|
In-depth Business Intelligence
Books on North Korea
REPUBLICAN REFERENCE
Area (sq.km)
120,540
Population
22,224,195 (July 2002 est.)
Capital
Pyongyang
Currency
North Korean won (KPW)
Leader
Kim Jong-il
|
Update No: 023 - (22/03/05)
Which way forward?
On the surface, the North Korea question saw little activity - much less
progress - during March. Barring some sudden breakthrough, the nuclear stalemate
looked no nearer to any resolution. The main event on this front was the visit
by Condoleezza Rice - the first in her new role as US Secretary of State - to
the three key countries in the region, spending barely a day and night in each.
The order - Japan, South Korea, China; following equally brief trips to India,
Afghanistan and Pakistan - was no accident: her hope being to build a unity of
views with America's two allies in the region, which could then be used to press
China to do more to get Kim Jong-il back to the six-party talks, stalled since
last June.
No unity on how to handle North Korea
That hope was not fulfilled. For while Japan agrees with the US that dealing
with North Korea may need sticks as well as carrots, South Korea in fact hews
closer to China (and Russia) in advocating incentives alone, while opposing
pressure on Pyongyang as liable to be counter-productive: as a cornered rat,
with no exit, might lash out in desperation. Seoul's unification minister, Chung
Dong-young - who also chairs the ROK National Security Council, and is the
ruling centre-left Uri party's leading contender to succeed Roh Moo-hyun as
South Korea's next president from 2008 - tried to square the circle by saying
that while the US is an ally, North Korea is a brother. (Like Cain and Abel, was
one sceptical response.) Although as ever both sides fulsomely endorsed the US-ROK
alliance, and Ms Rice is more diplomatic than some of her colleagues, the gap is
evident. South Korea's foreign minister Ban Ki-moon more or less openly urged
the US to come up with a new offer and more creative diplomacy to bring North
Korea back to the table.
Kim Jong-il will have observed such divisions with satisfaction, as weakening
effective pressure on him. He will also be glad of a further distraction and new
wedge, calculated to split any united front among his foes. A fresh row has
suddenly flared between Japan and South Korea over an old but usually dormant
issue: the disputed Tokto/Takeshima islets, claimed by both nations. Passions
are running high in Seoul, as though this were a bigger threat than North Korea
with its vaunted and uncontrolled nuclear weapons. This unexpected furore did
not help Ms Rice to build the united front that she had hoped.
Not guilty?
Naturally, North Korea backs its Southern brother to the hilt in this.
Pyongyang has its own quarrel with Tokyo. Relations remain stalemated, and
terrible, over allegations that abductee remains returned by the DPRK were
false. A new twist in this macabre affair is the admission - relatively
unpublicized - by a Japanese scientist involved that his DNA tests could be
wrong, if the sample had become corrupted. As with the further revelation that
US intelligence claims that North Korea had sold a uranium compound to Libya may
have been flawed - it now seems this went to Pakistan, who sold it on - this is
a salutary reminder that Pyongyang should not always be presumed guilty, nor its
enemies innocent.
Here, as on the nuclear issue, it is impossible at the moment to see how a way
forward can be found. Pyongyang's response to Ms Rice's tour was characteristic:
on March 21 it claimed (again) to have boosted its nuclear arsenal, and to be
ready to mobilize all its forces. The latter is boilerplate, as are North
Korea's vociferous protests against what are in fact routine if large-scale
joint US-ROK military exercises. Pyongyang may have been more alarmed at Ms
Rice's visit to a hitherto secret underground command post south of Seoul. Then
again, if listening carefully, her measured language - including describing the
DPRK as a sovereign state; whereas, even in this sunshine era, South Korea in
theory still claims to be the sole legitimate state on the peninsula - and
repeated insistence that the US has no plans to attack North Korea, should have
offered some reassurance to Kim Jong-il.
Premier visits China
But the secretary of state also warned that if Pyongyang did not return to
talks soon, other options will be considered. In practice this presumably means
taking the matter to the UN Security Council, which would put China and Russia
on the spot. China will exert itself to avoid this - and had an immediate
opportunity, with the arrival in Beijing on March 21 of North Korea's prime
minister Pak Pong-ju for a six-day visit. In the DPRK the premier normally ranks
lower than senior party officials: his job is chief steward of the economy,
itself seen as less important than political or military affairs. Pak's
itinerary indeed seems mainly business-oriented, including trips to a Nokia
joint venture, a brewery, and the city of Shanghai. A former chemical industry
minister, he once visited Seoul in that capacity on a study tour, impressing his
hosts with his diligence and grasp of detail. A pragmatic technocrat, he is
spearheading the (by its own standards) radical, if not yet very effective,
market reforms which North Korea is pursuing - contradictorily - even while
persisting in a nuclear defiance which can only scare away potential investors.
Perhaps because so much hinges on this reform drive, Pak appear closer to the
heart of power in Pyongyang than his predecessors. He is often seen accompanying
Kim Jong-il, including in military contexts. So he is well placed to communicate
the views of China's president Hu Jintao directly to the dear leader. This
perhaps offers some hope of fresh moves to break the nuclear logjam in April.
