1. DPRK WOULD NEED MONTHS TO RESTOCK FUEL
FOR COMBAT
Yonhap News, 24 April 2006
It would take at least four months for North Korea to be able to restock
its military fuels in case of full-time combat, according to a recent
study on the country's energy capabilities. According to an analysis by
Peter Hayes, professor at Nautilus Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,
North Korea would need to double its imports and production to sustain
combat. The study, completed last month, is based on estimates of how
much fuel North Korea uses during military exercises, such as jet hours,
the number of energy-using vehicles and their fuel use rate. It applies
Pyongyang's fuel import and production rates of the year 2000.
“Based on our estimates of fuel use during exercises, fuel use
by DPRK military for 30 days of full-time combat would be up to 200,000
tons,” the study said. The fuel use figure is based on a wartime
scenario in which 50 percent of ground force equipment would be inoperable
by the end of 30 days, aircraft cease operations in 24 hours, and 90 percent
of naval forces cease operation in five days.
The study predicted it would take four more months to restock military
fuels given North Korea's current supply rate, either by bringing in fuel
stored in rear areas or from refining new fuel and then moving it into
combat zones. Even if all the available refineries operate at 100 percent
capacity and all supplies are diverted solely to the military, it would
still take two months or longer to restock, Hayes said. North Korea's
military accounted for 8 percent of the country's total energy demand
in 2000, up from 4.2 percent in 1990. In terms of the types of energy
used by the military, 66 percent was coal, 37 percent was oil products,
and 8 percent was electricity.
In 1990, the military used 17.1 percent of the country's total refined
oil products, 3.9 percent of the coal and 8.1 percent of the electricity.
The study reaffirms the North's economy is stagnating from an energy shortage,
compounded by a drop in oil imports, a decline in coal exports, the flooding
of key coal mines and damage to major hydro facilities. Yet, Hayes argues,
pressuring Pyongyang via energy will not be effective.
“We provided this analysis... in order to explain to decision-makers
that it is very difficult to apply pressure to the DPRK economy or military
via energy except during all-out war,” Hayes told Yonhap News Agency
through e-mail. “Therefore, realistic policy options on energy should
revolve around cooperative engagement in very specific ways, not more
confrontation,” he said.
The military's fuel supplies would be less affected by pressure because
of stockpiling, he said. Hayes argues in his study that energy is a core
component in North Korea's denuclearization and that energy security issues
for the North are non-proliferation issues. There should be international
assistance to stimulate and sustain North Korea's energy sector and rehabilitate
its decaying power grid, estimated to cost between US$5.5 billion and
$7.5 billion, according to the study. Progress can also be made by reducing
vast waste of supplied energy, caused by equipment dating as far back
as the 1940s and less than 50-percent-efficient coal-fired boilers, Hayes
said.
*************************************************
2. JAPAN ADDS 20 DPRK FIRMS TO EXPORT CONTROL
LIST
Japan Times, 4 April 2006
Japan has added 20 North Korean and four Iranian companies and research
institutions to its export control list, over fears that items exported
to them from Japan could be converted into weapons of mass destruction,
the trade ministry said Tuesday. The North Korean bodies include trading,
chemical and cement companies as well as Kim Chaek University of Technology,
Pyongyang Maternity Hospital and Tanchon Commercial Bank. The four Iranian
entities are mainly petrochemical, energy and electronics firms.
The ministry annually updates the list, which covers entities that could
be suspected of developing missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons. This year, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry deleted
one North Korean and Iranian entity each, and two Indian bodies from the
list, bringing the total to 185 in eight countries and Taiwan. The five
other countries covered by the export control list are Israel, Syria,
China, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Among the targeted countries, North Korea has most companies and institutions
on the list with 58. They include Choson Central Bank, a public library,
a road construction office and the city construction bureau of the country's
capital Pyongyang, according to METI.
