Keeping the Lid on Will Only Get Harder

Document dump alert! This commentary was published first by Daily NK on November 24th, 2011.

‘North Korea Sees Big Jump in Mobile Phone Use’, one AFP report announced on November 16th. AFP was not alone; in a piece on November 21st, Reuters added its voice, proclaiming, ‘Secretive North Korea Opens Up to Cell Phones.’

The interest of the two international news agencies had been piqued by the news, revealed in the third quarter earnings report of one half of North Korea’s monopoly 3G cell phone service provider, Orascom Telecom, that there are now more than 800,000 cell phone subscribers in the country.

At this moment of apparent progress, there are even those who see North Korea as a country on the cusp of a digital revolution. One, Dr. Alexandre Mansourov, a senior associate with the Nautilus Institute, wrote in a recent piece that Pyongyang could be about to “bandwagon with China’s digital juggernaut and catch up with the digital revolution in the South one day.”

Sadly, this is an unlikely outcome. But it is certainly sensible to contemplate whether the rapidly approaching era of one million North Korean cell phone users could one day herald a revolution of another kind, one along the lines of the bottom-up, citizen-led, SNS-driven Jasmine Revolution in the Middle East.

Pyongyang’s determination to use access to information as a way to control the North Korean people certainly militates against it. Recently, North Korea’s leaders have been particularly active in trying to block off the flow of information coming in, with controls over: ▲ illegal border crossing; ▲ use of Chinese cell phones; and ▲ private smuggling all strengthened, and violators punished unusually heavily.

Simultaneously, by cracking down on things like illegal radios, USBs, DVDs and other technology capable of containing, receiving or otherwise aiding in the distribution of external information, the authorities have also been striving to stop the circulation of external information within North Korea’s borders. Inspection units like ‘Group 109’ represent the practical enforcement of these efforts, and sources report that while in the past violations could be sidestepped through bribery, currently the official emphasis is very much on enforcement of the law and on punishment. In a period of harsh repression, Party cadres and members of the security forces are bound to reassess their incentives.

And yet, despite these repressive steps, it remains the case that there is now a form of spontaneously arising ‘public opinion’ in North Korea that there was not fifteen years ago, and this is something which can mostly be attributed to two things; marketization and the associated spread of technology.

Even as recently as the early 2000s, that information which did pass between civilians in North Korea was exceedingly simplistic; for example, “South Korea is doing well”, or “China has succeeded in reform and opening.” But now, thanks to marketization, there has come recognition of the essential nature of good, high quality, reliable information.

Take the example of rice prices. In North Korea today, rice prices are held to be among the most basic of information, something without which trading would be exceedingly difficult and inefficient. Fortunately, rice prices are not considered a state secret, and so they can be transmitted freely on a domestic cell phone using the Koryolink network. And yet, rice prices and exchange rates are not merely numerical values; because traders need to know about cause and effect, their transmission is guaranteed to elicit 2nd and even 3rd levels of information too, and this information can have a subversive edge; for instance about policy changes, agricultural conditions, Sino-North Korean economic cooperation or the presence/absence of international aid. Anyone with an interest in trading rice is sure to take a deep interest in all of these other things.

In addition to which, idle complaint such as “rice prices are so high, it is making life pretty hard” is also possible, since it does not trigger the state’s cell phone surveillance system, which is automated in the first instance and relies on the presence of key words in conversation.

Thus, while it is clear that spontaneously arising ‘public opinion’ and mild criticisms of this sort do not yet have the power to greatly affect official decision making, the very fact that people are making and communicating private judgments about information made independent from the explanations and analysis of the official media is an immensely meaningful change. Fatalistic resignation may still be the mainstream response to most major developments, but it is apparent that there is now the tendency to think about and analyze external information and the aims of domestic policy.

However, we must avoid over-interpreting the signs. As with the watching of South Korean dramas on North Korean DVD players, the presence of 800,000 cell phones in North Korea symbolizes an important phenomenon and an unexpected step forward, but it does not mean North Korea is becoming freer, or is likely to have its own Jasmine Revolution any time soon.

First, this is because if an average family in North Korea were to have three members, and any one family were only to have one cell phone, then 800,000 phones in the country would still only mean 2.4 million people with access to a cell phone, or roughly 10% of the population. In addition, given the overwhelming financial supremacy of Pyongyang over provincial areas, it is likely that a large majority of those phones reside in the capital region. As such, all we can say with certainty is that the number of cell phones in circulation represents a good indicator of the size of the affluent class in the country.

Second, because it is simply not Kim Jong Il’s intention, nor is it in his interest, to offer the people of North Korea the option of communicating freely. Simply, Koryolink, in which the North Korean state is a partner, is a good way for the regime to earn money. The fact that the company offers a discount on bills paid in Euro is proof of this purpose. Koryolink also allows the regime to issue propaganda about the development of the country, an increasingly important point when many other plans for the strong and prosperous state appear set to go up in smoke.

