According to nkecon, on April 30 the price of rice in the DPRK was 4070 won per kg, but as of June 25 it had risen 26 percent to 5147 won per kg, the highest in many years. The price of corn has also sharply risen although not quite as high abovee recent levels as has the price of rice. However, the price of pork has fallen, reflecting standard corn-hog relations, and per capita incomes appear to have fallen. Crop failures have now been passing through to consumers in higher prices.
And in the meantime Kim Jong Un has sent an "excellent letter" to Donald Trump, who is traveling from the G20 summit in Osaka with South Korean President Moon, who would like there to be another Kim-Trump summit. Apparently Trump will visit the DMZ, the most heavily fortified place on earth, which Trump has now said is a model for how the US-Mexican border should be.
Barkley Rosser
11 comments:
This is important, but please describe how food prices are set in North Korea.
Please explain how serious or dire this is and what might be expected if that is possible to guess intelligently at.
A.,
Price setting complicated, a mixture of market forces (as there are unofficial private markets that are important) and the state. This is not a famine situation, but one of tightening and increasing stress, as I have been reporting on from nkecon. I do think it is playing a role in the internal political dynamics in the DPRK and it also remains basically totally unreported in the MSM, even as we have Trump vising Korea.
https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1145342394956701697
T.K. of AAK! @AskAKorean
Oh, and Kim Jong Un's interpreter who was supposed to be executed was spotted alive and well at the summit so there's that. Maybe we should worry less about N Korean nukes and more about N Korean ability to bring back dead people.
7:44 AM - 30 Jun 2019
Good. Guess you were right, A., about the reports of his death being false. However, the matter of worrying about DPRK nukes was never particularly related to whether this person was alive or dead.
As it is, I welcome the meeting in the DMZ, even if all it dii was restart the stalled-out earlier talks (basically the same outcome as what came from the Trump-Xi meeting in Osaka). As somebody said (Churchill?) "Jaw, jaw is better than war, war," even if no big agreement comes out of it.
Agreed completely, also:
The Korean War ended in a truce not a peace in July 1953. The state of war on the peninsula has existed all these years since, and there needs to be a negotiated end. President Moon will participate in and assist, and a peace will be welcome to Korea bordering China and Russia. There is then reason to be cautiously hopeful about renewed negotiations with North Korea and the United States, and evidently such negotiations will soon begin.
Correcting the careless sentence:
President Moon will participate in and assist negotiations, and a peace will be welcome to South Korea, to bordering China and Russia.
Anonymous,
It turns out that the person who was at the meeting is Kim Yong Chol, who was already known to have been rehaabilitated. He was not reported to have been executed but to have been sent to a camp. It is not news that he is OK. Apparently he is now #10 out of 12 at the meeting, although previously was in top handful.
The status of former top negotiater, Kim Hyok Chol, reported to be executed, remains unclear. There was a June 4 CNN Philippines report that he is alive and in prison being investigated, along with another figure reported to be executed. So he may be alive, but there have been no followups by anybody on his status. He certainly will not be leading the negotiating team for DPRK, at least not now.
The express reference was to the "interpreter" and only to the interpreter:
https://twitter.com/AskAKorean/status/1145342394956701697
T.K. of AAK! @AskAKorean
Oh, and Kim Jong Un's interpreter who was supposed to be executed was spotted alive and well at the summit so there's that. Maybe we should worry less about N Korean nukes and more about N Korean ability to bring back dead people.
7:44 AM - 30 Jun 2019
Since I myself recognize the interpreter, I set down the reference and made no other comment. I simply prefer to be accurate and that I was. I am not trying to score points, just to understand what information from a difficult to know about and understand country can be considered reliable.
Fair enough, A. Got it, interpreter. I know nothing about the interpreter. I think I have reported the status of the two Kim Chols, one Hyok, who was the lead negotiater, rwported to be exwcuted, more recently reported to be in prison, and Yong, former right-hand man and spymaster, reported to be in a camp but now rehabilitated mostly and in attendance at the meeting in the DMZ, although lower status than before his temporary disappearance.
I also note again that western media largely ignoring the tightended food situation in DPRK, which, as I speculated, may have led to internal political tensions, even if those in the end did not result in anybody getting executed (still not absolutely sure about that), and also quite possibly making it more likely Kim Jong-Un would like to resume negotiations with the US.
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