*************************************************
3. DPRK ACCUSES CIA OF PLANTING COUNTERFEIT
US DOLLARS
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), 19 April 2006
The people's security institution in the DPRK tasked to protect by law
the socialist system, the life and soul of its people, tightly holding
the arms for state security, is following with a high degree of vigilance
all sorts of dastardly plots and operations of the enemy's intelligence
and plot-breeding bodies against the DPRK. It will regard any involvement
in them in any form as an infringement upon the sovereignty and security
of the DPRK and force their perpetrators to pay a high price for their
crimes. A spokesman for the DPRK Ministry of People's Security declared
this in a statement issued Wednesday in connection with the fact that
forces hostile to the DPRK including those in the USA and Japan are working
hard to fabricate what they call "evidence" and "proofs"
by employing every conceivable means and despicable method to brand the
DPRK as a "criminal state" and "lawless state" over
"human rights abuse", "drug smuggling" and "counterfeit
notes."
The statement said: The CIA and plot-breeding organizations in Japan
are working with blood-shot eyes to produce animation files aimed at attacking
the DPRK after setting up organizations specializing in gathering photos
and animation files related to the "human rights situation"
and "drug and counterfeit notes" in the DPRK. They are now spending
a colossal amount of fund for this operation.
In order to make the source of those information sound plausible, they
are mass-producing video tapes and CDs for the above-said purpose even
by use of animation processing technology on "makeshift stages"
they have set up in the US forces' bases in a third country and in south
Korea. They are even manipulating the sale of such things behind the scene
to mass media in the USA, Japan and south Korea. Those media of the USA
and Japan are reprocessing the animation files and photos obtained in
a more sophisticated manner before airing and distributing them. The GNP
and other right-wing conservative forces in south Korea, as if they had
waited for the opportunity to come, are becoming zealous in using this
information for deterring the inter-Korean relations from improving and
realizing their ambition to return to power.
We have obtained the following shocking information: The CIA secretly
enlist experts on counterfeiting notes claimed to be the "most sophisticated
in the world" and invite them to issue lots of fake currencies at
"counterfeit notes printing houses of north Korean-style" operating
in US military bases in different parts of the world. Then they let these
notes find their ways to the DPRK and go out of it in the course of commercial
transaction in a desperate bid to term it "producer of counterfeit
notes." Such illegal practices on the part of the USA and the Japanese
plot-breeding organizations are absolutely intolerable as they are shameless
acts of defying elementary international law and a wanton violation of
the sovereignty of the DPRK. The DPRK, too, has the right to strongly
react to this vicious false propaganda launched by the hostile forces
against it, according to its relevant law.
*************************************************
FOCUS: 18th inter-Korean
ministerial meeting produces results
*************************************************
4. DPRK AGREES TO TALKS WITH ROK ON ABDUCTEES
by Brian Lee, Joong Ang Ilbo, 24 April 2006
Seoul appears to have dented at last Pyongyang's stonewalling refusal
to discuss the fate of Korean War-era prisoners in North Korea and South
Koreans kidnapped after the war to train North Korean spies. A communiqué
issued at the end of an inter-Korean ministerial meeting in Pyongyang
said the two countries would "cooperate in trying to resolve realistically
the issue of persons missing during the Korean War and after the war."
Although tentative, the statement represents real progress, an official
in Seoul asserted, noting that North Korea in the past has refused to
discuss the matters with Seoul. Pyongyang has not admitted to kidnapping
any South Korean civilians and asserted that any South Koreans who stayed
in the North after the war had done so of their own free will.
The communiqué was silent on North Korea's request for additional
massive amounts of rice and fertilizer, donations that public opinion
here has forced Seoul to link with the fate of prisoners and abductees.
Before leaving for Pyongyang on Friday, Lee Jong-seok, Seoul's unification
minister, said he was prepared to offer more aid if the abductees were
returned. Officials here offered no hints about how yesterday's agreement
would be implemented. Seoul's Defense Ministry estimates that more than
400 POWs are still being held in the North; civic groups say the number
could be about 600.
