N. Korean Workers Earn Dollars for Construction Work in Russia
By Young Ran-jeon, Vladivostok, Russia, 28 September 2009
With the international community tightening economic sanctions on North Korean entities for their alleged involvement in nuclear and weapons activities, Pyongyang is ever more eager to earn hard currency. One of the few options for the regime to get foreign dollars is to rely on its own labor exports. VOA’s Korean Service reporter Young Ran-jeon recently visited Vladivostok, Russia and filed this report voiced by Kate Woodsome. Pseudonyms were used to protect the workers interviewed for this story.
Skilled laborers
In Russia’s largest port city on the Pacific Ocean, Vladivostok, several small-framed Asian men are bustling around a half-built apartment building, trying to move large metal beams. They are North Koreans sent out by their government to earn much-needed foreign currency for the country.
Kim Dong Gil came from North Korea’s second largest city of Hamhung. He brags that North Korean workers have the best skills in the Russian construction market, which is also filled with laborers from Central Asia and Vietnam.
The estimated 5,000 North Koreans in Vladivostok come from various backgrounds and even include doctors.
“I didn’t have any construction skills since I used to be with the military,” said Kim Soon Nam, who served in the army back home. “I learned from scratch when I arrived here. I got trained by a really young person who used to curse and swear at me all the time.”
Appreciation for capitalism
Despite the stress of living and working in a foreign country, the North Koreans have come to appreciate the culture of capitalism.
“Back home I couldn’t make money even if I wanted to. But here if I work hard, I can make a dozen times more,” explained Han Jong Rok.
Choi Jong-kun, an assistant professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul, says money is just one reason to leave home. The other is improving one’s status among North Korea’s political elite.
“If they bring in more money, then they would sort of have sort of upward mobility in their social class,” explained Choi Jong-kun.
Potential political opening
Communist North Korea has one of the most isolated and centrally controlled economies in the world. After the country suffered a deadly famine in the mid-1990s, the government allowed private farmers markets for a few years. But it tightened the policy in 2005.
Pyongyang is known to pour money into weapons programs instead of public services. And it has kicked out many international development agencies, allowing just limited food aid primarily from China and South Korea. That has saved the population from starvation, but North Koreans still struggle with malnutrition and poor health conditions.
Pyongyang earns foreign currency from South Korean companies employing North Korean workers at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. But opening up to cross-border commerce means opening up politically, too. Professor Choi suggests it is easier to send workers overseas than to deal with the impact of liberalizing the economy.
“They have to think of not only economic prosperity but also they have to think of so-called regional security,” said Choi. “What kinds of implications would it have to their regional security.”
Key source of foreign currency
North Korea does not reveal significant economic data, but exporting workers is considered a key source of hard foreign currency.
A report by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul estimated in 2007 that Pyongyang earns at least $40 million to $60 million a year from labor exports. Outside of Russia, the institute has tracked North Korean workers in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bangladesh, China and Mongolia.
In Vladivostok, every North Korean worker is required to pay the Pyongyang government around $800 each month.
Kim Soon Nam says he works extra hours to make sure he has money for himself.
“If we want to save some money, we have to work Sundays and holidays, too,” he said. “We must earn a lot of money no matter what. North Koreans have to work from 8 am to 10 pm.”
Sacrifices help family members
The North Koreans in Vladivostok usually get a five-year visa, but many get extensions to earn more money. They sleep in dormitories and live to work, spending much of their time outside the construction sites doing extra jobs in local Russian homes.
Kim Chul Woong, a welder, says he is willing to sacrifice time from his family back in Pyongyang to give his son opportunities few North Koreans enjoy, like a computer.
“The video footage on the computer can enhance children’s intellectual development, but I don’t have the kind of money,” he said. “When I go back home after working in Russia I’ll have a good amount of money. I can buy expensive stuff for my son. If he wants to do music I can buy him a violin or a guitar.”
He says he is taking advantage of the work while he can get it. Kim Chul Woong says the construction jobs are dwindling in Russia because of the economic crisis. There is also greater competition from newly arriving Central Asians who are as hungry for dollars as he is.
Additional reporting by Kurt Achin in Seoul and Kate Woodsome in Washington.
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N.Koreans toiling in Russia’s timber camps
Simon Ostrovsky has travelled to remote far eastern Russia and obtained rare footage of North Koreans who are working there as labourers under an agreement between their secretive Stalinist state and a company run by British businessmen.
