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Goodfriends most recent report (North Korea Today No. 389) is on the China-DPRK trade and is a particularly meaty one. In addition to the price decline already noted in an earlier post, the report includes these nuggets:
With little response from embassy channels, Pyongyang has taken its food drive to China. Directives have been issued to normalize trade relations, including by cleaning up arrears. Officials are apparently admitting that credibility has suffered from a poor reputation with respect to deferred payments; this comports with some of our findings from a firm-level survey.
- Pyongyang has authorized the opening of new trade offices in Northeast China.
- Debates about the costs of dependence have also resurfaced, which are probably not ideological: some groups have ties with the lucrative China trade and others don’t.
As always, it is hard to know whether these moves portend something new or not; they could well be short-term. The report was written up prior to the February 16 holiday for Kim Jong Il’s birthday, when the government tries to dispense largesse.