Other points in the communiqué were rhetorical; the two nations
called for a peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue by
a speedy implementation of an agreement in principle reached last September,
even though Pyongyang has been boycotting those negotiations. The next
ministerial talks will be held in July in Busan, the two sides said; they
will address Seoul's proposal for a sand and gravel joint venture at economic
talks next month.
*************************************************
5. SOUTH KOREAN ENVOY QUOTES KIM IL SUNG
TO NORTH KOREANS
by Lee Young-jong, Joongang Ilbo, 26 April 2006
One month before he died, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung said that using
the railroad leading to the South to transport Chinese products could
earn the North $400 million per year, according to an official biography.
South Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok used those words to pressure
the North Korean delegation during inter-Korean talks, telling them it
was one of the dying leader's last requests, said a government official.
"The remarks by the minister made the North's delegation speechless,"
the official said. Mr. Lee pressured his North Korean counterpart, Kwon
Ho-ung, North Korea's senior cabinet counselor, to produce a concrete
date for the reopening of the railroad and a test drive. However, the
North made no concrete concessions about the railroad.
Mr. Lee also told the North Koreans that the issue of Kim Yong-nam, a
South Korean who was kidnapped in 1978, has now become a matter of concern.
The Japanese have investigated the kidnappings, because Mr. Kim later
married a Japanese woman also believed to have been abducted by North
Korea. The couple's daughter lives in North Korea. Mr. Kwon replied that
relevant government bodies were currently investigating the case, a remark
that seemed to acknowledge that Kim Yong-nam does exist.
A government official said yesterday that during four hours of direct
talks between Mr. Lee and Mr. Kwon, topics were brought up by the South
that could have agitated the North. He was not any more specific.
*************************************************
6. KIM DAE JUNG SET FOR RETURN VISIT TO DPRK
IN JUNE
by Seo Dong-shin, Korea Times, 25 April 2006
North Korea has accepted former President Kim Dae-jung's planned visit
to Pyongyang in June, the South's unification minister indicated yesterday.
The North basically shared the South's view on Kim's planned visit, the
minister, Lee Jong-seok, told reporters after the end of the 18th inter-Korean
Cabinet talks. Details of the visit, including protocol, will be discussed
at working-level meetings between the two sides, he said.
On the fourth and last day of the four-day talks, the Koreas agreed to
work toward “practical resolution” of the issue of prisoners
of war (POW) and abducted civilians. The agreement was included in an
eight-point joint press statement signed between Lee, the South's chief
delegate to the talks, and his North Korean counterpart Kwon Ho-ung. According
to the statement, the two sides will discuss measures to further expand
economic ties, such as jointly developing mining resources and extracting
sand from the western mouth of the Han River, during the economic cooperation
talks scheduled for May.
The two Koreas will also continue efforts for denuclearization of the
Korean Peninsula and early implementation of the Sept. 19 joint statement
so that the nuclear issue would be resolved in a way that befits common
interests and security. Regarding the possible return of South Korean
abductees in the North, they agreed to cooperate to “practically
resolve the issue of people whose fate became unknown during and after
the 1950-53 Korean War.” North Korea has denied having abducted
any South Koreans after the war, while the South estimates that there
are 485 South Korean civilians abducted after the war and still held in
the North.
The Koreas have shown step-by-step improvement in discussing the issue
in recent years. Last February, the two Koreas' Red Cross officials agreed
to discuss and resolve the issue of confirming the fate of the people
who went missing during and after the war within the framework of the
separated families issue. It was the first time that the subject of South
Korean civilians believed to have been abducted by the North after the
war was mentioned in an inter-Korean accord. Seoul is said to have coaxed
the North on the issue, offering more economic aid and repatriation of
former North Korean spies in the South.
In addition, Seoul will provide 200,000 tons of fertilizer aid to the
North, Minister Lee said. North Korea asked the South for 300,000 tons
of fertilizer aid and 500,000 tons of rice aid during the talks. But a
South Korean official involved in the talks said on condition of anonymity
that while Seoul would review the possibility of an additional 100,000
tons of fertilizer aid, the rice aid was not an issue to be agreed upon
at the Pyongyang talks. Despite earlier expectations expressed by Seoul
officials, the minister failed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
during the visit.