To the West, North Korea is a pariah state, best known for its secrecy, famines, belligerent politics and its leader’s brutality.
At home, North Koreans live under total government control and the watchful eye of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il.
But in the Amur region of Russia, almost 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from the border, North Korea has created a home away from home at a series of remote logging camps in which nearly 1,500 workers are employed.
I travelled to one of the camps deep in the forest. A giant monument bearing the words “Our greatest leader Kim Il-sung lives with us forever” stood in the middle.
One of the buildings had a sign which read “Laboratory of Kim Il-sung’s Theory” a commonly used slogan found on North Korean administration blocks. The camp even had its own theatre.
Further into the forest we found a group of North Koreans hard at work. They lived in a mobile wagon, decorated with portraits of the North Korean leaders.
Although reluctant to speak, one told me that he earned the equivalent of $200 per month. Another said that he earned $1 for each truck he loaded and that he could load up to nine per day, but he had not been paid since May.
Production targets
To try to find out who employed the North Koreans I travelled to Tynda, where the headquarters of the region’s logging operations are based.
I met Sergey Sarnavsky, the director of a small local timber firm which has a contract with Association No 2, a state-owned North Korean organisation.
“The Koreans work year round with two days off per year,” he told me. “All the other days are working days no matter what the weather conditions, they always work.
“The Koreans work for the government and their communist party, they’ve got production targets,” he said. “If the quota is filled then everything is ok. If it is not fulfilled, well then they’ve got their Communist Party of North Korea, and everybody gets punished from the managers down to the worker who didn’t fulfil the quota.”
Escape
Many North Korean labourers have tried to escape the camps. Over the last two decades thousands have abandoned their work and now live in constant fear of arrest and deportation to North Korea.
Branded enemies of the people by their homeland they are wanted by Russian police and their own country’s security services.
One worker, who ran away in the 1990s and had been given refuge by a Russian family, told me about life working in the camps, where winter temperatures regularly drop to 30C below zero:
“I was working endless hours. Twelve hours is normal in North Korea, but working 12 hours at the camps is very hard. In winter it’s very cold… It’s hard to work on an empty stomach. But the living conditions were the worst part.
“The logs cause injuries. The drivers drop logs and people get killed. Because people are so cold, they can’t avoid falling trees and are killed.”
‘Treated as traitors’
Russian human rights organisations are working with North Korean defectors. They say that often, after months of work, the labourers are underpaid and sometimes not paid at all.
Svetlana Gannushkina’s organisation is assisting some two dozen former loggers who escaped before 2001 and are now living in hiding. I asked her what would happen if they were handed over to the North Korean authorities.
“They can expect terrible suffering, they can expect a cruel death,” she said. “We know of cases when people in the moment of their detention have simply, killed themselves. These people and their families become pariahs in their own country. They are treated as traitors.”
Commercial benefits
So who benefits commercially now from North Korean labour in Russia’s Far East?
The North Korean state, which provides the labour through Association No 2, take 35% of the proceeds from their logging operations in Russia – approximately $7m per year.
The remainder goes to a firm called Tynda Les, who are owned by the Russian Timber Group – the largest logging firm in the region with around 1,400 North Koreans working on its sites.
The Russian Timber Group was founded in 2004 by British businessman, Peter Hambro and a Russian business partner. Together they bought up a number of forestry rights across Russia covering an area roughly the size of Belgium.
I asked Russian Timber Group’s CEO, Peter Hambro’s son Leo, if they had any control over the loggers’ welfare.
He told me that the Russian Timber Group makes sure that the company which provides the workers complies with the Russian labour code and that they get regularly inspected. He also said that Russian Timber Group had no involvement in how much the workers are paid.
“There is always going to be criticism… of any involvement with North Korea, especially as its been flagged by people like President Obama as an axis of evil,” he told me.
“It is not in our interest – in our public relations interest – to continue our involvement with the North Korean workers. But at the moment our product sells… and we are happy to continue our involvement because they are workers who are prepared to work while there is timber to be sold at good values.”
*Simon Ostrovsky’s film was shown in full on Newsnight on Wednesday 26 August 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.
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Russia deploys air defence on NKorea missile tests
Sydney Morning Herald (August 26, 2009)
Russia is worried about North Korean missile and nuclear tests and has deployed sophisticated air defences in its Far East region to protect against any potential test mishap, Russia’s top general said here Wednesday.
