By Kim Sue-young
Staff Reporter
North Korea's top finance official has failed to appear in public affairs for more than 20 days, fuelling rumors that he might have been fired over the chaos in the market triggered by last year's currency revaluation.
The communist state dropped two zeros from the nominal value of its currency last November in an apparent attempt to fight inflation and black marketeering.
The re-denomination was reportedly led by Pak Nam-ki, director for planning and finance at North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, who has not been mentioned in state-run media since Jan. 9.
Chun Hae-sung, spokesman of South Korea's Ministry of Unification, did not confirm the rumors about Pak's dismissal but said it was true that the senior cadre had disappeared from the public's eye early last month.
"North Korean media reported that he accompanied North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during an on-site inspection on Jan. 4 and participated in some events on Jan. 9," Chun told reporters. "But there has been no report on his public activity since then."
Pak assumed the directorship in 2005. As the currency reform raised inflation and paralyzed the market mechanism, some reports said that he had been grilled over the currency moves within the ruling camp.
North Korea's currency revamp reportedly crippled markets and led to people there starving to death.
Quoting a survey by the communist party, Good Friends, an organization in Seoul to help improve the human rights situation in North Korea, said that one or two people in Dancheon, South Hamgyeong Province, died of hunger every day last month.
In addition, some North Korean watchers claimed that the price of rice rose 30-fold from 20 won per kilogram last December to 600 won in January.
However, some experts said that the rumors may not be true.
"If Pak was dismissed over the failure of the currency moves, vice directors working with him would have been dismissed, too. But they still accompany Kim Jong-il," Professor Yang Moo-jin at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul told The Korea Times.
"I think his disappearance is more likely to be related to his health condition since he is in his mid-70s but it could be a possible personnel shift."