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When I visited Rason in 1997, I was struck by how fresh the air and how beautiful the night skies were. Given the dearth of outdoor recreational opportunities in northeast Asia, I mused that maybe the North Koreans might be better off in the long-run by preserving the wilderness rather than by developing an industrial park. [...]
South Koreans sometimes label Chinese investment in North Korea as “economic colonialism.” I normally discount these concerns as slightly paranoiac but a series a press reports from last week are starting to make even me wonder. First, multiple stories appeared in the Chinese and South Korean press describing an agreement between the China Overseas Investment [...]
So maybe Hu Jintao did not literally say “if you build it, we will come,” (I doubt that he’s a fan of either baseball or Kevin Costner) but it would seem reasonable to assume a certain degree of Chinese frustration with North Korea’s reluctance to embrace economic reform, and a willingness to support such a process [...]
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 month KCNA published the laws on the Rason and Hwanggumpyong and Wihwa Island zones. Curtis Melvin at North Korea Economy watch has helpfully posted them in pdf form. They make interesting reading. Well, at least for some of us. The Rason law gives extraordinary power and discretion to the Rason City People’s Committee, though [...]
Last week we mentioned apparent Chinese discontent with the rules that were being developed for the Hwanggumpyong, Wihwa, and Rason special economic zones. Ironically, double taxation was apparently one source of dispute. While terms under discussion for Chinese activities in the zones (the right to use Chinese currency and cell phones; the establishment of independent [...]
Over the past couple of months, a number of news reports have appeared indicating that North Korea is revising various aspects of its commercial code. A common thread running through these reports has been the absence of detail and lack of understanding of what was actually going on. IFES has summarized the core changes, reputedly [...]
In the aftermath of Kim Jong-il’s trip to China the spin coming from the usual suspects in the South has been that the trip was a less than complete success—Kim failed to meet with Jiang Zemin and brought home fewer goodies than expected. But on Thursday, Chen Deming, China’s commerce minister, and Jang Song-taek, Kim’s brother-in-law [...]
RFA offers up a range of opinion—including ours—on the development of Wihwa and Hwang-geum-pyong islands. Located in the Yalu river near the Chinese city of Dandong, the Chinese signed a lease last year on the islands for what appears to be an export-processing or bonded warehouse project. Chinese reports said that the “scale” of investment [...]