“We have an S-400 division there,” said General Nikolai Makarov, chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, confirming that Russia had deployed its most advanced anti-missile defence system near the border with North Korea.
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Kim Jong-il, son aura, son goût du kaki
Par Marie Jégo, LE MONDE (05 Juin 2009)
A Vladivostok, port de l’Extrême-Orient russe, à neuf heures d’avion de Moscou, l’essai nucléaire effectué par la Corée du Nord le 25 mai a causé bien des maux de tête. Non pas à cause du niveau de radioactivité – l’essai était souterrain, l’air n’a pas été contaminé affirment les météorologues -, mais du fait de l’inquiétude qui s’est répandue parmi la population. Les uns affirment avoir ressenti la secousse, d’autres s’inquiètent du prochain tir de missile balistique annoncé pour la mi-juin. Tous ont en mémoire l’incident de 2006, lorsqu’un missile nord-coréen avait dévié de sa trajectoire pour tomber près de Nakhodka, l’autre grand port marchand de cette Russie d’Asie….
Kim Jong-il, his aura, his preference for khaki
Letter from Russia by Marie Jégo LE MONDE (05 Juin 2009)
In the Far Eastern Russian port of Vladivostok, a nine-hour flight from Moscow, the nuclear test carried out by North Korea on the 25th of May has caused quite a few headaches. Not on account of the level of radioactivity meteorologists confirm the test was underground, the air has not been contaminated but due to the atmosphere of unease which has spread through the population. Some claim to have felt the shock, others are worried about the next ballistic missile launce announced for mid-June. Everyone remembers the incident in 2006 when a North Korean missile went off trajectory to land near Nakhoda, the other large commercial port of Russian Asia.
“There a whiff of powder on the border”, headlined The Far Eastern News, the local paper, in its 27 May edition. “If North Koreans carry on nuclear tests, they will end in disaster”, the weekly gloomily predicted. Only 140 kilometres separate the city of Vladivostok from North Korea. The border is well guarded, contacts between the populations inexistent. Eight thousand North Koreans are employed in the forestry camps but they are scarcely visible in town, unlike the Chinese who are active in all the marketplaces where they offer customers things Russia struggles to produce (electronic appliances, clothing, meat, fruit and vegetables).
Locked up tight 20 years ago, the Russian-Chinese border has become a place of constant passage. Since 2001, Russians and Chinese have had no need of visas to go have a look at the other side. Nothing like that on the North Korean side. In August of 2001 the border post of Hassan witnessed the passage in top secrecy of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il’s armoured train, on its way on the ten-day journey to Moscow and St. Petersburg. On the occasion he was accompanied by General Konstatin Poulikovski, the Kremlin’s Far East representative, who escorted him on the entire rail journey, keeping him company at lunch and dinner each day. The General has got a book “Across Russia with Kim Jong-il” out of it.
Obviously the company of the Dear Leader impressed him deeply. “Constantly I sensed his powerful aura”, he writes, dazzled by his “extraordinary ability to manage people” and his love of the colour khaki! In Russia, North Korea is a model which seduces not just the Russian military army reserve general Leonid Ivachov passes regular vacations in Pyongyang but also the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party. On Saturday, 30 May, the the regional branch of the party of what opponents call “the pen-pushers” held its annual conference in Vladivostok.
The officials, a well-off caste, poured into the meeting in their Japanese 4-wheel-drives. Among foreign figures invited was the North Korean consul. Speaking before the delegates, he assured his audience that his country was going to continue its nuclear tests. He also invited Russia to take its place under the North Korean nuclear umbrella. The consul’s diatribe was not condemned by any of those present. No question of getting angry with a “brother party”. On the other hand, who covered the conference were told not to report anything about the matter. The territory’s administration imposed tight control on things by calling editors to make sure instructions are well respected.
While the consul was being applauded in Vladivostok, in New York, at the UN Security Council, advocated taking a firm line, while against sanctions. “Basically, tensions on the peninsula work in our favour. We hope to take
advantage of our role as intermediary on behalf of the international community”, explains Mikhail Terski, director of Valdivostok¹s Centre for Strategic Studies. Russia is all the more concerned about North Korean nuclear technology since, “it’s our own, that which we had provided to China, now the process is slipping out of our control, and we can’t do anything about it”, notes the geo-political specialist.
