Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power - Health of the Nation

Temperature screening in Pyongyang. Image: KCNA, March 4, 2020.

 

Introduction

While the health of a nation’s leader can have an outsized role on a country, more important to a nation’s strength and wellbeing is the health of the general population. It is from this population that government officials, soldiers, technicians, and farmers are drawn, and if the health of the people is poor, it will be reflected up and down economic, government, and military institutions.

For North Korea, the general state of the healthcare system and the presence of poor health in large segments of society has affected a poorer educational performance, led to higher rates of work-related disability, and has even influenced national security as the military has had to lower recruitment criteria in a reflection of the impacts of long-term malnourishment.

Despite some marginal attempts by Kim Jong-un at improving healthcare (such as the construction of the Pyongyang General Hospital and modernizing the Myohyangsan Medical Equipment Factory) and attempts to improve the food supply, illnesses like tuberculosis still rage through the country and over 42% of the population suffers from undernourishment.

Compounding the problems associated with limited healthcare, food production, and endemic disease has been the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and the regime’s response to it. Closing the border has all but ended foreign trade, expelling foreign aid workers has prevented medical and food aid from being distributed, and Kim Jong-un has rejected offers by the international community to provide millions of COVID vaccine doses.

As such, while Kim Jong-un can boast some legitimate accomplishments in other sectors, the efforts to better the health of the people must be seen as a failure.

 

Health of the Nation

The South Hamgyong Provincial Hospital after the 2021 renovation. Image source: KCNA, May 2021.

 

The State shall protect the people’s lives and improve the working people’s health by consolidating and developing the system of universal free medical service and improving the district doctor system and the system of preventative medicine.” - Article 56 of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea’s constitution, 2016 version. Emphasis added.

  

   On paper, one might suspect that North Korea has a fairly robust healthcare system. With 133 provincial-level hospitals, 1,608 county-level hospitals, and 6,233 primary care clinics, there are almost 37 doctors per 10,000 people: a ratio on par with Australia. However, despite impressive gains in life expectancy and the proliferation of medical clinics into small villages around the country during the 1960s and 1970s, North Korea currently has some of the worst healthcare infrastructure in the world.

Most clinics are capable of diagnosing basic diseases and setting broken bones, but everything from sterile needles to antibiotics and anesthesia is in short supply. In Kim Jong-un’s North Korea, there still remains no national emergency number (like 119 in South Korea or 911 in the U.S.) and patients must arrange transportation directly with their local hospital. As there are not enough ambulances in the country, private taxis may be required or even asking for transport on a passing tractor.

Despite the constitution guaranteeing free healthcare, people are often required to pay for supplies and medicine prior to receiving any care (including emergency care), and there have been reports of patients needing to provide their own blankets as well as meals for the nursing staff and doctors.

Hospitals capable of providing more complicated services are limited to Pyongyang and provincial capitals, but electricity shortages and shortages of everything from IV bags to modern medical beds hamper even these favored institutions.

The constitution’s guarantee of preventative medicine has likewise gone unfilled under the rule of Kim Jong-un.

The rate of smoking among North Korean men has indeed fallen from 59% in 2008 to 46.1% in 2019 according to the World Health Organization, but smoking rates remain above the global average of 36.7%.

An estimated 71,300 North Korean die each year from smoking-related causes. These represent 31% of the total deaths in the country. Although the rate of smoking has gone down, deaths caused by tobacco use are compounded due to a lack of early detection and available treatment options.

To tackle this problem, all three Kim’s have instituted various anti-smoking initiatives, but they have only met with moderate success. Under Kim Jong-un, such initiatives have been seen in 2016 and 2020 which included bans on smoking in certain public buildings.

However, Kim Jong-un continues to smoke in public, undermining efforts to curb smoking among the people.

 

   Tuberculosis isn’t a self-inflicted disease the way lung cancer can be, but it is still an illness that has been controlled in many parts of the world thanks to antibiotics and routine screenings (86% of all new cases can be found in just 30 countries). North Korea has the highest rate of TB among its neighboring countries, and it has been reliant on international aid to keep its spread in check. However, the regime hasn’t always been fully cooperative, and international sanctions have hampered efforts as well.