However, there is room to take heart. During yesterday's International Media Conference for North Korea Press Freedom held in Seoul, Daily NK president Park In Ho pointed out that it is the very same people who use cell phones, watch DVDs and carry illegal USB sticks who will find out time and time again that no matter how well educated they are and how successfully they trade, they cannot live the life they want to live because the regime won’t allow it. Every year that passes will bring more and more traders and students, cadres and ordinary women into closer and closer contact with each other. Invisible relationships will be built, information and modest grievances periodically aired, and people will thus become better able to appreciate that their country is not the place the authorities want them to think it is. This is a long but slippery slope for the regime.

It is not, in short, the ‘kotjebi’ who will lead the revolution in North Korea. When it happens it will be led by those young people from Pyongyang universities who have been deprived of a year of university education in order to get the construction of Changjeon St. done on time. It will not be easy to keep such a country in chains for too much longer.

Fast News in a Slow News Month

Two pieces of great news for today. 

First and foremost is that there is now the full text of 'NK People Speak, 2011' available in pdf format on the Daily NK database.

Second, that there is now also a way for people who are not in Seoul or Tongyeong to take sign the petition to save Shin Suk Ja and her two daughters, and maybe, just maybe, to close those dastardly prison camps!

It's been a slow news month, but you cannot say I never do anything for you!

Celebrity Tittle Tattle, But No Celebrity

There are many reasons why I don't always enjoy reading the South Korean media, and this past few days has seen me provided with one more; namely, Kim Han Sol.

Let's be clear: Kim Han Sol is a complete nobody. Not necessarily a good lad, but not necessarily a bad lad, either: he may or may not be kind to his friends, for example, and he may or may not send home gifts to his father at Chuseok and Seolnal religiously. Either way, we don't know the answers to these questions, and the reason why we don't know is because, even though his father is allegedly Kim Jong Il's first son Kim Jong Nam, it just. doesn't. matter.

It doesn't matter first and foremost because the boy is 16 years old. He had the misfortune of being born in North Korea, alongside the dodging-a-bullet good fortune of being born into the Kim family. But, like Prince Harry, he also has the good fortune of having absolutely no chance whatsoever of ever being the successor to anybody.

All of which then obviously begs the following question: why did the appearance of a young man of this name on the class list at a fairly obscure educational establishment in Bosnia & Herzegovina (a statement pretending that the arrival of Kim represents the absolute pinnacle of outreach can be read here, but the class list has been taken down) have the South Korean media falling over itself to publish not only his photos (the lad is relatively dashing, and has fashion sense best described as more 'Japanese-y' than Korean, piquing front page picture editors all over Seoul, including on the Korean side of my office) but also, pretty much verbatim, every comment he has ever posted/left on the internet?

For saving me the bother of reproducing said comments, thanks to Martyn Williams at North Korea Tech for this very brief overview of the kind of stuff that filled a page 2 spread in the Chosun Ilbo (see left, followed on from page 1 above, and synthesized in English in large part here, found via Leonid Petrov).

Anyway, it's all irrelevant. As the post title suggests, it's celebrity tittle tattle, but without any sign of a celebrity. This young man, if indeed it is who the South Korean media believe it is, may one day end up in Pyongyang (or elsewhere) doing the bidding of whoever is on the throne in the North Korean capital. Then, much like Kim Jong Cheol and the sordid tale of his appearance at an Eric Clapton concert in Singapore, he will be fair game. It won't be interesting, but it will be legitimate, and connected criticism will be absolutely justified. The current press focus on Kim Han Sol is neither.

Part of me wants it all to turn out to have been an elaborate hoax, but the other half of me knows that the Korean media would then feel compelled to publish that, too, and I am not sure I can take much more.

(This is an extension of a commentary I wrote for The Daily NK on Saturday, October 2nd here, ably assisted, I might point out, by Mr. Gerard Armstrong, one of those behind-the-scenes kind of heroic translator sorts who make my daily management of Daily NK content so much easier.)

The Complexities of Trade, in a Picture

In an e-mail received quite a lot more than a year ago from Professor Stephan Haggard, the co-author of 'Witness to Transformation' and a number of other critical tracts in the English-speaking world of North Korea analysis advised me that any serious scholar of North Korea in the modern age who did not possess a pretty firm grasp of economics (very broadly defined) would soon enough be a scholar left behind in the dust.

Though I am aware that it did not actually require a professor of political science to recognize that fact, coming from him it nevertheless had more of an impact. And it is a truism that is only becoming truer with the passing of time. The economic and political landscape of North Korea, a thorny topic at the best of times, seems now to be changing rapidly, and in some interesting ways.

