North Korea’s overseas money men, called home, go to ground instead
After the news broke that Jang Song Thaek has been purged, The Daily NK reported that the regime was summoning party cadres from other parts of North Korea to Pyongyang. Now, new reports tell us that North Koreans in China are also being called back, possibly to be purged themselves. The Joongang Ilbo carries a fascinating interview with Lee Keum-Ryong, a defector and Free North Korea Radio correspondent, and obviously a very brave man. Lee defied the risk of abduction, or perhaps a curbside injection of neostigmine bromide, to get close to many of these North Koreans in Beijing. He reports that many of them have since vanished, but not all of them went home.
“I went to an office building where North Korean officials in the business of trade, whom I have personally known for some years, used to work. Stuff had been removed from all three rooms and [North Korean] strangers were standing guard. I waited for hours for North Korean officials to show up, but they didn’t. A source in China told me ‘a whole group of team members seemed to have disappeared’ and those who were standing guard at the office were an arrest squad [sent from Pyongyang].
“I [finally] reached a North Korean official in hiding through a go-between. The man, who worked for a trading company under the North Korean administrative department previously led by Jang Song-thaek, said, ‘I was able to flee [from arrest]. And I expect others [with ties to Jang] have done the same. I don’t know what to do next.’”
The official told Lee he was mulling fleeing to another country, possible the United States or a European country. When asked how many North Koreans fled from arrest, the North Korean said he did not know.
The Joongang Ilbo adds that about 70 to 80 North Koreans in Europe, who also had ties to Jang, may also have to decide whether to defect or return.
Pyongyang usually keeps the wives and children of its overseas agents at home, as hostages. The fact that any significant number of them refuse to return home suggests that cohesion and discipline are breaking down. It may also reflect the sentiments of officials in Pyongyang, although the choices there are more stark.
One of Lee’s Chinese sources told him a majority of North Korean workers [in Beijing] “are frightened and desperate.” “In Beijing alone, there are about 30 North Korean workers, and they are now nowhere to be seen … We don’t know whether they went back [to Pyongyang] voluntarily,” said the source.
Most of those who disappeared are senior ranking members of North Korea’s trading companies who have worked with Jang over many years and have transferred foreign currency to Pyongyang. Lee quoted his Chinese source as saying there was an arrest squad dispatched from the North, fueling speculation that those who returned to their country did it involuntarily.
“I bet their [North Koreans in China] position is that there is nothing to hope for after the execution of Jang Song-thaek,” said a Chinese businessman. “[Those who have disappeared] are North Koreans stationed in Beijing, Shenyang and Guangzhou. Those who were in Guangzhou are the people who looked after Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of Kim Jong-il,” he said.
Many of these North Koreans were “in China to enhance bilateral trade and investment.” Some analysts interpret the order as a sign that the regime disapproves of Chinese-style reforms.
At a minimum, removing these deal-makers will necessarily have some adverse effects on the deals they were making, or made. That will undo a great deal of connection-building and negotiation, and will damage economic relations between China and North Korea. The regime’s denunciation of Jang for “instruct[ing] his stooges to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random” and “selling off the land of the Rason economic and trade zone” will certainly chill new investment deals, and scare cadres into reinterpreting existing ones, causing more conflicts with investors. Regime banks accounts could even be lost if the only people who know where it is die without telling where they are.
Not that any of these things would be bad, mind you.
It’s hard to imagine that this purge could fail to cause a significant disruption in Pyongyang’s money flows. Could they really be dumb enough to do that to themselves? If they were dumb enough to destroy their own currency, then I suppose they are.
For what it’s worth, a North Korean official interviewed by the AP says that Pyongyang’s economic policies won’t change, that North Korea welcomes foreign investment, and that Pyongyang will proceed with its special economic zones. Not that I suppose this is really about me, but the interview answers my swipe that the AP hasn’t interviewed any North Korean officials or adding any useful information to our speculation about the purge. Whether these assertions are useful information is a question I’ll leave to you, to time, and to the boys at the Inmin Poan-Bu to tell, but they are exclusive and newsworthy. Good for the AP reporters for making the effort.