“It's true that we asked the North for a meeting with Kim,”
the official said. “But the North officially told us in a polite
manner that it is difficult because Kim is now in another part of the
country.” The two sides agreed to hold the next round of the Cabinet
talks in July in Pusan.
*************************************************
7. FULL TEXT OF INTER-KOREAN MINISTERIAL
AGREEMENT
Yonhap News, 24 April 2006
The following is the full text of a joint press statement issued by South
and North Korea at the end of their four-day meeting in Pyongyang, North
Korea, Monday. The 18th inter-Korean ministerial meeting was held in Pyongyang
on April 21-24. During the meeting, the two sides agreed to make positive
efforts to elevate bilateral relations to a level befitting the spirit
of the Korean people's togetherness as well as assess achievements made
following the joint declaration of the June 15 summit, and the following
are the points of the agreement.
1. South and North Korea agreed to promote the Korean people's reconciliation
and trust by taking practical measures which recognize and respect each
other's ideology and system in line with the June 15 (2000) joint declaration.
2. South and North Korea shared the need to take practical measures to
ease military tension and ensure peace on the Korean Peninsula and agreed
to cooperate in their implementation.
3. South and North Korea agreed to make positive efforts to implement
"the Sept. 19 (2005) joint statement" in order to resolve the
nuclear issue in a peaceful manner in ways that benefit the interest and
security of the Korean people, as well as continue to make efforts to
realize the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. South and North Korea agreed to hold a festival in the South to mark
the sixth anniversary of the June 15 joint declaration as part of efforts
to promote the unity of the Korean people in a meaningful way through
the participation of the two sides' delegations in the festival.
5. South and North Korea agreed to realize economic cooperation which
can contribute to the Korean people's joint prosperity.
The two sides agreed to take practical measures of mutual benefit which
can expand investment and cooperation in terms of region, business type
and scale under the firm belief that inter-Korean economic cooperation
is a cooperative business by the Korean people and for their joint prosperity.
In this regard, the two sides agreed to hold the 12th meeting of the
inter-Korean economic cooperation promotion committee sometime in May
to discuss ways of extracting aggregate in the estuary of the Han River
and jointly developing resources, as well as implementing trial runs of
trains, the opening of railways and roads across the border and discussing
the Kaesong industrial complex and cooperation on light industry and resources.
6. South and North Korea agreed to cooperate in resolving the issue of
the people unaccounted for during or after the Korean War in a practical
manner.
7. South and North Korea agreed to promote cooperation in such various
projects as prevention of natural disasters, enhancement of health and
preservation of cultural assets.
8. South and North Korea agreed to hold the 19th ministerial meeting
in Busan on July 11-14 in 2006.
*************************************************
OPINION
*************************************************
8. NORMALITY IN DPRK CAN DEFUSE NUCLEAR
RISK
by Victor Mallet, Financial Times, 25 April 2006
Diplomats will wince at the barefaced honesty, but it is time to admit
publicly that the world is making no progress in persuading North Korea
to abandon its nuclear weapons. Amid the rhetoric and angst over Iran
(which is years away from manufacturing a nuclear bomb and denies it wants
to), North Korea (which boasts of its nuclear deterrent) is quietly getting
away with it. Even the doves in the US state department are beginning
to realize that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's negotiators have been
stringing them along, perhaps for more than a decade and certainly since
the start of the six-party talks three years ago.
The latest North Korean excuse is that talks cannot resume until the
release of Dollars 20m frozen in North Korean accounts at Banco Delta
Asia in Macau, designated by the US Treasury as a "primary money-laundering
concern", even though the sum is equivalent to just a week of the
electricity supplies promised to Pyongyang by South Korea under an agreement
at the six-party talks last September.