For Moscow, the Pyongyang regime is a partner who it is wise to take care of, a potential client for Russian arms and nuclear industry, just like Iran and Venezuela. At the moment, this client is low on cash, but one can always hope. Eventually a branch of the Russian-Chinese gas pipeline beginning construction this year will go to the border post of Hasan, where Gazprom plans to build a plant for gas liquification. Moscow’s support for its North Korean neighbour is also explained by fear of seeing the United States create “a unified Korea, bound to become America’s partner in world affairs,” declares the Independent on 3 June. The daily warns: “Have no illusions, The United States, Japan and South Korea have only one goal: to eliminate North Korea.”
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“REEK OF WAR NEAT RUSSIAN BORDERS”,
Moskovsky Komsomolets (No 113, May 28, 2009, pp. 1, 3)
“Any hostile move including detention and inspection of our peaceful vessels will be regarded as an unacceptable encroachment on our sovereignty and cause a powerful retaliation by military means,” Pyongyang said. The international community all but took it for a declaration of war. Was it, really?…
…This newspaper approached Konstantin Asmolov of the Center of Korean Studies (Institute of Far East, Russian Academy of Sciences) for comments on what threats North Korea with its nuclear ambitions constituted.
“Matter of fact, nobody has withdrawn from the truce agreement yet,” Asmolov said. “North Korea merely said that it retained the right to do so. It should be noted that the North regards the dialogue with the South as relations between two parts of a divided country and not as international relations at all. Incumbent President of South Korea Lee Myung-bak decided to change this state of affairs and treat North Korea as a foreign state. Besides, this Conservative all but cancelled what had been previously accomplished in the Korean dialogue.”
“Also importantly, the initiative South Korea pledged readiness to join stipulates examination of ships suspected of ferrying weapons of mass destruction. The DPRK in the meantime has a strong “besieged fortress” complex. Its military doctrine assumes that if it comes to a war, it will be a war against an alliance of the United States, South Korea, and Japan. Observing escalation of the situation or what they regard as escalation, the North Koreans might well decide that the war is imminent. Neither can we forget the existing level of mutual distrust. The North Koreans know that they lack sophisticated tanks and fuel and therefore see nuclear weapons as a factor of deterrence. Their military doctrine also stands for guerrilla warfare. This is what 200,000 men have been specially trained for. The enemy may even occupy North Korea, and that’s when they will come into play,” Asmolov explained.
Question: Pyongyang’s demarches… How serious are they?
Konstantin Asmolov: The North Koreans keep issuing warnings. Pyongyang tested the international community and public opinion in the world, it wanted to know how serious Obama was when he talked about a constructive dialogue. The DPRK launched a satellite and gauged the reaction to it. If America really meant it, then it would have let it be without trying to present this episode as a ballistic missile launch. But America did make a fuss and the DPRK knew right away that nobody intended to be constructive or anything. Well, two can play this game, they decided. In a word, North Korea has only one option – it will probably keep upping the stakes waiting to see who is the first to snap under the strain. It will be either a war which nobody wants, or treatment of the DPRK as an odious but equal partner. It is not nuclear blackmail or anything. The DPRK does not escalate tension in the hope to get relief aid from abroad. It is equality that Pyongyang aspires to.
Question: But what if it is a war, after all?
Konstantin Asmolov: We’ve all heard about the colossal regular army of North Korea numbering 1,000,000 men. Anyway, regular army of South Korea is 650,000 men strong. This latter has sophisticated merchandise while the North Koreans use obsolete military hardware. Besides, military budget of South Korea equals 26 military budgets of North Korea. South Korean military experts used to tell me that should they find themselves face to face with the North Koreans even without help from the US Army (which is unlikely, by the way), they would certainly repel all attacks and take the war to the territory of North Korea.
Also importantly, Pyongyang knows that the use of nuclear weapons will untie the hands of the international community. All bets will be off and all sorts of international retaliation will be possible then… In a word, let’s not present the North Korean leadership as a bunch of unpredictable tyrants.
Last but not the least, there is a factor that directly concerns Russia. Bombardment of North Korean nuclear sites will bring the fallout to Vladivostok in a couple of hours. It will be a humanitarian catastrophe. Besides, Russia and China will have to deal with stampeding refugees from North Korea.
