Comments on: Meet Roh Jeong-Ho: Ex-Millionaire, Symbol of a Failed Policy, and Asshole

By: kushibo

kushibo — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:23:22 +0000

Thanks for the input, slim. I’m not entirely incredulous, I’m just hoping for a direct source, preferably a contemporary one. Having had my own words distorted in public media far beyond what was said or intended, I’m always a little suspicious of the recollections of repetitions of reconstituted information.

Case in point, you are saying “200,000″ (a bit more than half the population) but Don Kirk said at the same time, “from which the North is to expel several hundred thousand local residents while opening it to foreigners” (essentially the entire population). Shinuiju’s population was officially 352,000 in 2006.

So his suggestion seems to be that everyone (or almost everyone) would be expelled, while if you’re recollection is correct, then it would seem half are being removed. But even then, were they being expelled or relocated. Were the plans to clear people out of the way of new industrial parks or to clear them out of the region altogether? This is why I’d prefer to see another source.

By: slim

slim — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:23:44 +0000

Kushibo – I was in Beijing when the Shinuiju scheme came (and went) and I recall that the state media of China and possibly North Korea rather straightforwardly reported that 200,000 people would be removed. Not a lot of taboos about that in the Communist world. (Although China seems wary of repeating the Three Gorges fisaco)

By: Joshua Stanton

Joshua Stanton — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:19:30 +0000

I also meant to say that it was interesting what you dug up about Kim Tok Hong. I suppose after that the North Koreans would have speculated that Roh was a spy, which I suppose is possible.

By: Joshua Stanton

Joshua Stanton — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:14:31 +0000

Antti, Your point about the barbed wire sale preceding the Sunshine Policy is a fair one, but I didn’t say that Roh Jeong-Ho was a product of the Sunshine Policy, I said he was a role model for it and a symbol of it. Although Russia and China ended up dominating Rajin-Sonbong, it certainly appears to have been the prototype for Kaesong and Kumgang, the twin pillars of the Sunshine Policy, and the entire self-serving arbeit-macht-frei notion that you can liberalize a country with barbed wire and slave labor. Like Rajin-Sonbong, they were touted as ways to open up North Korea, yet both were cleared of North Korean inhabitants, surrounded with barbed wire, hermetically sealed from the local population, and largely used as cash cows by the regime. All three projects also appear to have failed because of a combination of excessive regime interference in their internal operations, largely because the regime used them to pursue its political goals and had a pathological fear of allowing foreign states to have too much control in these exclaves.

By: Alec

Alec — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:18:16 +0000

Golly gosh, it makes you despair at human nature.

By: Ernst

Ernst — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:10:55 +0000

Alec, when you read an announcement like the below, nearly four years after this post by NK Econwatch, then you know something is not quite right.

RNS Number : 9271E Aminex PLC 04 January 2010

North Korea

An Aminex delegation to Pyongyang at the end of November was warmly received and the Company has been assured that the stalled process of exploring the East Sea is likely to be permitted to restart. A further announcement will be made at the appropriate time.

—————————————————————————————-

By: Alec

Alec — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:49:31 +0000

From when it looked so good, Ernst:

http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2006/06/06/oil-in-the-dprks-waters/

D’you have owt on their being shafted?

It puts me in mind of Matrix Churchill, which sold to Mr Saddam with HM Government’s nod ‘n wink, then got done by HMG in court.
You’d have to be a sadist with a heart of stone not to laugh out loud. Say what you like about Armand Hammer, he wasn’t stupid.

By: Ernst

Ernst — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:43:31 +0000

Just the expression of this guy’s face is pretty much a give away of another self righteous idiot, a bit like, dare I say, RP.

But in the greater scheme of things, it’s good to see that over the past years, ie a few decades, it is quite clear that there is absolutely no honour in doing business with NK. They’ll always try to suck you dry.

There is a British company called Aminex and in 2004 (5) they reached an agreement with NK to do a bit of oil exploration. Needless to say, all that’s been explored so far is Aminex’s current account, and it doesn’t seem likely they’ll ever get a rig on site.

But hey, NK , in their own usual way, sold Aminex some very worthless exploration licenses and no doubt, Kim’s cronies were able to have some memorable banquet’s celebrating yet another gullible company eager to believe their ‘charming hosts’.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:53:13 +0000

By the way now that the currency reform has been enacted does anyone know how Orascom is getting paid?

By: kushibo

kushibo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:36:32 +0000

What is the source of Don Kirk’s claim the the North was “to expel several hundred thousand local residents”? Was that written as part of the plans or was it something he speculated would be necessary for this to go through?

I ask because I remember reading about this (I was very hopeful about the prospect of such projects becoming an inadvertent Trojan horse) and wondering what was going to happen to all those people, and I got the impression from other sources that they were (mostly) going to be hermetically sealed off in that zone abutting China, them being largely tainted already by socialism with Chinese characteristics.

I’m fairly certain that I did not read Don Kirk’s article at the time (I knew him, and his name on the article would have registered), but if I had read about mass expulsions that would have set off alarm bells because I was writing stuff about China doing the same in those days with the Three Gorges dam, from which about a million were forcibly removed.