It has fallen to a retired official to tell the uncomfortable truth.
In recent interviews with the Financial Times and The Oriental Economist,
a Japanese newsletter, Richard Armitage, former US deputy secretary of
state, was pessimistic about prising Mr. Kim away from his nuclear arsenal.
Asked if he expected the talks to succeed, Mr. Armitage doubted there
would be a breakthrough in the near future. "I don't see it,"
he said.
Admitting the failure of Plan A - the multilateral negotiations - is
easy; devising a sensible Plan B is harder. One suggestion is to accept
North Korea as a nuclear weapons state and focus on dissuading Pyongyang
from using them or selling the technology to others. Another option is
a US military strike against North Korean nuclear facilities, although
that would be at least as risky as an attack on Iran. A third possibility
is to target the regime with more economic sanctions, a popular idea because
of the evident inconvenience caused to North Korean leaders by the freezing
of the Macau accounts.
A better strategy is to examine why the multilateral talks have failed
and why the North Korean economy is in better shape than it was a few
years ago. The answer is that China and South Korea, two of the six nations
involved in the talks (the others being North Korea, the US, Japan and
Russia), are more interested in shoring up the Kim dictatorship with investment
and trade than in depriving it of nuclear weapons.
In the words of Mr. Armitage, China is "enormously investing"
in North Korea, while the two halves of Korea are engaged in a slow, de
facto process of unification. In Washington last week, Hu Jintao, the
Chinese president, gave only token support to the drive to denuclearize
the Korean peninsula. As for South Korea - supposedly a key US ally -
a recent opinion poll showed that nearly half the country's young voters
would side with the North if the US attacked Pyongyang's nuclear facilities.
The South Korean government and the private sector are vigorously promoting
economic exchanges across the demilitarized zone.
Instead of despairing at this neighbourly rapprochement, the rest of
the world should welcome it as part of the solution. The long-term survival
of the nuclear-armed North Korean regime depends on isolation and an artificial
sense of permanent war with the west, both of which are diminished by
globalization and the influence of Chinese and South Korean capitalism.
That is why it would be wrong to underestimate the significance of Mr.
Kim's mysterious trip in January to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where the
post-Mao economic modernization of China was launched in the late 1970s.
Smothering North Korea in the embrace of China and South Korea, two of
the world's most successful economies of the past 20 years, will not persuade
Mr. Kim to abandon his nuclear ambitions overnight, but it will help to
transform a paranoid, militarized state into a more normal country. And
normality is a precondition for the rational negotiations on which a solution
to the nuclear crisis depends.
*************************************************
9. 48% OF ROK YOUTH SUPPORT DPRK IN CASE
OF US ATTACK
by Park Song-wu, Korea Times, 21 February 2006
Almost half of juniors surveyed, who will get their first voting rights
in the 2007 presidential election, said in a recent poll that South Korea
should side with North Korea if Washington attacks nuclear facilities
in the North without Seoul's consent. In the survey of 1,000 youngsters
aged between 18 and 23, conducted by The Korea Times and its sister paper
the Hankook Ilbo on Feb. 16-19, nearly 48 percent of respondents said
that if the USA attacked nuclear facilities in North Korea, Seoul should
act on Pyongyang's behalf and demand Washington stop the attack. But 40.7
percent of them said Seoul should keep a neutral stance in the event of
such attacks, while 11.6 percent said South Korea needs to act in concert
with the United States.
A political expert in Seoul said that the poll results should not be
interpreted as meaning young South Koreans are anti-American.
“To me, the survey does not hint at our youngster's hatred for
the United States,” Kim Soo-jin, politics professor of EWHA Women’s
University in Seoul, said in a telephone interview. “I interpret
it as their opposition to any attempt to solve the nuclear crisis by armed
force.”
Regarding South Korea's aid programs for North Korea, 46.2 percent of
the interviewees said they think the current level of support is acceptable,
while 28.1 percent of them said that it should be reduced. South Korea
plans to provide North Korea with 1.2 trillion won ($1 billion) in aid
this year, including rice and fertilizers. The total sum amounts to 0.16
percent of South Korea's gross national income.
