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In our analysis of the disastrous currency conversion of 2009, we argued that the long-run swing away from economic reform after 2005 has also been associated with renewed efforts to secure the border (an objective, we should add, that is in manifest tension with the country’s stated efforts to secure foreign direct investment). This effort ultimately depends on Chinese support, and the regime appears to be getting it.
In mid-February, the KCNA offered up a number of stories on the high-profile visit of Chinese Minister of Public Security Meng Jianzhu to Pyongyang, including an audience and dinner with Kim Jong Il and a full panoply of meetings with top military, security and political leaders. The visit was initially read for its wider diplomatic significance: as an endorsement of the transition, particularly given recent reports that Kim Jong-un is headed to China some time in the next couple of months. But in a short item on February 13, the KCNA also reported that Meng Jianzhu had signed a new cooperation agreement with his counterpart, DPRK Minister of People’s Security Ju Sang-song. The Chinese press framed the agreement in terms of the upcoming ROK-US military exercises, but the main responsibility of the two ministries is with internal security. (The 2009 SAIS report, Flood Across the Border by Carla Freeman and Drew Thompson remains one of the best sources we have seen on the complex security arrangements on both sides.)
As always, Good Friends’ North Korea Today (No. 390) provides insight on how these efforts are likely to play out on the ground. With unusually cold weather and dwindling food supplies, the number of people seeking to cross the border started to rise, generating alerts in December from the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces and the Department of the General Staff. According to Good Friends, military personnel were offered material incentives—including priority access to college admission and Arirang TVs--to turn defectors in, in effect turning military personnel into bounty hunters. But with low salaries and poor rations, the attractiveness of this prospective offer will depend on the bribe prices offered—in cash—by border crossers.