Moskovsky Komsomolets also approached Major General Vladimir Dvorkin of the International Security Center of the Institute of Global Economy and International Relations (formerly commander of the 4th Research Center of the Defense Ministry).
“North Korea beats South Korea in terms of quantity of weapons. In quality, however, it is the other way round. The North Koreans have vintage Soviet weapons – armored vehicles, aircraft, and so on. Its aircraft meanwhile cannot hope to pierce any antiaircraft defense belt,” Dvorkin said. “Sure, Nodon-1 missiles can easily reach Seoul and other South Korean cities but some of them if not all will be intercepted by the Americans and South Koreans.”
“I do not think that the North Korean regime will go for hostilities. It knows after all that it will be the end of it. Pyongyang but blackmails Japan, South Korea, United States, and the rest of the negotiators.”
“Iran set an example for the DPRK,” Dvorkin continued. “The UN Security Council passed five resolutions on Iran without any effect whatsoever. Tehran defies them all and keeps threatening Israel. North Korea threatens South Korea in the same manner. The North Koreans desperately need diesel fuel, oil fuel, rice, and finances. They regard military blackmail as a means of survival.”
Said Colonel General Victor Yesin, formerly Strategic Missile Forces chief-of-staff, “Seoul is within reach of the North Korean aviation and artillery. It means that the threats to wipe if off the map are not to be taken lightly… All the same, however, I do not expect the latest developments on the Korean Peninsula to have any serious military consequences. All this sabre-rattling is but bluff. North Korea won’t attack anyone as long as nobody attacks it first. Its leadership knows that even though North Korea will damage South Korea and, to a lesser extent, Japan and the Americans on Okinawa, North Korea itself will be certainly destroyed.”
“The nuclear test and the missiles they launch are elements of a campaign of blackmail. Also importantly, they are supposed to have a certain effect on the population of North Korea itself. Their economic situation is disastrous. Official Pyongyang sends a message to the population: sure, we spend a lot on weapons but we can defend ourselves now. It does not matter to them that nobody intends to attack North Korea,” Yesin said.
This newspaper approached Konstantin Kosachev of the International Committee of the Duma for comments.
“Development of the situation has taken the worst possible turn,” the lawmaker said. “The DPRK chose an open confrontation with the rest of the world. It does not look like tactical maneuvering at all. It looks like strategy focused on military might, nuclear potential, and readiness to face self-isolation.”
“Another resolution of the UN Security Council is inevitable now,” Kosachev continued. “It may even include a reference to new sanctions, though what sanctions they may be is beyond me. Should the international community decide to leave North Korea without food, oil fuel, and other humanitarian articles, it will affect the population of North Korea and not its leaders. Personally I regard these measures as undesirable because they will but play into the hands of the ruling regime. As for other sanctions (say, embargo on luxuries), they’ve been in effect for years. In a word, I do not know what else might be invented. It will be an attempt to choose a lesser evil in any event.”
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Russia given cold shoulder as Chinese snuggle up
Sunny Lee, Beijing Correspondent, The National (April 29. 2009)
As the international community seeks to defuse tensions in the wake of North Korea’s recent long-range rocket launch, the tepid reception given to Russia’s foreign minister in Pyongyang last week reveals a strained relationship between the one-time allies, and is a sign of China’s strong influence, analysts said…
…“At this point, there is no leverage for Russia to exert North Korea into doing something,” said Leonid Petrov, a Russian expert on Korean affairs. “The 2006 nuclear experiment and the rocket or missile launch this year demonstrated that North Korea has no interest in listening to what Moscow [says].”
Russia’s waning influence on Pyongyang has been supplanted by the growing influence of China, which once competed with Russia for leverage in North Korea during the Cold War. Those days are long gone as China has established itself as the country’s most important ally.
That point was starkly illustrated during Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s stopover in Seoul after visiting Pyongyang. In a press conference there, the Russian diplomat debriefed the South Korean press on the results of his visit to the North, which had originally been undertaken to urge Northern leaders to resume the six-party talks on their nuclear programme. “North Korea, at the moment, doesn’t have an intention of returning to the talks,” Mr Lavrov reported.
Seoul had also hoped Moscow would play a mediating role on the contentious issue of transporting natural gas from Russia, through North Korea, to the South. Little progress seems to have been made on this point either. “I need to mention that this project is very difficult to realise,” Mr Lavrov said when asked about its status.