But while these joint efforts between Pyongyang and NGOs had produced consistent positive results in the decline of TB deaths since 2000, that trend began to reverse in 2016. North Korea’s expulsion of foreign aid workers and border closures in response to COVID-19 also means that the country has been left for over a year with almost no assistance fighting this highly contagious disease.

By December 2020, experts and aid workers who had worked in combating TB in North Korea warned that North Korea would soon run out of the life-saving drug supplies it had acquired in the run-up to the country’s lockdown. One U.S.-based humanitarian official said, "Every untreated TB patient could infect 10 to 15 other people. We could be looking at a much bigger epidemic [in North Korea]”.

Organizations were able to send 918,000 doses of the Bacillus Calmette–GuĂ©rin (BCG) vaccine, but the usage rate is over 300,000 doses a year as every newborn is given it. This left North Korea with only a three years’ supply in the best of circumstances.

A further shipment of TB-related treatments was stuck in a Chinese port for months as North Korea worked through their extreme quarantine measures (which extends to both people and products). Lapsed TB treatment plays a role in the development of antibiotic-resistant strains. These ‘super strains’ already account for 21% of new TB cases in North Korea and the country has run out of the drugs needed to fight them.

If Kim Jong-un doesn’t end the lockdowns soon, whatever progress had been made in fighting TB (and drug-resistant TB in particular) could largely be undone. With an estimated 135,000 people currently infected, without treatment, each of those individuals could infect a further 10 to 15 people as stated above.

It must also be said that in the case of North Korea, of five main risk factors, over 65% of TB cases are attributable to undernourishment according to the WHO “Global Tuberculosis Report 2020”; a problem that has only increased due to the extreme nature of the country’s lockdowns.

 

   In terms of being able to provide services and access, North Korea’s healthcare system is deficient in multiple areas.

According to the article “Surgical Diseases in North Korea: An Overview of North Korean Medical Journals” published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2020, North Korea’s healthcare infrastructure seems to be unable to provide complex surgical procedures like organ transplants.

Based on a review of medical literature from hundreds of DPRK-specific reports, the 2019 study “Systematic review of evidence on public health in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” found that cancer screenings appear lacking, particularly for cervical and breast cancers. While both rural and urban women are aware of diseases like cervical cancer, only 6% of women reported having a cervical cytology smear test and 62% of rural women said that travel distances were a barrier to getting screened.

It is this lack of access and loss of faith in the medical system (due to distance, medical costs, and shortages of medicine) that leads many patients to forego visiting hospitals and instead seek medications on the black market and herbal/folk remedies for self-treatment for a wide range of illnesses. 

Unfortunately, this has helped to fuel drug addiction in the country as upwards of 61% of patients end up buying opioids on the black market. Without adequate monitoring, both addiction and physical dependence can quickly develop, leading to a host of other problems.

 

   Attempts to limit or ban drug abuse and alcoholism have occurred for decades. Although drug addiction is not as widespread as some suggest, the lack of proper medicine and treatment options requires that people seek help elsewhere. The state doesn’t help matters by being behind the manufacture of drugs like methamphetamine and heroin. In fact, for a time in the 1990s, most of the methamphetamine being abused in northern China came from North Korea.

Despite crackdowns on domestic drug use, abuses of amphetamines and opioid narcotics remain more than a passing fad among the country’s youth. Occasionally reaching epidemic proportions within the northern provinces of the country, the drugs aren’t merely being used for people to get high, but are used to cope with never-ending demands for labor, long working hours, physical exhaustion, and to try to address health problems like chronic pain from injury, disability, and even end-stage cancers.

As briefly mentioned above, compounding the spread of drug use is also its state-sponsored manufacture. With sanctions cutting into the regime’s finances and China taking a harsher view toward drug sellers, domestic drug sellers and criminal gangs have had to find local buyers for their highly potent drugs.

No proper study has been conducted on drug abuse within the country, and the regime often claims it doesn’t even exist, but the reports from defectors are consistent in that drug abuse exists and has reached what could be described as an epidemic at different points since the 1990s, with drug addiction being almost unheard of prior to the famine.

