North Korea's VNR Report

By Yang Moo-jin

On July 13, North Korea participated in the Voluntary National Review (VNR) held at the High-Level Political Forum under the U.N. Economic and Social Council, and reported on the implementation of the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development." VNR is a process in which all developed and developing countries participating in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), voluntarily share and review experiences, challenges, and lessons.

The SDGs were adopted at the U.N. General Assembly in 2015, and North Korea has shown a relatively active will to implement them. As internal organizations for the implementation of the SDGs, North Korea launched the National Taskforce for Sustainable Development (NTF) in August 2018, which is supervised by the Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Planning Committee, and organized six technical committees (TC) made up of officials from the Central Statistical Bureau under the NTF, establishing the SDGs implementation system. In 2019, working groups also participated in a workshop hosted by the UN Economic and Social Council to prepare a VNR report that meets the international standards.

The characteristics of North Korea's VNR report are as follows. First, North Korea released its first VNR report this time. It is unusual for North Korea to submit a 63-page report including 100 statistics on its economic and social reality to the international community after a long preparation period.

Second, the distinct characteristic of this VNR report is that North Korea has localized the U.N. SDGs by linking and integrating them with North Korea's national economic development strategy. For example, no poverty of SDGs No. 1 is localized to improvement of people's livelihood, and zero hunger of SDGs No. 2 is localized to agricultural development, ensuring continuity of SDGs implementation and justifying their policy orientation.

Third, it is worth noting that North Korea is showing keen interest in global issues such as climate change response. It is assessed that North Korea is exposed to risks such as reduction in agricultural production, destruction of agricultural infrastructure, and loss of soil and water resources due to rapid climate change. The VNR report describes that North Korea is making efforts to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as they set the goal of greenhouse gas emission at 15.63 percent reduction compared to BAU by 2030, and predict that reduction by 50.34 percent is expected if international support is made in order to respond to climate change.

Fourth, North Korea points out that hostile policy, including continued sanctions and blockade, serious natural disasters every year, and global health crisis are a severe obstacle to achieve the SDGs, and intends to promote bilateral and multilateral international cooperation programs to support for achieving the SDGs.

To outline the characteristics of its VNR report, North Korea can be said to express its will to pursue economic development as a normal state with joining the flow of international community in its first VNR report. To make the North Korea's will see actual results, it is essential for international community to cooperate actively.

One of those ways, if the international community would strengthen support for North Korea's capacity of building national statistics, will help a lot to provide a basis for the implementation of the SDGs. Also, North Korea recognizes the importance of developing statistics and emphasizes the need of augmenting the capacity of the Central Statistical Bureau and setting up an unified statistics system in its VNR report.

Furthermore, given North Korea's will to abide by global rules related to climate change, we can have a point of view for improving U.S.-DPRK relations. In his inaugural address, President Joseph Biden declared the U.S. would actively get involved in global issues under the key phrase "America is back" and signed an executive order on his first day in office bringing the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Accord. Since even North Korea acknowledges the need of intensifying international cooperation to work out a long-term plan for greenhouse gas emission reduction in its VNR report, it is necessary to actively seek various U.S.-DPRK and multilateral joint cooperation plans related to the response to climate change. It allows us to imagine that North Korea will take positive action on the global agenda set by the U.S.

Exemptions of sanctions against North Korea should also be applied broadly and flexibly, in that cooperation related to the global agenda such as the response to climate change is not a project for unilaterally delivering economic benefits to North Korea. The policy towards North Korea centered on sanctions and other pressures only deepens mutual distrust. If we were to take advantage of North Korea's interest in the global agenda to engage with it, and promote cooperation, it would be a good opportunity to restore trust with North Korea and come closer to peace and common prosperity on the Korean Peninsula.

Yang Moo-jin (yangmj@kyungnam.ac.kr) is a professor at the University of North Korean Studies and vice chairman of the Korean Association of North Korean Studies. He is also a standing committee member of the National Unification Advisory Council and a policy consultant at the Ministry of Unification.