rice.  The DPRK now has lower yields than any other country that grows Japanese rice.^[4]

Rice varieties available in the DPRK are generally good and up-to-date and are supported by the International Rice Research Institute.

Available varieties of the two other main staples, maize and potato, are also excellent. IFAD [the UN’s International Fund for Agricultural Development] and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) have assisted the DPRK to achieve more-or-less state-of-the-art potato breeding, and disease free seed potatoes are distributed annually to each county. Maize is 100 percent hybrid, something that many countries have yet to achieve. The DPRK is justly proud of its “seed revolution.”

Government has a determined philosophy of national self-sufficiency and food security. Agriculture still produces 21 percent of GDP and employs nearly 40 percent of the population. In terms of national priorities, agriculture and food security take second place only to the army and national defence. Huge resources are diverted into farming, especially urban workers who are bussed out to rural areas during labour peaks.

MB: How significant are the natural disasters to the DPRK’s food shortages?

TM: It is true that 80 percent of the annual rainfall occurs in July and August. It seems also true that extreme weather events such as winter cold, spring droughts, and the July/August deluges, are more frequent and more severe as a result of climate change.

But it is also true that the DPRK’s soils and catchments have been made more vulnerable by many years of mismanagement so that the effects of these extreme weather events are more severe. One obvious example of this is that potato seed stores on individual cooperative farms are either not deep enough or not sufficiently well designed to preserve potato seed until the spring.

“80 percent of annual rainfall occurs in July and August. Poor farming practices and deforestation of the hills means severe flooding leading to many deaths each year (these people aren’t dead, they’re just acting). If this is what happens to people, imagine the damage to crops and livestock…” | Source: Tom Morrison

One less obvious example is that soils and catchments are so exhausted or denuded that they cannot absorb the July/August rains as they could in the past. This leads to erosion, raised river beds, and flooding of the rice paddies. In 2012 much of the rice was inundated for long enough for it to die through drowning. Proper soil and catchment management would have almost completely mitigated these natural disasters. 

This argument has already been won. The DPRK’s Academy of Agricultural Sciences, its Ministry of Agriculture and the international donor community agree that Conservation Agriculture (CA) should be government policy, and it now is. For brevity, this is not the place to elaborate what Conservation Agriculture is and the effect it has, but Google it and follow the FAO leads and you can find out that this is successful and the basis of the future of agriculture in the DPRK (as well as much of the rest of the world).

MB: So why is the DPRK in persistent chronic food deficit, even after the extraordinary (and impressive) efforts to achieve food self sufficiency in the year of Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday, 2012?

TM: First, many in the international donor community, including myself, would say it’s the system. Farm managers and cooperative farms are generally not poor. They have the won (local currency) to purchase everything they need. But they don’t have the dollars, euros, or more practically the Chinese yuan. Even if they did, only a few have the knowledge on how and where to spend them.

More and more cooperative farms are processing the grain they grow and this means they are allowed to sell the produce on the local market. (“Processing” in this context usually means making noodles from maize, or tofu or oil from soya. North Korean farm managers can then sell it to whoever they want and put the cash into the cooperative farm.)

Added to that, there are rumors that some cooperative farms will be allowed to sell primary produce on the open market. When formally asked about this during the 2012 Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP)’s Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (CFSAM), the DPRK Ministry of Agriculture’s reply was that there would be no formal announcements about it—but they didn’t deny it.

Two good first steps would be for cooperative farms to accumulate won, and then to be allowed to convert some of those won into foreign exchange, but even if these steps happened tomorrow, it would take a few years to build the supply chains to deliver the required farm inputs.