 

   In the field of mental health, competent institutional support for psychiatric problems is almost completely lacking. While some facilities exist, named No. 49 Hospitals, they are described by defectors as little more than prisons for the mentally unwell.

Words like “psychiatrist” and “mental health” are rarely known of by the average person, and the most common way to address mental illnesses of all sorts, it would seem, is for people to either ignore it or try to treat it (as though it were a regular disease) with herbal medicines.

In general, mental health disorders are simply not recognized as such and there is little in the way of research or treatment. Additionally, people can be accused of anti-state activities because they are non-conforming and don’t simply “snap out of it” after being subjected to greater ideological indoctrination. To summarize defector sentiment about the state of mental health in the country, in North Korea, only the mentally sound exist. A sentiment underpinned by the general view that,psychiatric disorders should not exist in an ideal socialist society.”

Undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses are also associated with higher rates of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and can even express itself through violence in a country where domestic abuse and abuse against women outside the home are already common.

 

   Regarding infant and maternal mortality, North Korea has made continued improvements in infant mortality with the mortality rate per 1,000 live births dropping from 55 deaths per 1,000 in 2000 to just 20 in the year 2020. On the other hand, maternal fatalities are on the rise.

According to the “Report of the detailed findings of the commission of inquiry on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” by the UN Human Rights Council and published in 2014, “almost half of the women surveyed did not see a doctor throughout their pregnancy and almost half delivered their babies at home regardless of whether they were from a major city or village. Women also reported that the death of the mother or baby during or after childbirth was not uncommon. Maternal mortality rates almost doubled in the decade from 1993 to 2003, largely due to inadequacies in emergency obstetric care.  The maternal mortality rate in 2010 was estimated to be 81/100,000 live births.”

Maternal mortality has thankfully dropped from 81 deaths down to 66 deaths per 100,000 live births as of 2014, but it is still six times as high as in South Korea, over twice as high as in China, and higher than Cuba’s, another country who has held on to a strict command economy and has been the subject of sanctions for decades.

In particular, the high level of maternal mortality is due to the fact “that many hospitals were unable to provide adequate obstetrical emergency care such as anticonvulsants, antibiotics, and blood products.” Such inadequacies can be seen throughout the whole of North Korea’s medical system.

 

Dental procedures in Pyongyang. Image: Wikimedia Commons by (Stephan), June 9, 2008. CC 3.0.

 

   Although North Korea’s healthcare system has several severe deficiencies, there are areas in which the system is not only competent but has the resources required to provide care such as in basic dental and eye health, and as mentioned above, the system has been able to make strides in infant mortality.

The problem is that these improvements aren’t equally distributed. The most modern equipment and best medicines are first reserved for a handful of elite hospitals that are allowed to work on Kim Jong-un, the rest are distributed throughout Pyongyang. Finally, the main provincial hospitals can expect to receive occasional modernization efforts; although, medicines are often diverted into the black markets or given to the military.

Kim Jong-un has mentioned healthcare in five of his New Year’s speeches, but they were simply token remarks with the exception of 2018. That year he moderately expounded upon the state’s goals saying the state should “apply the people-oriented character in public health service in a thoroughgoing way, and boost the production of medical equipment and appliances and different kinds of medicines.”

Interestingly, “anti-epidemic” work was expressly mentioned in his 2015 speech, but what concrete measures were implemented is hard to say.

Over the last decade, there have been a few large construction projects related to medical infrastructure. One of the earliest was the opening of a new breast cancer research center at the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital in 2012. Although it is reported to be the cutting-edge research and treatment center for breast cancer in the country, as discussed above, travel difficulties remain a major barrier to accessing treatment. Additionally, as entry into Pyongyang itself is restricted, rural women being able to get emergency treatment is even more precarious.

Following that, the nearby Okryu Children's Hospital was opened in 2013. Billed as the best children’s hospital in North Korea, it is where the bulk of pediatric specialists can be found.

