CINA

본문

<China-NK relations, Economic policy>
by Michael Rank (source: http://www.nkzone.org) 

There's a very interesting Chinese look at North Korea on a website specialising in the hermit kingdom, it compares NK with China during the Cultural Revolution or Great Leap Forward, paints a generally bleak picture of a starving country where there is much anti-Chinese resentment. It's anonymous and is written from a personal perspective, but it's on a well established website and seems to reflect a strand of official opinion.

It's roughly comparable with the highly critical article in the Chinese journal Strategy and Management (“S&M” to its fans) which was censored last summer, though a bit less official. S&M was closed down for publishing this article, incidentally, and its website has been wiped.

A short introduction by the “webmaster” quotes the U.N. as saying at least two million people died of starvation in the 90s as the country was arming itself with nuclear weapons, maintained the world's fifth biggest army, etc. “This is the Kim family's choice, not the choice of the North Korean people. The article says here are no fat people in North Korea but this is not right, Kim Jung-il's fat stomach which the webmaster has seen on television continues to make a deep impression on him.”

The article starts off in Dandong, where he notes few trains or cars or trucks cross the bridge into NK. “Clearly NK's closed policies have restricted border trade. But there are hardly any restrictions on tourists visiting NK from Dandong and local people can go on a four-day tour for 2,100 yuan ($250).” [When I visited Dandong in 1999 I was slightly surprised how many of the people I met had visited NK - Michael].

The author says he was hoping to visit NK to find out about everyday life there but was told tours were highly regimented and restricted official sites like Kim Il-sung's old home, the Juche tower, etc, and “there is no time for free activities, while there are also language problems and North Koreans are not willing to have contact with foreigners, so it is difficult to learn about NK on an ordinary tour.”

But he adds that if you establish a good relationship with your guide, they are likely to be more open, “and even be mildly critical of the authorities, which in NK amounts to subversion and can be severely punished.”

He adds that talking to Korean-Chinese on the border is also a good source of information as many of them have close ties with NK and have relatives there.

He says NK is still in the grip of hunger/famine and that (even) in Pyongyang the state ration has fallen to 100 grams a day [can this be right...?], while meat and eggs are considered luxuries, and people supplement state rations with leaves and bark. He says that even during the “years of hardship” (Great Leap Forward) in China people received 28 jin (14 kg) a month, or 467 grams a day, so NKs are much worse off than Chinese during that terrible time. [But the 28 jin a month was pretty notional, millions starved during the GLF - Michael].

He says Chinese tour groups are told to bring extra food because of the shortages, and not to give locals any of their extra food. Some tourists who gave some of their foods to some “as thin as sticks” children were fined and the children were punished by the police, their crime was insulting socialist NK's glorious reputation. But many tourists who have given children food without being found out, he adds.

All North Koreans are thin, he didn't see a single fat person, “the people you see on television are the same, apart from Kim Jung-il, of course.” And people on both sides of the Yalu say even Kim has got thinner.

Many people say the reason ordinary North Koreans aren't frank is they are afraid of being punished. The author says he travelled all over China before and after the Cultural Revolution, when things were much the same, so of course he understands this. “The only thing that the author found shocking is the surprising similarity between North Korea today and the Chinese interior before Deng [Xiaoping]'s reforms and opening up.”

“In fact fear of punishment is only a secondary reason for their not being frank, the basic reason is their fierce national pride. But fierce national pride is a common feature of all civilised countries,” is often manipulated, eg Japanese denial of atrocities in WW2. He says Chinese ethnic Koreans share this pride, he was told by young Koreans in a Korean restaurant in Dandong that the whole of northeast China is ours, in the Koguryo period there was no civilisation like ours. The author replied that the northeast was in fact formerly Manchuria, its original inhabitants were Manchus and Koreans have only been there 100 years at most, many came in the 1930s to flee the Japanese.

Many Korean-Chinese admire SK for its economic success but regard Kim Il-sung as a national hero and are unwilling to criticise NK publicly. But many don't want to go to NK because of its poverty, many who went to SK to work found themselves victims of discrimination, so they don't want to live there either. They told the author sincerely that China is our home. Many people take part in semi-official border trade, which is why there is less hunger near the border. A very few NKs cross the border to beg or steal food, he adds.

There used to be NK border trade in ginseng, timber, coal, scrap steel which were bartered for food, detergents, soft drinks but as the NK economic crisis has intensified few Chinese consumer goods have been imported. Forest resources are exhausted, hunger has reduced coal production...

People's freedom of movement has been restricted, just like during the Cultural Revolution, so people are unable to move around in search of food, many people are dying in mountainous areas, he says, but adds that because such areas are closed he did not see this for himself.

He quotes Chinese who have close contact with NK officials as saying most officials get the same rations as anyone else, this relative equality reduces discontent, in contrast to China where there is unrest because of great inequality of wealth. High NK officials live lives of luxury, but ordinary people aren't aware of this, so this has not affected stability.

