Less than two weeks after being punished with new UN sanctions, North Korea has sent its ceremonial head of state and two top economic officials to Singapore and Indonesia on a trip that appears aimed at drumming up outside investment.
North Korea Parliament Presidium President Kim Yong-nam arrived in Singapore on Friday for his first reported trip overseas since former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death in December last year.
He traveled yesterday to Indonesia with two senior economic officials, according to North Korean state media.
Photo: EPA
Kim Yong-nam often represents Pyongyang abroad.
The weeklong visit comes on the heels of new UN sanctions imposed on North Korea for launching a long-range rocket last month in defiance of Security Council resolutions banning it from nuclear or ballistic missile activity. Pyongyang insists the launch was an attempt to launch a satellite into space.
Washington suspended an agreement to provide North Korea with food aid and the North could face more punishment if it follows the launch with an atomic test as it did in 2006 and 2009.
Even as it has risked punishment by developing missiles, Pyongyang has also focused, since 2009, on improving its economy by developing light industry, attracting foreign investment and expanding trade.
With ties remaining tense with Seoul, North Korea is looking elsewhere to build economic partnerships.
Singaporean entrepreneurs are already supplying the well-to-do in Pyongyang with everything from Heineken beer to Hello Kitty, and have introduced some locals to hamburgers, fried chicken and Belgian waffles.
North Korea is looking to diversify its trade, import natural resources and export consumer goods with Southeast Asia’s help.
Singapore offers an attractive model for attracting direct foreign investment, while resource-rich Indonesia could give pointers on how to make money from minerals, said Cho Bong-hyun, a research fellow at the IBK Economic Research Institute in Seoul.
Kim Yong-nam visited a food factory and an electronics manufacturer in Singapore on Saturday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
The North Koreans may also use the trip to Singapore to learn how to develop a successful growth model that does not threaten the political power structure, said Andray Abrahamian, executive director of Choson Exchange, a -Singapore-based nonprofit group that has provided business and legal training for about 200 young North Korean government officials and students.
“Singapore’s development trajectory has been attractive to a number of countries who are interested in maintaining political stability to manage rapid economic growth,” he said.
Trade and investment between North Korea and Southeast Asia have waxed and waned over the past 12 years.
From 2000 to 2006, trade with 11 Southeast Asian countries — including Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand — accounted for between 10 percent and 12 percent of North Korea’s foreign trade, but after Singapore and others pledged to enforce UN sanctions, trade with the region dropped to less than 2 percent in 2010, according to the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul.
North Korea has sought to reverse that trend. In 2010, Singapore was North Korea’s sixth-largest trade partner, according to the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Seoul.
In recent years, the North has developed two special economic zones, in Rason in the northeast and Hwanggumphyong in the northwest, and is looking to Singapore for guidance, analysts said.
“Since the 1990s, North Korea has consistently said that it sees Singapore as a model for its special economic zones,” said Lim Soo-ho, a researcher at Samsung Economic Research Institute in Seoul.
Accompanying Kim Yong-nam is Ri Kwang-gun, who heads the North Korean Joint Venture and Investment Commission in charge of attracting foreign investment.
Pyongyang could also try to sell itself to manufacturers looking for cheap labor as well as boost exports of its consumer products, analysts said.
The other economic official in the delegation is North Korean Minister of Light Industry An Jong-su, KCNA said.
Meanwhile, South Korea is set to negotiate with China on a free trade agreement that could lift tariffs on products made in North Korea’s special economic zones, making investment in North Korea more favorable.
“North Korea has the cheapest labor in the world, less than half of China’s [rates],” Lim said. “Foreign investors can manufacture goods in North Korea and export them to China.”
Indonesia could provide guidance on how North Korea might exploit mineral resources that the North Korea Resources Institute in Seoul estimates are worth more than US$10 trillion, analysts said.
Indonesia has had strong ties with North Korea since 1964. In 1965, when late North Korean founder Kim Il-sung paid Indonesia a visit, then-Indonesia president Sukarno presented him with an orchid dubbed the Kimilsungia.
On Tuesday, North Korean and Indonesian officials signed an agreement to share news stories, photographs, video and TV footage, and eventually swap journalists, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
STEPPING UP: Diminished US polar science presence mean opportunities for the UK and other countries, although China or Russia might also fill that gap, a researcher said The UK’s flagship polar research vessel is to head to Antarctica next week to help advance dozens of climate change-linked science projects, as Western nations spearhead studies there while the US withdraws. The RRS Sir David Attenborough, a state-of-the-art ship named after the renowned British naturalist, would aid research on everything from “hunting underwater tsunamis” to tracking glacier melt and whale populations. Operated by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the country’s polar research institute, the 15,000-tonne icebreaker — boasting a helipad, and various laboratories and gadgetry — is pivotal to the UK’s efforts to assess climate change’s impact there. “The saying goes
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
RSS