North Korea has a high incidence of cataracts and other eye conditions. To combat this, foreign specialists have been allowed to occasionally enter the country and direct mass evaluations of patients and to conduct procedures. However, in 2016 Kim Jong-un order the construction of the Ryugyong General Ophthalmic Hospital. It is the second of two identified eye-specific hospitals in the capital.

In late 2018 Kim Jong-un ordered the modernization of the Myohyangsan Medical Appliances Factory which he found lacking during a visit that October. The factory is responsible for the manufacture of medical beds, dental chairs, and a wide range of other equipment.

A year later in 2019, a medical oxygen plant was constructed. As we have seen in India and elsewhere during the COVID-19 pandemic, having the capacity to domestically produce enough medical oxygen is an essential part of the medical supply chain and is a requirement for the treatment of scores of diseases.

The most recent major medical construction project has been the Pyongyang General Hospital. Slated for completion in October 2020, it sits unopened today. Causes for the delay have been numerous including poorly manufactured electrical insulators and Pyongyang’s inability to import needed equipment. Located in the heart of Pyongyang, right next to the WPK Founding monument, the hospital must be viewed through the lens of being a personal prestige project for Kim Jong-un and the regime; one that is now 15 months overdue.

A kind of long-distance medical system was also introduced in recent years, with a drive to expand the system in 2021, but accessing it still requires patients to travel to their local clinic or hospital, and as personal computers and smartphones are banned for most of the population, patients can’t directly access the system at home. However, according to senior researcher Kim Young Hui of the Korean Peninsula New Economy Center, this remote medicine system has allowed provincial doctors to learn new skills and improve their treatments as they are monitored by doctors at more advanced medical facilities around the country.

 

   Worker health and safety is another key indicator of a government’s commitment to its people, as well as the strength of workers’ rights and labor laws. In a ‘worker’s paradise’ like North Korea, one would expect that labor laws and safety requirements are rigidly adhered to, with tough repercussions for neglectful managers.

However, as there are no independent labor organizations, lobbying or pressure groups, and no independent enforcement agencies, the North Korean state has a monopoly over the entire labor market and set standards as they see fit, and ignore them with impunity.

The constitution guarantees an eight-hour workday and prohibits child labor, but these regulations are routinely ignored. Grade school students, college students, and soldiers alike are all required to work on farms for portions of each year. Teenagers and the adult population are also often called upon to engage in ‘speed campaigns’ of mass, manual labor to build the regime’s latest megaproject. Hundreds of thousands of others are called to duty to perform mass games and serve in military parades.

The labor activities and the training for things like the mass games and parades place a tremendous burden on the body, with injuries being very common and with participants unable to take time off for sickness, to use the bathroom at will, and are rarely provided with enough calories to meet the increased activity level.

A lack of robust occupational safety regulations means that injuries and disabilities in the mining, timber, and construction industries are common. Repetitive stress injuries and the development of chronic conditions within agriculture (which is still largely a feudal activity involving significant human labor) are also routinely found.

All of this means that North Korea has been ranked by the World Health Organization as having the third-worst worker-related death and injury rate in the world.

Based on the “WHO/ILO Joint Estimates of the Work-related Burden of Disease and Injury, 2000–2016” report (published in 2021), North Korea had 76.9 work-related deaths per 100,000 workers in 2016. That's an increase from 56.2 in the year 2000. For comparison, in 2016 South Korea had 20.6 work-related deaths per 100,000 workers, China had 39.7, and the United States had 25.7.

Despite alleged worker protections limiting the workday to eight hours, North Korea also had among the worst rates of “stroke attributable to exposure to long working hours.” Long working hours is defined as more than 55 hours a week. North Korea had 28.1 work-related stroke deaths per 100,000 workers in 2016. South Korea and Japan, both countries well-known for their stressful working conditions and long hours had significantly fewer stroke-death rates at 3.9 and 4.9 respectively.

All of this has a significant impact on the North Korean economy, with the country losing an estimated $1.5 billion each year due to work-related injuries, disabilities, and death.

