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After three decades of watching North Korea, I have learned that really important news about that nation seldom makes headlines. Instead, media attention is usually reserved for events of little actual significance. The endless soap opera of the "nuclear negotiation" is the major topic, and until the recent death of Marshal Kim Jong-il, the issue of who was to succeed him came a close second.
However, it has long been clear that there is no solution to the nuclear issue – the North Korean government will never negotiate away its vital deterrent. And it has also become quite clear that even if the name of Kim Jong-il's successor had become known prior to 2010, it would not have told us much about the future of North Korea. After all, virtually nothing of substance was known then about any of the possible candidates, including the one who became leader: Kim Jong-un (even his name was misspelled when first reported).
Meanwhile, the media paid little if any attention to such important things as the growth of grassroots market economy, the boom in China's trade, the rise and fall of cross-border migration and the spread of South Korean pop culture in the country. In the long run, these things will be remembered, and with good reason: they really matter.
More recently, the international media has essentially ignored the significant improvement in North Korea's economic situation. Almost every autumn, foreign newspapers run stories of looming starvation in North Korea, uncritically citing relief agency reports and hints dropped by the North Korean officials (the latter long ago have learned to manipulate the media in order to maximize the intake of foreign aid). The autumn passes, and no famine occurs, but this is a non-news event, which is seldom reported.
As a result, the image of a "starving country" has been firmly established at attached to North Korea, and people are surprised to learn that Pyongyang's streets occasionally experience traffic jams, or that the North Korean capital now has a diverse and booming restaurant scene. They are also surprised to discover that the supposedly "Stalinist" country has a large and growing entrepreneurial class, whose members do not feel shy about showing off their wealth in all possible ways (keeping a young mistress is said to have become particularly popular in the last two to three years)
Last spring, when North Korean propagandists erupted in an avalanche of comic bellicose threats, crowds of journalists descended swiftly on Seoul to report on the non-existent "crisis on the Korean peninsula," as if it was not clear that the entire affair was yet another North Korean exercise in diplomatic tension-building. The noise promptly ceased, and the real negotiations began, but these efforts attracted far less attention in the media.
Thus, I am not particularly surprised to see that really big news from North Korea is ignored by major news outlets or, at best, warrants but a short note somewhere on page 25. Meanwhile, it seems that long-hoped for changes are at last beginning to occur in Pyongyang.
Last year the North Korean government promised that farmers will soon be allowed to keep a significant part of their harvest. For decades, they were required to surrender every grain to the state. For a brief while it appeared that the government had reneged on this promise, but now it is clear that the new system has been implemented in many parts of the country. If this experiment continues, in a couple of years it will have a dramatic impact on harvests, as Chinese experiences in the late 1970s demonstrated.
Meanwhile, there are significant changes occurring in industrial management as well. Their first manifestation might appear somewhat bizarre: last month workers of some privileged state-run companies discovered that their wages had suddenly increased a hundredfold. The workers at the Musan Mine and Chongjin steel mills suddenly started receiving a monthly salary of some 300,000 North Korean won, roughly equivalent to $30-$40. It might not sound like much, but their wages until recently were below $1, so the increase is staggering.
The increase was made possible by the introduction of a new system that allows export-oriented enterprises to use hard-currency earnings to pay their workers. In turn, this reflects efforts to make state factories more independent, to jettison the last vestiges of the centrally planned economy.
These efforts might lead to the economic revival of North Korea. However, they are more likely to provoke regime disintegration and collapse. At any rate, these changes are important, meaningful – and yet, not seen as "sexy enough" by the world media to dwell on.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
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