It is a shortage of these farm inputs that is the main reason for low yields: a) farm mechanization, b) diesel fuel, c) fertilizer and lime, and d) agro-chemicals. These four are discussed individually below, roughly in order of importance. None is too difficult to remedy, but it is expensive to do so, as all other countries have also found.

a) Farm Mechanization

There is no national policy on farm mechanization, or at least none that has been revealed to the international donor community that has been asking for one since the early 2000s. The evidence supports the view that there is no coherent mechanization policy or strategy. Shortly after the DPRK was created there was early and heavy emphasis on high levels of farm mechanization. This was, and will continue to be sensible because of the short growing season and the need, at least in some areas and some situations, for double cropping (i.e. two crops in a short growing season meaning short turn-around time between crops, thus high mechanization).

But the tractor technology then and now is 1930s vintage, slow, inefficient and heavy on fuel consumption. Moreover, the maintenance philosophy of that tractor technology is in no way suited to modern tractors, and fuel supplies are insufficient in terms of quality for modern tractors.

Yet we see a few modern tractors (western or Chinese-western hybrids) working on farms, mainly the result of foreign aid projects. Without the spare parts and quality diesel fuel supply chains in place, the life of these tractors is low. The result is that an estimated 80 percent of land is cultivated by oxen. This has certain advantages, but they cannot deliver the capacity, speed and quality that are required.

“…And even rice can drown.” | Source: Tom Morrison

b) Diesel Fuel

Worldwide, 80 percent of diesel engine failures are caused by poor quality fuel. Nowhere is this more evident than in the DPRK. There is a western embargo on diesel fuel because of fears that diesel supports the military and navy, and its scarcity is evidenced by the large proportion of lorries, and occasionally tractors, in rural areas powered by wood gas. In spite of the embargo, some diesel fuel is obtained by the government and made available to farms, but generally only 50 percent or 60 percent, rarely 70 percent of requirements. This evidence I have gathered directly in interviews with farm managers almost every year since 2000. Moreover, as already mentioned, the quality is low in terms of sulphur content, and water and dust contamination.

c) Fertilizer and lime

The Republic of Korea used to provide fertilizer free of charge to the DPRK but that stopped in 2010. China provides some on commercial terms. Domestic production of nitrogen fertilizer is slowly increasing but depends on oil and electric power both of which are short. There are some local deposits of phosphate rich soil but not phosphate rock that is the usual basis for phosphate fertilizer. The whole fertilizer picture is quite complicated but the end result is that farms receive grossly inadequate amounts of fertilizer annually.

Moreover, until Conservation Agriculture is more widely adopted, the fertilizer that is supplied will not be sustainable. Nitrogen (N) and potassium (K) will be leached from soils that have lost their ability to store and hold them, and phosphate, which does not leach to the same extent, will be removed, along with nitrogen and potassium, as part of the current practice of whole crop removal at harvest. Most threshing is centralised at farm HQs, not in the field, because that’s where the electric power is, and not all the crop residues are composted and returned to the fields.

Lime has to be discussed together with fertilizer, and the current lime deficit is as serious as the fertilizer deficit itself. The reason is that soil acidity has been steadily increasing since the late 1990s, and this reduces the effect of fertilizer. To increase soil pH to a level where fertilizer can become effective means increasing the amount of diesel allocated to cooperative farms so lime can be hauled from the quarries, and so that coal can be hauled to burn it. Over the last decade most cooperative farms have received about 60 percent of overall diesel requirement, and even in 2012 when a huge logistical effort was made to deliver more diesel, few farms received more than 70 percent of requirement.

d)     Agro-chemicals

The agri-environment is seriously out of balance (that is a whole subject on its own) and one of the ways this is manifested is increasing susceptibility to crop pests and diseases. In the long term this imbalance will be largely addressed through Conservation Agriculture, but in the short term there is an increasing need for agro-chemicals. Most of them have to be imported and there is a serious shortage.

Climate change could be included in this list, but is a bit more ephemeral. One of the least controversial aspects of climate change is that extreme weather events are more common: colder winters, wetter summers, more serious typhoons, more spring droughts. There is also recognition that government can do more about mitigating the effects of these extremes through adoption of Conservation Agriculture.  These weather extremes or “natural disasters” as they are called by government, are often accorded a disproportionate level of blame for the DPRK’s food insecurity. But it’s important to bear in mind that cereal production now would be little different had those disasters occurred or not.