Although North Korea has enacted numerous domestic laws and multi-year plans stated to protect workers and bolster healthcare, and despite voting in favor of multiple international resolutions calling for improved access to trauma medicine, surgical care, and increasing access to basic medicine in rural areas, the lack of implementation means they currently have not made a measurable impact on people’s lives.

North Korea’s Ministry of Public Health announced in their 2016-2020 plan to modernize 200 local hospitals outside of Pyongyang. Yet, the regime has failed to even complete the flagship project of North Korea’s medical sector, the Pyongyang General Hospital, despite it being slated for completion in October 2020 – let alone hundreds of smaller facilities. And a review of satellite imagery indeed shows only a handful of provincial hospitals that have been upgraded.

Also affecting both civilian workers and those in the military is North Korea’s nuclear program. From mining and milling uranium to producing plutonium and testing the finished bombs, the process is fraught with physical dangers and toxic chemicals. In 2019 I wrote two articles detailing the health consequences of Pyongyang’s nuclear program (Part I, Part II).

In short, pollution leaking into the environment from the mining and milling process affects the drinking and irrigation water for thousands downriver. Former workers of the Pakchon Uranium Concentration Plant and from the Yongbyon Scientific Nuclear Research Center have all reported on a number of diseases consistent with both acute and long-term radiation exposure. And, defectors who lived in the areas downwind of the Punggye-ri Underground Nuclear Test Site have reported spikes in illness following the nuclear tests, describing the illness as the “ghost disease” as it comes and goes (following the tests) and causes its victims to become very weak (also consistent with radiation exposure).

 

An ‘epidemic prevention’ unit took part in the 73rd DPRK Founding Parade on September 9, 2021. Image: KNCA.

 

   The state of health in North Korea is also having substantial impacts on arguably its most important institution, the military.

Around 60% of North Korea’s population are either currently serving in the military, have served, or will end up serving for at least a few years, this makes the health of the military not only a concern to national defense but impacts the broader issue of public health as well.

The health of KPA military personnel received a lot of international attention in 2017 when a soldier defected across the DMZ. He was shot multiple times by fellow DPRK soldiers and required intensive medical care in South Korea. During his treatment, it was revealed that he had large intestinal parasites.

This discovery was not surprising. As many as 47% of North Koreans have helminthiasis, parasitic worm infections. What is surprising is its existence within a soldier who was serving in a relatively elite KPA unit as a frontline soldier of the DMZ.

Food rations in North Korea have long been based on one’s social and political standing, with the military receiving better rations and other supplies as part of the Songun Policy. Thus, one would expect to see fewer infections and other health problems among the military. Yet, this does not seem to be the case ever since the collapse of the economy in the 1990s.

Exposure to these parasites is predominantly due to poor hygiene (only 59% of the population has access to flush toilets), the use of improperly prepared “night soil” (a euphemism for fertilizer made from human waste), and eating food that hasn’t been properly cleaned.

All strata of society, from soldiers to farmers to students, are required to collect night soil and are also required to engage in farming activities. This creates a large level of exposure to parasites and other pathogens.

Chronic parasitic infections are associated with everything from poor cognitive development in children to liver damage. They can also exacerbate malnutrition and make one more susceptible to tuberculosis infections.

Although the levels of malnourishment have fallen since the days of the famine, most soldiers still do not receive their full dietary requirements, leading to soldiers robbing civilians of their food in some instances.

This multigenerational experience of malnutrition has been reflected in the military changing some of its recruitment criteria. Among them, the acceptable shortest height for new recruits was lowered in 2012 to 142 cm (4’ 6”). This change remains today and is not always enforced as the military struggles to maintain recruitment quotas.

Malnourishment and chronic disease can only have one impact – lowering the soldier’s readiness and endurance, regardless of their ideological fervor. Repeated injuries are also common in basic training, while taking part in labor activities, as well as for those who are called up to be part of mass parades. This lack of caring on behalf of the state has been discussed by multiple former KPA defectors, some of whom have taken to YouTube to describe the difficulties associated with military parades.

 

   While the state is ultimately responsible for the general welfare of its people, the inescapable role of international sanctions, levied as a result of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, on the country’s healthcare system cannot be overlooked.

