This is a nice profit for the cash strapped regime considering that they make $86 million a year from the Kaesong Industrial Complex as well. Tourism is only growing in North Korea despite the human rights situation so the Kim regime can probably count on larger profits in the future:
Foreign runners join a ceremony to mark the annual Pyongyang Marathon in this photo taken in August 2014. North Korea plans to invite up to 1,500 marathoners from abroad in April next year. / Courtesy of Koryo Tours
Tourism is emerging as a new cash cow for North Korea amid growing U.N. pressure on its economy amid its state-perpetrated human rights violations, according to analysts last week.
They speculated that the cash-strapped Kim Jong-un regime could step up efforts to boost tourism in the long term.
The experts said travelling to North Korea is not currently seen as a violation of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions that restrict trading activities between the internationally-isolated regime and the rest of the world because of Pyongyang’s development of weapons of mass destruction.
They also said touring the authoritarian state is not considered defiance against growing U.N. calls to improve Pyongyang’s dire human rights records, including the severe working conditions of North Korean laborers overseas.
“I guess North Korea could capitalize on tourism as a growth engine to escape poverty,” said Yoon In-joo, a researcher at the Korea Maritime Institute.
Citing her 31-page research paper released this year, Yoon said North Korea’s income from foreign tourists was estimated to be in the range of $30.6 million to $43.6 million last year.
I wonder if this guy was really a prolific anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter as claimed or just another Soviet era propaganda creation like Kim Il-sung was:
This file photo shows North Korean Marshal Ri Ul-sol (L) being greeted by leader Kim Jong-un.
Ri Ul-sol, an iconic North Korean politician and military official, has died of lung cancer, the country’s state media reported Sunday.
The North announced that it will hold a state funeral for Ri, who died Saturday at the age of 94, and that leader Kim Jong-un will lead a preparatory committee
He was an anti-Japanese guerrilla in the first half of the 20th century, working with Kim Il-sung, who later founded the communist nation.
“He dedicated his all to the sacred cause of liberating the country by participating in the glorious anti-Japanese armed struggle led by President Kim Il Sung (Kim Il-sung) in the dark period of the Japanese imperialist rule,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
After Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 35-year colonial rule in 1945, Ri “protected” Kim Il-sung, risking his life, and devoted himself to developing the Korean People’s Army, it added.
Ri assumed a number of key posts in the military and even gained the title of marshal of the North’s military.
But his role and influence had dwindled markedly since Kim Jong-un took power in late 2011.
The funeral committee said that Ri’s coffin would be laid at the Central Hall of Workers, and it would receive mourners though Tuesday. His funeral will be held the following day. [Yonhap]
Is it just me or does anyone else find it distasteful that someone who willfully allowed himself to become detained in North Korea and become a bargaining chip for the Kim regime is now trying to profit off of his infamy?:
Kenneth Bae, a U.S. citizen who was detained in North Korea for two years before his release last November, plans to tell his story in a book.
W Publishing Group, an imprint of the Christian publishing firm Thomas Nelson, says “Not Forgotten: The True Story of My Imprisonment in North Korea” will be released next spring.
Bae, a Christian missionary and pastor, has family in the Seattle area but moved to China in 2006. He began leading tours to North Korea in 2010. He was arrested in 2012 while leading a tour group to a special economic zone and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for alleged anti-government activities. [Washington Post]
A ROK Drop favorite Dr. Andrei Lankov has an article published that explains why the middle class in North Korea will have a harder time transitioning to a unified Korean peninsula compared to their Eastern European counterparts:
In the last days of the communist system, people in most former-communist countries widely believed that the transition to democracy and collapse of the Leninist economy would in no time lead to material bounty, as well as the revival of the liberties once lost to communism.
This was the case at the end of the day – though not everywhere. And even where it was, the transition was far bumpier than the revolutionary enthusiasts had thought it would be. Many an Eastern European engineer, technician or accountant in the early 1990s suddenly discovered that their skills were hopelessly outdated and of little use in the new, emerging capitalist economy. In the former Soviet Union the transition was particularly harsh, and middle class enthusiasm quickly transitioned to disappointment and even desperation. In due time, it was a major reason behind Putin’s rise to power in Russia.
However, generally speaking, over the long run things turned out well for the Eastern European urban middle class, or at least a majority of them. After the first turbulent years, industry began to grow again, while engineers and technicians managed to update their skills, eventually learning how to fix and design modern equipment. Doctors, schoolteachers and functionaries also had time to acquire new skills and learn new rules. It helped that they had little internal competition: In any given country there was only one set of white-collar, skilled workforce; no significant group of outsiders could directly challenge their status. In a unified Korea, by contrast, things are liable to be rather different. [NK News]
You can read the rest at the link, but this is why I have always believed that if the Kim regime was to collapse the South Koreans would be wise to prevent people from South of the border from buying property or taking up jobs in North Korea. It is better that the North Koreans do things for themselves poorly than to have South Koreans move in and do things for them better. This will over the long term create a culture of dependency and eventually resentment in North Korea.
The best people in the South to help North Koreans with the transition would be North Korean defectors. That is also why I have believed that the ROK government should offer scholarships to defectors for skills that will be needed in a post-Kim regime North Korea. In return for the free education the defectors would agree to return to North Korea to help re-train their fellow countrymen when the country is reunified.
A ROK Drop favorite NK News currently has 2016 calendars for sale just in time for the holidays. The calendars feature high quality photographs of North Korea that people who have a deep interest in the country may find of interest:
For those interested in purchasing calendar please click here.
A bus with solar panels mounted on its roof is parked in the North Korean city of Nampho, in this still image from a program of the North’s Korean Central TV Station on Nov. 2, 2015. The bus, which is equipped with 32 100-watt solar panels, 50 batteries and a 95-kilogram electric motor, can run at a speed of 40 kmph, the broadcaster said. (Yonhap)
Really nothing new here because reports of North Korea being able to target the US have persisted for years despite the fact they have never test fired one of their KN-08 missiles to prove it:
“North Korea has an extensive ballistic missile force that could strike South Korea, Japan, and US military bases in Asia,” the report states. “Pyongyang has deployed at least 400 Scud short-range tactical ballistic missiles, 300 No-Dong medium-range missiles, and 100 to 200 Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missiles.”
The longest-range missile, the Taepo Dong 2, is still in development. However, if deployed, the missile is believed to be nuclear capable if North Korea ever succeeded in miniaturizing nuclear warheads.
The most serious of North Korea’s missile threats comes from the country’s KN-08 missile. The KN-08 is a road-mobile intercontinental missile, meaning Pyongyang can move the launch system throughout the country. In contrast, other long-range missiles must be fired from stationary launch pads.
“It’s the relocatable target set that really impedes our ability to find, fix, and finish the threat,” Adm. Bill Gortney, the commander of NORAD, told reporters in April 2015. “And as the targets move around and we if don’t have the persistent stare and persistent [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] that we do not have over North Korea at this time, that relocatable nature makes it very difficult for us to counter it.”
Heritage notes that Gortney also said in April 2015 that the KN-08 “is operational today. Our assessment is that they have the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland.” [Business Insider]
A group of North Korean soldiers watches a delegation of South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo and his U.S. counterpart Ashton Carter visit the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone, which separates the two Koreas, on Nov. 1, 2015. Carter arrived in South Korea to hold the Security Consultative Meeting, the highest channel for reviewing and coordinating far-reaching issues between the allies, with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo the next day. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)
