Kim Jong-il's regime in North Korea desperately needs security guarantees for economic reforms to take root, but he is unlikely to get them at six-nation talks on the Stalinist state's nuclear program starting today.
In the streets of Pyongyang small businesses have always been state-owned but the prices are now fixed by the market, and buyers use cash instead of ration coupons.
For those who have money, several hundred market salesmen on Unification Street now offer imported goods from China or Southeast Asia, such as clothing, televisions and washing machines.
"When we are in North Korea, it is like going back 20 years" to a time when economic reforms first started in China, said Cheng Peng, vice president of the Society for Friendship and Sino-Korean cultural exchange which organizes trips for Chinese businessmen.
Quoted in the Chinese economic journal Zhongguo Jingying Bao, Cheng talks of "virgin territory" and gives assurances that there are dream opportunities for small and medium-sized Chinese enterprises in the country.
But the chances of the reforms lasting depends on the regime's own chances of survival.
"In North Korea the reforms are imposed from on high. They are there to stabilize the system and to make the situation better for the elite," Ruediger Frank, a specialist on Korea at Vienna University, said.
But he said the North's leaders were yet to be convinced that "foreigners are not going to exploit internal conflict caused by the reforms to provoke a change in regime."
"For the economic situation in North Korea to improve in the long run, it must transform its military-run industries into civilian ones," said Zhao Huji, a specialist on North Korea from the Central Party School in Beijing.
"But for that to happen North Korea needs security guarantees, a requirement the United States refuses to meet since Pyongyang is only offering a compromise, and not a dismantling of its nuclear program," said Zhao.
While North Korea admits to having a plutonium-based nuclear program, which it has offered to freeze, it denies the existence of a uranium-enrichment one, which the US insists it must dismantle.
China, Russia, South Korea and perhaps Japan could for their part accept the more basic compromise, the Chinese expert suggests, but much depends on the US.
Seoul recently signed agreements to develop its economic relations with the North, while pledging a huge aid package if a solution is found to the nuclear standoff that erupted in 2002 with US claims that Pyongyang had resumed its nuclear program.
"South Korea seems determined to press ahead with engagement, regardless of the nuclear situation," said Marcus Noland, a researcher at the International Economics Institute in Washington.
Washington realizes this and, in order to prevent it becoming isolated, "the United States is likely to present more evidence regarding North Korea's second, highly enriched uranium-based, nuclear program, in an effort to keep China and others on board," Noland said.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
RSS