Hunger is blamed on drought/floods, but on the Chinese side of the border crop yields are high, so it is clearly not just a matter of the weather. Chinese-Koreans who often cross the border to visit relatives blame the collective agriculture system and “eating from one big rice pot” [the slogan used to attack the Maoist system], this makes peasants are apathetic, not interested in saving crops when there is a disaster. The NK government says there is no need for reform, but has in practice relaxed its policies and allows some private plots. “If the NK government relaxes its policies further that will clearly help NK leave severe hunger behind.”

If NK adopts Chinese-style reform and opening policies, there should be no fundamental obstacle [to recovery]. In Dandong NK, SK and Chinese company managers talk business as well as getting together over karaoke, all the songs are South Korean. And in Beijing and Russia NK businessmen also negotiate deals and “take back to NK the buds of reforms and opening up.”

He also mentions an NK ship which is a floating casino moored at Dandong, which he dubs “Macau on the Yalu”. The owners of speedboats which take people towards the NK side of the river say they haven't been on board as you need to have thousands of yuan, but it comes under NK jurisdiction so you don't have to worry about the Chinese ban on gambling. However, the casino was recently closed and nobody is allowed on board, “but this shows that the degree of openness in NK can actually exceed China's”.

NK hostility to China - when the author went out on one of these speedboats they were pelted with stones from the NK side, those throwing the stones included soldiers, the stones were quite large and somebody could have been killed but nobody was hit. “Over the last few decades China had given NK vast amounts of food aid, so why are the NKs hostile to Chinese people?”

In recent years Chinese magazines have published long articles about the Korean war, including documents from ex-Soviet archives, saying Stalin and the NKs placed more importance on the Korean problem than on Taiwan, which worried the Chinese...

Later when China and the Soviet Union quarrelled over ideology and international leadership, NK often supported Moscow over Beijing, ordinary NK people became biassed against China because of media attacks.

NK became extremely unhappy when China established diplomatic relations with SK, so NK voted against Beijing [or abstained???] hosting the Olympics in 2000 [that doesn't sound right to me, can anyone confirm/comment - Michael], greatly upsetting large numbers of Chinese people.

Not only this, but NK has also quietly referred to Taiwan as the Republic of China and “honoured nation” in order to gain economic advantage [to refer to Taiwan as a “nation” is of course anathema to Beijing].

But he adds that China wants stability in the Korean peninsula to ensure its own economic stability, so it needs to cooperate with NK. “Therefore China's relations with NK will strengthen”.

He is scathing about the Juche ideology, which he says is similar to China's Great Leap Forward theories. “China's 'Great Leap Forward'” resulted in famine and NK's 'Juche idea' has had the same result.“ But he notes that NK remains wedded to Juche and they have attacked China for taking the capitalist road (a note adds that this has since largely ceased).

Although NK is a closed society most North Koreans are aware that living standards in China are much higher. They also tend to blame China but if China hadn't provided them with large scale food aid it would have nothing to eat, and the results would be unimaginable. ”But China which is itself not wealthy could not take care of NK's 24 million people and has no duty to do so. To basically end North Korea's hunger, North Korea must rely on itself“ is how the article ends.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But much more better/interesting is this article from World Magazine (www.worldmag.com), March 5:

Room with a view

ASIA: An American businessman gets a bird's-eye look at what may be regime change underway in North Korea | by Priya Abraham

American businessman Roy Browning has a front-row seat for the unusual signs of change emerging from North Korea. Mr. Browning lives in a high-rise in Dandong on the Chinese side of the border with North Korea, overlooking the Yalu River that separates the two countries. He has been there for three years, but in recent months the usually well-sealed border has come unglued, admitting more North Koreans into China. Mr. Browning has talked with several businessmen and North Korean officials, accompanied by KGB-style secret police.

"Trade across the border with civilian officials has increased dramatically in the last few months, and our connections have also increased in frequency," he told WORLD on Feb. 21. "We have even been able to talk to some very senior officials with their secret police looking on. This is very strange and implies that things are loosening up but with a lot of apprehension."

Why the sudden activity? Mr. Browning hears from his sources that "the state is being increasingly controlled by the military and the higher ranking civilian officials due to the strain that a possible Bush invasion was causing," he said.

Those rumors intensified late last year after reports that portraits of Mr. Kim, which dominate Pyongyang's public buildings, had been removed. Insiders claimed the portraits and other Kim images were removed to be cleaned, or because their presence had drawn comparisons to Saddam Hussein. But South Korean officials took them seriously enough to dust off decades-old contingency plans for civil emergency in the event of a collapse to the north.

Any such retooling of Mr. Kim's likeness is significant in the country, which has built a cult of personality around the Kims. Great Leader Kim Il Sung remains president for life, even after his 1994 death. His son, Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, is supposed to command singular loyalty. The country's goals of reunifying with South Korea and defeating U.S. "imperialism" hinge on the presence of an all-powerful leader. One of the younger Kim's sayings is, "To expect victory in a revolution without a leader is as good as wishing for a flower where there is no sun."