Pyongyang also reportedly turned down a Russian proposal to have North Korea use Russian facilities to launch a satellite in the future. Pyongyang maintains that its rocket launch last month was to test its ability to put a satellite in orbit.
To highlight the North’s disinterest in Russian overtures, and to make matters worse, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il failed to meet the Russian envoy, a protocol his father, the late leader Kim Il-sung, had maintained. When asked about this slight, Mr Lavrov said that it was not done because he “didn’t ask for it”.
South Korean media, initially holding out hope that the Russian envoy would bring a “deal proposal” from Pyongyang, did not conceal their disappointment, saying: “Unlike our expectation, he came from Pyongyang empty-handed,” said MBC, a major broadcaster.
Despite his unproductive trip, the Russian envoy surprisingly showed support for the North by exhibiting what analysts termed “undiplomatic” behaviour at a joint press conference in Seoul. After South Korean foreign minister Yu Myung-hwan described the two countries’ support for UN sanctions on the North, Mr Lavrov replied angrily, “I need to state that the sanctions are unconstructive”…
…After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the cash-strapped Russian government demanded Pyongyang pay back in hard currency its debts to Moscow, which, Mr Petrov said, “dealt a major blow in the Russo-North Korea relationship”.
Russian interest and influence in North Korea declined steadily in the 1990s, especially after Moscow established diplomatic ties with South Korea, which Pyongyang felt to be a betrayal. The relationship was salvaged somewhat in 2000, when Russia’s president at the time, Vladimir Putin, made a historic visit to North Korea, the first ever by a Russian leader.
That, however, does not mean today’s relationship between the erstwhile friends is back to the same level as during the Cold War. “The two countries used to be allies, but now they are neither friends nor foes,” said Mr Funabashi.
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Lavrov Says Pyongyang Won’t Budge
Reuters, Moscow Times (27 April 2009)
North Korea will stay away from international nuclear disarmament talks, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday after visiting the secretive state and pressing Pyongyang to return to the sputtering discussions.
North Korea, which raised regional tensions with a defiant rocket launch earlier this month that was widely seen as a disguised test of a long-range missile, can send satellites into orbit on Russian rockets, Lavrov said after leaving North Korea.
North Korea responded to UN punishment for the launch by saying it would boycott the nuclear talks with Russia, China, Japan, South Korea and the United States as well as restart a plant that makes arms-grade plutonium. “North Korea at this point does not intend to return to the six-party talks,” Lavrov told reporters in Seoul.
Lavrov, the first high-level envoy from a global power to visit the reclusive North since after the launch, and South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan agreed to work together to have North Korea return to the nuclear talks, Yu said at the joint news conference.
North Korea, arguing that it has the right to have a peaceful space program, said it sent a satellite into orbit in the April 5 launch.
Lavrov, who delivered a message from President Dmitry Medvedev to the North’s leader, Kim Jong Il, said Russia stood by the UN move to chastise Pyongyang and tighten existing sanctions that limit the North’s arms trade and imports. Lavrov did not meet Kim.
While Lavrov was in North Korea, he also attended the opening of a Russian language school at the Pyongyang Institute of Foreign Languages.
“I am sure the Russian Center we are opening today will be one of the best abroad,” Lavrov said, noting that it was one of the first opened under the auspices of the state’s Russian World foundation, Itar-Tass reported.
The Russian Center occupies an auditorium on the seventh floor in the main institute building, the report said. It has computers, a collection of audio and video materials and a library. Russian is the second most popular foreign language in North Korean schools after English, the report said.
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Russia Does Not See N. Korea As Nuclear Power: Envoy
SEOUL (Yonhap) — Russia does not acknowledge North Korea as a nuclear power and will continue working with regional allies to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear ambitions, Moscow’s envoy to Seoul said on Jan. 21.
Gleb Ivashentsov, Russian ambassador to South Korea, said regional stability is “crucial to Russia’s economic development,” as Moscow is pushing for increased natural resources development in Siberia and the Far East.
North Korea detonated its first atomic device in 2006. The relatively small underground test had less than a kiloton in yield, below what is considered a successful nuclear test.
“The explosion occurred just 177 kilometers from Russian territory, so this issue has direct repercussions on Russia,” the envoy said in a speech at a forum hosted by the state-run Korean Global Foundation.