“Making noodles from maize on a cooperative farm. Processed foods like this can be sold on the free market by the cooperative. The problem is sporadic electricity supply.” | Source: Tom Morrison

MB: How close is the DPRK to food self-sufficiency at present?

TM: The situation now is that, in a year of relatively good weather like 2010, the country can produce about 4.4 million tons (Mt) of cereal equivalent, consumption is about 5.5 Mt, and it therefore needs about 1 Mt of imports, either commercially or as humanitarian aid. More specifically, the shortfall is made up by the World Food Programme (WFP), the European Commission’s regular development programme (the European Commission is also, after the US, the second largest donor to the WFP) and commercial imports.

In a year of comparatively bad weather like 2011, but in which extraordinary efforts were made by the government in terms of fertilizer (up by 55 percent year-on-year) and other inputs such as diesel to achieve national self sufficiency in the lead-up to 2012, the year of the Great Leader’s 100th birthday, required imports were still 0.74 Mt. The agronomist (i.e. me) on the 2011 Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (CFSAM)[5] pointed out that if the weather had not been so severe, the DPRK might have achieved self-sufficiency for the first time since the mid-90s.

So, with luck and special effort, success is perhaps within reach. At least in the medium to long term, there is absolutely no doubt that national food self-sufficiency can be achieved, though we know also that many doubt it.

At a national average yield of 4t/ha, the DPRK is generally about 1 million tons short of self-sufficiency. At 5t/ha it would be self sufficient. At 8t/ha which has been achieved historically though unsustainably, it would have an abundance of cereal grain equivalent, and could export or diversify into more nutritious food. The technology and knowledge to deliver 8t/ha sustainably has been demonstrated and is now government policy. It’s just a matter of investment and adopting the right policies to deliver farm machinery, fertilizer, and agro-chemicals sustainably. A daunting task, and massive investment, but a clear one with clear results.

Taking the last 15 years as a whole, the national grain shortfall (milled rice equivalent) has consistently hovered around the 20 percent mark, or about 1 Mt out of about 5 Mt needed. The variation around this 1 Mt has not been large: in 2000/2001 needed imports were as much as 2 Mt and in 2011, as already mentioned, as little as 0.7 Mt.

MB: Why has the problem proved so difficult?

TM: To sum up, first, soil fertility and crop yields are still low; second, there is vulnerability to natural disasters caused by soil and environmental degradation (note that it is not the natural disasters themselves, but the DPRK’s vulnerability to them); and third, there is a perennial shortage of critical inputs like fertilizer, agro-chemicals, seeds, up-to-date farm machinery, and clean fuel. But taking more of an eagle’s eye view, the overall problem is structural. Put simply, if the State is responsible for everything, then the State and the way it works must be responsible.

Such physical factors, though severe, are perhaps easier to remedy compared to this fourth and most important factor, the weak incentives and rigid institutional mechanisms that still hold down food production on cooperative farms. Structural reforms are fundamentally needed to deliver sustainable food security, something that physical inputs on their own cannot deliver.

Kim doling out onsite guidance at Masik Pass Ski Resort construction site | image Rodong Sinmun, May 27, 2013

The Olympics are coming to Korea in 2018 and the North Korean Army is building a ski resort at Masik Pass. No country is better than North Korea at taking advantage of even the slightest opportunity to score propaganda points to the benefit of the state and the ruling elite. In a way that sustains archaeologist Clifford Geertz’s notion of “pomp serving power” into the 21st century, sport is being employed as a key element of propaganda in the Kim Jong-un era. The recent announcement by Rodong Sinmun (로동신문) that a new ski resort is being built by the People’s Army at Masik Pass is the latest indication of the regime’s strategy to use sport as a trope for a “strong and prosperous state.” If the Mass Games is a pompous event that reinforces the legitimacy of the regime, what would the North Korean people (and the world for that matter!) make of Olympic events held north of the 38th?  Christopher Green explains the significance and possible reasons behind North Korea’s decision to build the resort. – Steven Denney, Managing Editor