But the persistence of the rumors are significant, given North Korea's announcement in February that it has nuclear weapons. Activists and observers used to probing the communist country's idiosyncrasies believe a dramatic change is slowly underway, one that is shifting power away from dictator Kim Jong Il and toward a cabal of military generals.

Mr. Browning first learned last November that portraits of Kim Jong Il had been taken down from public display across the country. Though official denials quickly followed, his sources are adamant the portraits were removed. He also noticed that North Koreans he met coming across the border were hiding their "Dear Leader" pins inside their coats instead of displaying them over their hearts as mandated.

From his 12th-floor apartment window, where the Oregon resident lives while overseeing a semiconductor equipment business he co-owns in the city, he further noticed more-than-usual cargo-truck convoys waiting to cross the border on the bridge leading to Dandong, the only land-link between the two nations. Before, there were about 10 to 15 trucks a week; now between 50 and 70 lined up each day.

As first reported by The Oregonian, Mr. Browning also has seen North Korean trucks driving within Dandong, identifiable by their number plates and exhaust fumes that smell like burning tires—literally, he said, because North Korea recycles tires for fuel. Then there are the businessmen he has met, buying rice, vegetables, and other food and even computers, while selling their own products. From all these signs, he speculates that momentous change is afoot.

"I believe that we will see a slow disintegration followed by a revolution, although the revolution may not even be visible to outsiders," he said. "It is difficult to see things happening even as close as we are because of the strict control the country has. If you can imagine Nazi Germany in 1939 and then make it much worse, you will then have the situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."

While Mr. Browning is seeing physical changes unfold before his eyes, others are coming to similar conclusions watching other signs. Seoul-based Korean-American human-rights activist Douglas Shin has been tracking blips in North Korea's usually predictable propaganda. From subtle rewordings in the state press and from reports Mr. Shin receives from a high-ranking North Korean official, he believes a band of military generals has already sidelined Mr. Kim.

Most unusual, Mr. Shin said, is Kim Jong Il's virtual disappearance from the public eye. "This kind of thing on this scale has never happened before," Mr. Shin said. "Kim Jong Il has never spent more than five months away from outsiders' view." Yet even photos released of Mr. Kim with Chinese envoy Wang Jiarui in late February appear dated. The same entourage from Mr. Wang's North Korea visit last year is shown.

Mr. Shin said official news organs are increasingly highlighting subordinates more than Kim Jong Il. At a Feb. 2-3 meeting of the "General Onward March for the Songun Revolution," a pow-wow of the Communist Party leadership introduced 10 years ago by Mr. Kim to reinforce military-socialist indoctrination, the rhetoric shifted slightly away from praising Mr. Kim alone and toward the military leadership around him. An editorial in the country's state-run newspaper, the Rodong Shinmun, carried "very unfamiliar terminology," Mr. Shin said. "It said all the people have to protect and follow—usually Kim Jong Il—but this time also the head leadership. It was a plural concept with Kim Jong Il at the peak."

Mr. Shin is persuaded enough by such signs to believe the military generals are gradually consolidating their power. He speculates that they found themselves in a dilemma. On one side the United States was pressuring North Korea to disarm. On the other, Mr. Kim feared he would lose power if he did give up nuclear weapons. After all, his belligerent rule is necessary to project the urgency of defending North Korea against an impending U.S. invasion. The only solution, Mr. Shin believes, was to sideline Mr. Kim. North Korea's declaration that it has nuclear weapons could be, he said, the generals "bluffing for the last time."

Still, decoding secretive North Korea remains an intensely speculative parlor game. Tim Peters of Helping Hands Korea, a group assisting North Korean refugees, also hears growing chatter from his contacts about changes in Pyongyang. They confirm the increased border activity Mr. Browning has witnessed, but note that while approved forays into China have multiplied, a parallel clamp-down on refugees escaping North Korea has occurred on both sides of the border.

While Mr. Peters believes Mr. Kim is suffering challenges to his rule, he is not sure the bouffant-haired dictator has lost control just yet. "I don't think we should underestimate the staying power of this regime," he said. "Not because Kim Jong Il is so powerful, but because of the [indoctrination]. There's a joke that if any two people had a conversation that was even remotely critical of the government, they would both inform the authorities."

In the meantime, Mr. Browning has noticed another odd development across the Yalu. North Koreans seem to be re-occupying an abandoned village just outside of border-town Sinuiju. That is unusual because the village is too close to the river, he said. Anyone wanting to escape could swim across, or almost walk across, when the water level is low.

He said North Korean businessmen and regime officials are in evidence in Dandong at least once a week, compared to six months ago, when he only heard about one or two showing up. Asking about Mr. Kim's hold on power, now that rumors circulate, is a touchy subject. "They'll just clam up—they won't say a word," he said. "Something's going on, but it's difficult to find out." With North Korea suggesting last week it may be ready to resume six-party talks over its nuclear arsenal, knowing just who holds the levers of power will be crucial for the United States and its allies. —•