Any announcement of a later return visit to Pyongyang by President Hu would also
be an encouraging sign.
New rumours: a Japanese daughter, public executions
Meanwhile developments within North Korea remain opaque. At the top, the
Monthly Chosun, a leading Seoul news magazine, continued its habit of Northern
scoops - or rumours - with a report that Kim Jong-il has a daughter in Tokyo, by
an ethnic Korean who caught his eye on a visit to Pyongyang with a dance troupe.
(Kim's main consort, Ko Yong-hee, who died last year, was also a dancer born in
Japan.) This daughter, named Mieko and in her late 20s, visits Pyongyang each
February for her father's birthday. She is also said to be in email contact with
her half-brother Kim Jong-nam, the dear leader's eldest son: himself reportedly
the target of two murder plots linked to the succession issue. Japanese police
keep an eye on Mieko and her mother, for their own safety.
At the grassroots, the latest in a series of illicit videos to emerge from North
Korea had a grim subject: public executions. Broadcast by the Japanese
television network NTV, this apparently shows the shooting by firing squad in
Hoeryong, a border city close to China, of three people accused of helping
defectors to leave the country. Human rights groups in Seoul believe that a
fresh crackdown on defections and smuggling has seen up to 70 such executions of
late. This practice, once common, had lapsed for the past two or three years -
possibly to deflect international criticism. Its revival now suggests that the
authorities are worried that illicit cross-border movement is getting out of
hand. Whether such brutal methods will make this new clampdown successful
remains to be seen.
Numbers, for once
In sharp contrast to the murk enveloping most things North Korean - be it
nuclear claims, extramarital liaisons, or grainy video scenes - March also saw
the rare publication of that most elusive of Pyongyang products: a mass of
numbers. The DPRK's Central Bureau of Statistics and Institute of Child
Nutrition jointly published a Nutrition Assessment Survey - the fourth of its
kind - assisted by Unicef and the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
It was WFP which released this report, at a press conference in Beijing on March
7. (It is in fact dated November 2004; the survey itself was carried out in
October. The delay was not explained.) Again unlike the usual vague dreary
bombast from Pyongyang, this is an impressive, highly professional report: over
100 pages, with 46 tables and 24 figures. The sample comprised 4,800 children
aged up to six, plus 2,109 mothers of children under two: drawn evenly from
seven of the DPRK's nine provinces and the capital, Pyongyang.
Hunger embodied
Moreover, the topic could hardly be more sensitive. For what this survey
measures, with grim precision, is the toll that years of hunger have taken on
the bodies of small children and their mothers in North Korea. WFP's press
release tried to look on the bright side. Since the last survey in 2002, the
proportion of young children chronically malnourished (stunted) is down from 42
to 37%. Acute malnutrition (wasting) eased from 9 to 7%. But those underweight
rose from 21 to 23% - though for the under-twos, most at risk, this fell from
25% to 21%. 1 in 5 children had diarrhoea, and 1 in 8 showed symptoms of acute
respiratory infection. But mothers have made no progress: a third (32%) were
anaemic and malnourished, the same figure as two years ago. Vitamin A deficiency
is common.
There are regional differences. Conditions are better in Pyongyang and the
southwestern Hwanghae ricebowl region than in the bleak northeast. In Ryanggang
province people eat meat, fish or eggs on average just once every three weeks.
Another northern border area, Jagang province, was excluded as WFP was denied
entry; this also means it got no food aid, since WFP will not supply areas where
it cannot monitor. Access to parts of Jagang has since been renewed.
Too proud for aid?
Yet overall the regime is uneasy about such help. For 2005 it forbade UN
agencies to launch their usual consolidated aid appeal. WFP is nonetheless
seeking $202 million this year to buy 504,000 tonnes of food, mainly grains. It
could hardly not, as in January the state cut its Public Distribution System (PDS)
rations to starvation level: 250 grams of cereal per person per day, the lowest
for five years. Such cutbacks do not usually happen until March, when last
year's crop typically runs out. This is all the more strange, given that 2004's
autumn harvest is thought to have been the best in years.
It is hard to see how Kim Jong-il thinks he can do without aid. Currently, as it
has done for almost a decade, WFP is feeding a staggering 6.5 million North
Koreans - nearly a third of the population. The main categories are 2.7 million
children under 10, and 2.15 million people in food for work programs. Other
beneficiaries include 900,000 elderly, 300,000 pregnant women and nursing
mothers, and 350,000 in low-income households. These are a new category: victims
of the post-2002 reforms which have seen inequalities widen, even as the state
retreats ever further from providing any help to the millions of citizens that
its disastrous past and half-baked present policies have starved and stunted.
With ironic timing, the very day that WFP released this survey, another study
reported a different child nutrition problem from South Korea. In Seoul, 1 in 10
schoolchildren are overweight; obesity rates are growing fast. Come
reunification, on top of all the myriad economic and political challenges this
will bring, there will be a visible physical gap. Even as adults, the more than
a third of today's North Korean under-6s who are stunted, and especially the 1
in 8 who are severely stunted, will be looked down on by their South Korean
peers - in more ways than one. If today's immediate nuclear and other problems
seem knotty enough, the long-term challenges of reunification will be no less
formidable.
«
Top
|