Skiing in Choppy Waters: North Korea Lays Out the Pyeongchang Hustle

by Christopher Green

On May 27, Workers’ Party bulletin Rodong Sinmun (로동신문) revealed news of Kim Jong-un’s latest onsite guidance tour of the provinces. This time, Kim headed for the East Sea coast. As Rodong noted, one port of call was a food processing facility run by the military. Another was a military supply unit. But the third was by far the most intriguing: a new ski resort being built by the People’s Army.

“Masik Pass Ski Resort” (마식령스키장; translated as “Skiing Ground” in English) is eponymously named after the Masik Pass (마식령) in which it sits. Located in Muncheon County (문천군) at the point where South Hamkyung and Gangwon provinces meet, the pass connects the plains of the west and Pyongyang with the east coast and Wonsan. The nascent ski resort thus lies not far from the Pyongyang-Wonsan-Mt. Geumgang highway (평양－원산관광도로; Pyongyang-Wonsan Tourist Highway), a fact Kim was quick to applaud, declaring with great satisfaction, “The traffic conditions are very convenient; Masik Pass Skiing Ground is in a great location.”

There is nothing technical limiting North Korea’s construction of ski resorts; and, like the South, it has plenty of steeply sloping ground to choose from. And yet, there has only previously ever been one such ski hill; near Samjiyeon at the foot of Mt. Baekdu in Ryanggang Province (see video here). So, why suddenly start building another one?

If You Build it, They Will Prosper: Ski Resort as Propaganda Trope |  Initial reports of the news have been lacking in scope and vision, although that is not to say they are inaccurate. There is logic to the idea that since the ski resort is being constructed by the military, it will be used for military practice exercises, for example. Nor is there any question that, no matter the circumstances, the resort will be of greatest leisure benefit to Party cadres, their families and tourists. Equally, the question, “Why are you building ski resorts when you cannot feed your people?” can hardly be dismissed without discussion.

However, these assessments get in the way of a more holistic appraisal. First and most obviously, there is a very salient domestic propaganda rationale behind it. Plenty of North Korean people live in mountainous regions, and they do, in fact, like skiing. Since he first came to power, the North Korean government has been promoting Kim Jong-un as a man of the people, one who, like grandfather Kim Il-sung, is dedicated to improving North Korean lives. Given both these facts, what better propaganda trope to employ than sport?

Real skiing at the base of Mt. Baekdu. Next stop Masik Pass! | image ⓒSino-NK

Moreover, sport is a key element in the propaganda of the Kim Jong-un era in any case, and the construction of a ski resort sets the stage perfectly for future media discourse about the nation’s winter sporting prowess. This can be propelled by the State Sports Guidance Committee (국가체육지도위원회), a cross-institutional entity chaired by Kim loyalist Jang Sung-taek that was launched at the end of 2012. Established in the midst of a positive atmosphere engendered by North Korea’s four gold and two bronze medals at the London Olympics, the committee has been domestically promoting sport (and sports-related propaganda) ever since, aware that the appearance of state strength is often attained through sporting victories, even at times when the state is not actually strong at all.

Beyond Sham and Show: the Economic Rationale for Building a Ski Resort | In addition, although North Korea is a place where sham and show have come to predominate, there are some genuine, albeit rather optimistic, economic concepts involved. As noted by the progressively minded, pro-engagement Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES) at Kyungnam University in February this year, North Korea is hoping that the region around Tongcheon (통천군), a port county just down the Gangwon Province coast from Wonsan, can be developed into a Special Economic Zone.

Problematically, the South Korean government’s view of any such plan would inevitably be colored by one main, and very pertinent, point: in the event that it comes to fruition, it will involve the ongoing use by tourists of facilities at Mt. Geumgang, South Korean assets that were gruffly expropriated from Seoul after years of bilateral wrangling over the death of South Korean tourist Park Wang-ja at the resort in the summer of 2008.

