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The “Sunshine Policy” of South Korean President Kim Dae-jung derived its name from Aesop’s fable of the North Wind and the Sun in which the Sun and Wind compete to see which can strip the coat off a traveler. While the Wind fruitlessly attempts to blow away the coat off, the Sun uses its warmth [...]
The US is not the only country in the midst of a presidential election. In an earlier post, I reprinted some snippets of Ahn Cheol-soo’s musings on North Korea taken from his book. Opposition rival Moon Jae-in has made a major policy speech on North Korea; Karin Lee at the National Committee on North Korea [...]
One of the stories that we have been following is the development of the mining sector in North Korea. Yonhap is now reporting that according to the Seoul-based North Korea Resource Institute (NKRI), North Korea has nearly $10 trillion in underground minerals. As Scott Bruce points out in a recent piece, there are both financial [...]
South Korea will elect a new president in December. One interesting figure on the South Korean political scene is Ahn Cheol-soo, who despite having never held public office, would be an instantly credible candidate were he to declare. As such, his views onNorth Korea are of interest. Ahn recently released a book, “Ahn Chul-soo’s Thoughts,” [...]
It is clear that change is underway in North Korea and that China will play an important role, though the jury is still out on where it will all end up. The survey that Steph Haggard and I did indicates that Chinese enterprises are unhappy about the North Korean regulatory environment and corruption, and last [...]
Last week, on the anniversary of the “24 May measures” undertaken in response to the shooting of a tourist at Mt. Kumgang, the sinking of the Cheonan, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, the Hyundai Research Institute (HRI) released a report claiming that North-South economic activity has been depressed greater than originally expected. According to [...]
Earlier this week we speculated that the explicit recognition of food insecurity problems in the joint New Year’s editorial could be interpreted as a North Korean signal that they were interested in re-engaging on the food-for-nukes negotiations sidetracked by the death of Kim Jong-il. Whatever their motives (true desperation, stockpiling in anticipation of the Kim [...]
In response to its economic crisis, North Korea has intensified efforts to attract investment to its Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic and Trade Zone. While this effort to promote the zone represents an important start, the zone clearly has a long way to go before it will be able to attract the type of investment envisioned by [...]
A wide ranging interview with Steph Haggard, complete with color photos!
It’s been at least a week since we’ve had a post on tourism, so we must be overdue. We’ve got golf, juche study halls, study tours, radical chic. There’s so much activity on that front that you’d think Wonsan was Miami Beach. Now from the good folks at Koryo Tours, we’ve got the heavy metal [...]