Peaceful unification was the most preferred method of reintegrating the
two Koreas, receiving the approval of 54.1 percent of respondents. But
35.5 percent said they have no problem in maintaining the status quo if
the two sides can coexist peacefully. Nearly 40 percent of respondents
chose China as the partner most important for South Korea to keep friendly
relations with. The United States came next with 18.4 percent and North
Korea came third with 18 percent. The United States has traditionally
been considered the most important ally of South Korea since Washington's
participation in the 1950-53 Korean War to defeat the North's invasion.
As for the US Forces Korea's possible engagement in a conflict between
China and Taiwan, 56.2 percent of respondents said that South Korea should
declare its neutrality as there is actually no way to bar Washington's
move. Nearly 22 percent of those who answered said South Korea should
cooperate with its ally, the United States, while 16.8 percent said Seoul
should oppose the US intervention as South Korea could be involved in
the conflict. As potential voters in the 2007 presidential elections,
20.1 percent of respondents picked Rep. Park Geun-hye, chairwoman of the
largest opposition Grand National Party (GNP), as the most appropriate
candidate to become the next president.
Lee Myung-bak, Seoul city mayor and a GNP member, placed second with
an 18.5 percent approval rating, followed by former prime minister Goh
Kun (14.6 percent) and chairman of the ruling Uri Party Chung Dong-young
(8.5 percent).
A law revised last year lowered the voting age by one year to 19, making
the 2007 presidential election have an additional 4.2 million voters,
who were born between December 1982 and December 1988.
In the 2002 presidential election, the voter turnout of those aged between
20 to 24 stood at 57.9 percent. In the upcoming local elections in May,
young people favored Kang Kum-sil, former justice minister and a Uri Party
member, as Seoul mayor even though she has not yet declared her candidacy.
She topped the list of possible candidates with a 36 percent support rate,
followed by a far runner-up, Rep. Hong Joon-pyo (8.4 percent), a veteran
politician of the GNP.
Half of the respondents considered themselves “progressive”
(50.1 percent), while 21.1 percent of them said they are “conservative.”
Many of the respondents had rosy expectations for the future of South
Korea. Nearly 43 percent of them said the country's future is bright,
while 15.7 percent saw it negatively. Media Research was commissioned
to conduct the survey. The poll has a plus or minus 3.1-percent margin
of error and a 95 percent confidence level.
*************************************************
QUIDNUNC
In this section of CanKor, we invite readers to send questions, answers, or responses.
Answers should be under 150 words and may be edited for space.
*************************************************
HOW MANY PEOPLE IN NORTH KOREA HAVE UNFETTERED ACCESS TO INFORMATION
ABOUT THE WORLD OUTSIDE THE DPRK?
*************************************************
North Koreans with truly "unfettered" access to information are likely
to be very few indeed. Access to external media is tightly controlled,
as is access to visiting foreigners. Nevertheless, there are at least
two ways in which the outside world seeps into North Korea. One is via
the northern border, where Chinese media are accessible to North Korean
traders and those with the means to purchase Chinese-made radios and TVs.
The other is the stable of civil servants working in government ministries
that maintain regular contact with the outside world, such as foreign
affairs and trade, interpreters, staff of embassies, etc. One of the pleasures
of my time working at the WFP in Pyongyang was to observe the way local
staff relished all the newspapers, magazines, CDs, movies and videos that
arrived on a regular basis via diplomatic pouch from our respective home
countries, or the way interpreters asked to listen to BBC news on the
short-wave radios in our vehicles. These mostly young sons and daughters
of the elite had for the most part a surprisingly sophisticated understanding
of the outside world. Erich Weingartner, Editor of CanKor.
*************************************************
WHAT NOW? How many NGOs continue to remain resident in the DPRK? Which
ones?
[Answers should be e-mailed to: editor@CanKor.ca]
*************************************************