For example, it is the view of the president of The Daily NK, Park In-ho, that the days when we can talk of North Korea having 'markets' or a 'jangmadang' should be put behind us. This is not to say that there are no markets; on the contrary, they are beginning to thrive again after the November, 2009 currency redenomination, although prices are too high given the ongoing lack of capital for many.

No, what Mr. Park actually means is that by referring to 'markets' or 'the jangmadang' as if they were one unit, we are basically hindering our capacity to understand what is going on in North Korea's capitalist economic sector. It was once a useful designation, then, but in many ways has ceased to be so.

What Mr. Park wants us to recognize is that North Korea now has formal and informal markets. These are more instructive terms, in that they tell us many things about the nature of the markets in question.

That being said, if you turn around and say to me, "But Chris, both these markets sell the same stuff, and are co-located to a very high degree," I'll only agree with you. In terms of demand, you'd be correct. After all, an informal market and a formal market do get their goods from many of the same sources, and do serve exactly the same people, with the same tastes in smuggled DVDs and Chinese clothing. Equally, they really are on two sides of one wall in many cases; on one side in a formal setting with multiple 1m x 1m stalls for which traders pay a fee and get the right to trade in exchange, the other on the street, with no stall fees, and no stalls; only goods, set up ad hoc on whatever is nearby. Therefore, they look somewhat different, but act in much the same way.

On the supply side, however, the distinction between formal and informal is more important, notably since the authorities persist in only allowing women of a certain age (and with a certain amount of clout with the powers-that-be, in most cases) to trade in the formal market. This form of arbitrary discrimination would be disastrous for those prohibited from trading if there were no alternative. However, there is an alternative and it is, obviously, the informal market.

Thus, while it is beyond my remit to suggest policies that might employ these facts, it is to be hoped that policy-makers in Washington, where Mr. Park was speaking, and elsewhere appreciate that somehow attempting to 'support the development of the jangmadang' or 'encourage capitalist activities in North Korea' is likely to result in supporting and developing some people (the wives of cadres being the quintessential example) who do not need it. More nuance is needed if such an ambition is to bear any fruit.

Second, if we move marginally up the commercial chain, we come to the subject of cross-border business. To which end, I bring you some art (see above)...

This is a recreation of a diagram penned by Professor Haggard when he visited The Daily NK a few months ago. Utilizing it, he pointed out one of the main things that characterize cross-border trade in the present day; most of it is being done by larger enterprises.

While small-scale private smuggling does still go on with some frequency, particularly in more rugged areas as shown by type-B transactions, it is true to say that most A-type transactions are no longer like that, involving as they do significant commercial entities on both sides of the Sino-North Korean border.

Whether or not this is bad is rather hard to decide, which may be why few people are prepared to try. On the positive side, these enterprises are both sustaining their own staff and, more importantly, feeding domestic traders' need for products in the form of C- and D-type transactions. On the negative side, they do pay their dues to the Party in the form of loyalty payments and such like, making them complicit tools in the perpetuation of the Kim dynasty, much like a formal market trader paying her stall fee to the market management office.

So there you are; just two good economic reasons why being against the North Korean regime and for the North Korean people is only going to get more complicated as time goes by, all without so much as mentioning a trans-Korean gas pipeline or the words 'Mount Geumgang'. Those are a whole other issue completely...

Nice Lada, Where Did You Get It?

According to RBK Daily (via here), a North Korean company called Lucas Trading purchased 250 cars made by the Russian company AvtoVAZ in the first half of this year. The cars apparently included the Lada Priora and the Lada 4x4.

The same company apparently has a record of purchasing cars from AvtoVAZ; 500 in 2008 and 530 in 2009; however, it purchased none last year.

Obviously, none of this is in any sense news. Given its status as a former ally of the Soviet Union, North Korea has a history of buying both Lada and Volga cars, some of which can be seen crawling the underpopulated streets of Pyongyang to this day.

Regardless of which, inspired to see whether the North Koreans were getting much bang for their buck, I looked for some reviews online, and this is what I came up with;

1) My Lada car was hit severely twice, once from the back, the other from the front, without any remarkable damage. 2) High performance on the road with smooth driving and no problems as long as you follow the maintenance schedule. 3) Equipped with EEC, power steering operated with hydraulic power, air-conditioning and electric windows but without air-bag...

Sounds good, doesn't it? Bit of a luxury vehicle for some in the North Korean capital, I'd say. But I wonder whether the next review might not have been a factor, too;

Pull your head out of your ass and stop exaggerating. These vehicles are mediocre, at best. They will break down when least expected. The positive side, cheap and easy to fix, every mechanics' dream come true...

Bit rude, but I can certainly see cheap and easy to fix being quite popular features. Might one speculate that fuel efficiency is also quite good?