Stalled negotiations aimed at terminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons program are expected to move forward only after the United States, a member of the six-party talks, rolls out its North Korea policy under the newly inaugurated Barack Obama administration.
North Korea claims it has joined the ranks of nuclear nations with its 2006 test. Participants of the nuclear talks — also including South Korea, China and Japan — reject the North’s position.
The envoy said Russia’s energy project in its eastern region will be “as large as the development of the American West.” “Russia needs security guarantees in neighboring countries for it,” he said.
To break the impasse in inter-Korean relations, the envoy suggested Seoul and Moscow push for joint economic projects, such as connecting the Trans-Korean Railway and the Trans-Siberian Railway that runs across Russia.
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South Korea considers undersea pipeline
RedOrbit: Wednesday, 26 November 2008
South Korea may opt for an undersea pipeline to receive Russian natural gas if North Korea refuses an overland route, says the state-run gas company’s head.
“The plan to build an underwater pipeline came up during talks with Gazprom President Alexei Miller and experts at Russia’s Pacific Ocean Institute in Vladivostok last week,” Choo Kang-soo, head of Korea Gas Corp., said Wednesday to the Yonhap news agency.
In September, Korea Gas announced it will import 7.5 million tons of gas annually from Russia starting in 2015 using an overland pipeline through North Korea.
However, Yonhap quoted Choo as saying Russian gas company executives hinted Pyongyang officials they met with recently may not support it because of strained relations between the two Koreas under South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s conservative government.
Earlier this week, North Korea said it will tighten crossings through the border with the South beginning next month, the report said.
Choo said the Russians suggested an undersea pipeline linking Vladivostok with either Samcheok on South Korea’s east coast or Busan, the country’s largest port. He said while an undersea pipeline would cost more “it is not technically impossible,” the report said. Choo indicated the overland route may still be possible as North Korea also needs access to natural gas.
Source: United Press International
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North Korea wary of Russia’s return
By Donald Kirk, Asia Times on-line, 23 Aug. 2008
WASHINGTON – The spectacle of a renascent Russian military powerhouse flexing its muscles in Georgia conjures images of Moscow’s search for power in northeast Asia – and raises the question of the degree to which Russia’s current leaders see the Korean Peninsula as a future battleground for political and economic influence.
The fear of Russia, an abstraction in South Korea, may be more acute in Pyongyang, where Moscow has been alternately a benefactor and a bully ever since installing Kim Il-sung as leader of North Korea after World War II.
Great Leader Kim and son Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, who took over power 24 years ago after his father’s death, “always said Russia was more scary than the United States”, said Kim Dong-su, a former North Korean diplomat who defected in 1998. They believed, he said, that Russia would be “the first to do harm in case anything happened”.
Everyone agrees the Russian display of armed might in Georgia has implications for the former satellite states of the old Soviet Union, from the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia through eastern Europe. The implications are less clear for northeast Asia, especially North Korea, which the Soviet Union supported with enormous military economic aid from 1946, through the Korean War, until the demise of the Soviet leadership in 1991…
See the full text of this article here…
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Russian ‘Power Politics’ and North Korea
by Leonid Petrov
The sharp rise of oil and gas prices has enabled Moscow to utilise its mammoth energy reserves to achieve domestic and foreign policy goals. The new Russian ‘power politics’ have already been tested on the Baltic States, Belarus, Ukraine, and recently the Czech Republic. Russia’s Far Eastern frontier is now turning into the place where energy export becomes a political tool in shaping the country’s relations with regional neighbours. China, the two Koreas, and Japan are hungry for energy, natural resources and, at the same time, strive for economic and political cooperation. In such circumstances, the opportunities offered by trans-national railroads and pipelines appear to be more powerful than weapons. Given this new leverage and understanding, can Russia exert its soft and hard power upon North Korea in promoting the goals set in the Six-Party Talks?
See the full text of “Russia’s ‘Power Politics’ and North Korea” here…
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Presidential elections and the future of Russian-Korean relations
By Leonid Petrov
At the end of this month the inauguration of the recently elected President of the Republic of Korea will take place in Seoul. Russia is poised for its own presidential elections in early March. In North Korea (formally known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK), it has been reported, the grooming of a new leader is already under way. Nevertheless, the dynamics of relations between Russia and the two Koreas will depend not so much on personalities but on the joint efforts of the sides…
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