“The critical period is NOW!”

During a time of political deadlock between Pyongyang and Seoul, the director of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom in Korea, Walter Klitz, visited the North in order to talk to officials of Workers’ Party and Chamber of Commerce about current developments within the country and acquire first hand information on the DPRK’s food-supply situation.

As reported within the media extensively, North Korea’s supply situation was disastrous in spring and early summer. Klitz had the opportunity to visit a cooperative on the country side north of the city of Pyeongseong and gain first-hand impressions of the early crop of 2011. In addition to the “usual problems” North Korean farmers face every year (such as a lack of fertilizer, gas and modern equipment) heavy rain and massive floods in autumn of 2010, an extremely cold and long winter and a serious drought this spring “added up to a severe shortage of food”, the directress of the cooperative told Klitz. Together with the chairwoman of the People´s Committee of the province of North Pyeong-An, she gave him a tour around the degenerated farmland, that once used to be the country’s breadbasket.

The yielded crops are expected to significantly undercut those of 2010. Usually the output of crop on the fields should amount to 2 tons per hectare minimum. This year, only 1 ton per hectare is to be expected. Due to harsh weather conditions (“the hardest winter in 60 years” the guides said), also the turn-out of the potato harvest is expected to be extremely low. While 15 tons per hectare are considered average, the visited acres will only yield to 5-6 tons per hectare this year. In order to compensate and bridge the hard time until the next crop comes in, the cooperative intensified vegetable production. “The stocks are empty and the early crop of 2011 is almost lost. Nevertheless, the situation on the countryside is still far better than within the big cities, but we are all waiting for the rice crop. Until then, even though farmers do not have much to give these days, cities have to be supplied. The critical period” - the two ladies noted - “is now!”

En route to the cooperative and at other trips along the outskirts of Pyongyang, the FNF representative spotted numerous military units working on the fields. It became quite obvious that the whole country was mobilized to sow the summer’s crop. A rich harvest in 2011 (and foreign food aid) is desperately needed for the leadership to pick from an embracement of riches at the “party of the century” in 2012 and prove to its people and the world that the DPRK has really become a “prosperous and powerful nation”.

However, undersupply and malnutrition of parts of North Korea’s population are not ineluctable. Even if the DPRK might heavily rely on food-imports (or aid), the country indeed is rich on natural resources (such as ferromolybdenum and rare earths). A consistent development of those resources and trade could easily open up a back-door to prosperity! A small minority in Pyongyang – despite of all sanctions - seems to already profit from trade and the countrie’s treasures of the soil. The numbers of luxury cars on the capital’s streets, a recently introduced North-Korean debit card system named “wings” (NaRae) and some “popular” café’s and restaurants already testify of “the wealth of a few”.

In a meeting with the head of the North Korean Chamber of Commerce, Klitz discussed further possibilities of cooperation in regards to a regulatory framework of trade and investments. Representatives of two of the leading North Korean companies involved in mining and trading raw materials provided Klitz an insight of their trading activities with China. All conversations confirmed his assumption that deposits of natural resources, especially rare earth and molybdenum, are a lot higher than known in most parts of the world and that trade - so far - is completely monopolized by China. China buys resources for “political prices”, reprocesses the raw materials and later sells them on the world-market. The one-sided trade with China is already bringing in enormous piles of money.

Within the past five years of travelling to the DPRK, Klitz has steadily built up reliable working-relations with important representatives of the ruling Workers’ Party. In order to work inside the secretive country -  and to get to a position that allows to openly debate critical issues as well – it is important to frequently meet decision-makers, to try to understand the ratio behind the countries action and to build-up a certain level of trust. This is why, even on short trips, Klitz uses every opportunity to meet with high-ranking party officials. On his latest three-day trip he came together with the head of the European Desk of the International Department of the Worker’s Party three times for political talks. Once again he was impressed of his interlocutor’s level of up-to-date information on international as well German politics. Klitz pointed out, that the Western world would expect a strong signal of the DPRK’s commitment to denuclearization. His North Korean counterparts indefatigably expressed the DPRK’s readiness to bring forward the process of denuclearization and rapprochement under the principle of „action for action“, as agreed upon within the declaration of chief nuclear negotiators of the two Koreas, the US, China, Japan and Russia on September 19th, 2005.