Needless to say, however, these South Korean concerns don’t register with Pyongyang. In the words of Jang Jin-sung, the first of three major tenets of North Korean diplomacy is: “Pay no attention to South Korea.” According to IFES, citing a Chinese-language planning document on the subject, North Korea is doing just that. To wit:

Growing attention is being paid to the Tongcheon Special Economic Zone in the Mt. Kumgang Tourism Zone. Industrial service facilities will be built in the Tongcheon SEZ along the coastline including, ‘comprehensive industrial, merchandise, and communication service center zone,’ ‘international multipurpose building zone,’ ‘international finance, trade, and business center,’ and a golf course.

The master plan also includes the construction of “Wonsan International Airport,” the piece explains, and, equally crucial, significant upgrading of the aforementioned 310km-long Pyongyang-Wonsan-Mt. Geumgang highway.

No such endeavour would be complete without access to a ski resort, and this is no less true in North Korea. Indeed it may be more so, given that the authorities have concluded that tourism is one of the few sources of foreign currency that is politically risk-free (note the recent decision to permit Western foreigners to visit Sinuiju and Hoeryong for further evidence of this). Thus, it makes sense: people travel to North Korea just to visit amusement parks and play golf, after all, which leaves little doubt that “skiing where no tourist has ever skied before” is a money-spinner.

Hitting the dodgems down at Rungra Resort in Pyongyang | image ⓒSino-NK

Lastly, but also most interestingly, is one aspect of the plan that shows, again, how adept the North Korean dictatorship has become at playing the long game. Based on the images published by Rodong Sinmun today, it appears that the ski resort project was probably launched sometime on, or at least around, July 6, 2011, the day the International Olympic Committee voted by 63-25-7 to host the 13th Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, just across the DMZ in South Korea.

Unable to Lose, Exactly How North Korea Likes it: Concluding Remarks |  What inter-Korean political capital will North Korea earn from constructing a ski resort of this nature? It is too early in the political cycle to tell. But if the ski resort can be completed in good time, it will situate the Workers’ Party very strongly for future political clashes with its Southern foe. By building a ski resort in the mountains close to the DMZ, the Kim regime is providing itself with the infrastructure required to, in principle at least, co-host events for the 2018 Games. If this happened it would go against IOC rules, since they demand that the Games be held in just one city, but such rules can be and are broken. Indeed, Pyeongchang is not actually a city, either, and many of the 2018 ice events are to take place in distant Gangneung, which is actually by the seaside.

Were North Korea to suggest some kind of co-hosting at a later date (or were a liberal South Korean lawmaker to raise it in the National Assembly, as is equally probable), conservatives in South Korea would immediately see an attempt to foster internecine South-South conflict (남남갈등) in the run-up to the 2018 party. Conversely, progressives would see North Korea reaching out to the South for talks, using sport as a way through the political minefield. Both perspectives would reflect ingrained proclivities in their adherents, of course, but both would also be arguable. Which is exactly how North Korea likes it.

Progressives would wish to seriously consider the offer in the event that they held political sway nearer the time (especially if seen as likely to win the 2017 presidential poll), and this would create discomfort in the South Korean polity no matter what. Conversely, a conservative administration would almost certainly reject it quite quickly, meaning that the resulting inter-Korean and domestic South Korean tension would inject a sense of unease into the run-up to the Games. The geographic proximity of  Pyeongchang to the North-South border (a short 100km hike) means even the smallest increase in tension would have disproportionate effects. As ever, North Korea would be unable to lose.

Further Readings

Christopher Green, “Up Close and Personal: Dennis Rodman Hits Pyongyang,” Sino-NK, March 1, 2013.

Peter Ward, “All the World’s a Stage. Looking Again at North Korea: Beyond Charismatic Politics,” Sino-NK, March 25, 2013.