Overbroad sanctions and bureaucracies that move with the speed of pitch have created a complex web of import controls and trade barriers that even make it illegal for North Korea to acquire computer monitors for hospitals and many medicines. Getting specialized equipment into the country is nearly impossible.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, aid organizations have had to seek exemptions from the United Nations to send even the simplest of medical goods. Gloves, masks, and thermometers are all tightly regulated by international sanctions.

Of course, the regime in Pyongyang has not been helpful in this regard, either. Ignoring their continued development of nuclear bombs which lead to the sanctions being put in place to begin with, Kim Jong-un’s actions to combat COVID-19 can only be seen as criminal.

 

   Kim closed down the country’s borders in January 2020 and put an end to tourism as well. Soon after, foreign diplomats and aid workers were being sent out of the country, group by group. By March 2021, not a single foreign aid worker was left in the country.

This ‘border blockade’ has had multiple effects. It prevents goods and medical supplies from entering the country through legitimate trade and it keeps international groups from being able to bring in and distribute much-needed aid.

The regime’s extreme stance is underpinned by the mistaken belief that the surface of products can be a major source of COVID infections. Everything from visitors to Pyongyang to bus seats has been disinfected more than once, and the government issued shoot-to-kill orders regarding any foreigner who may wash up on their shores (for instance, a wayward fisheries official from South Korea in need of help).

COVID’s threat to North Korea is very real. Although the country is perhaps better equipped than most to enforce local and regional lockdowns to stop any spread of the virus, the country’s medical infrastructure is incapable of dealing with numerous severe cases at once.

To that end, the regime has taken strict measures to quarantine people with COVID-like symptoms and increased legal penalties for those who disobey lockdown orders. North Korea has also tested roughly 50,000 people for COVID-19 and reported zero positive cases. While this has raised a number of doubts (particularly as small outbreaks of COVID-like illnesses have occurred), it does seem that North Korea’s extreme measures have prevented any widespread infection.

However, there have been major consequences to the country’s lockdown measures. Food supplies are running low, people are unable to find daily hygienic items in the marketplace, medications for tuberculosis are running out, and the government can’t import the vast majority of things they need to keep hospitals operating because the border has basically been hermetically sealed.

Although UN medical supplies were sent to North Korea in October 2021, the lack of personnel to distribute the supplies and to independently monitor that distribution means the supplies could easily be diverted elsewhere, as has happened with various other aid and food shipments in the past.

Making matters even worse is Kim Jong-un has the power to end this suffering while also combating the virus. As NK News reported, “North Korea is one of only two countries that has yet to administer any COVID vaccines, despite being promised over 8.12 million doses from COVAX and rejecting another 3 million Sinovac doses.”

Instead, he has taken the opportunities afforded by having a sealed border and almost no foreigners at all in the country for the first time in a generation to crackdown on everything from market activity to going after people wearing skinny jeans (something viewed as being foreign and anti-socialist).

While the war on pants endures, mothers can’t get the help they need during childbirth.

There has been a recent glimmer of hope, however. At least one train has recently been granted permission to enter the country from China to test out North Korea’s new disinfection center at Uiju. If the process goes well, this may open up opportunities for cargo to once again regularly enter the country.

Additionally, the state-party newspaper Rodong Sinmun published on January 10, 2022, that the regime is modifying its anti-epidemic policies to be more “people-oriented”, suggesting that some restrictions may be lightened up. While no specific changes were announced, it is clear that two years of total shutdown have wrecked both the economy and the country’s healthcare system, all without a single COVID case ever (officially) being reported.

 

Conclusions

   The current state of healthcare in North Korea is due to multiple factors. From economic mismanagement to diverting products away from hospitals and clinics to sell for foreign currency to the cumulative effects of years of sanctions. But Kim Jong-un has had a chance to address each one of these major factors and has opted not to.

His anti-pandemic measures have only served to make matters much worse.

The construction and modernization of select medical facilities in the country reflect the regime’s “our way” attitude and are an attempt at self-sufficiency, but the country lacks the indigenous manufacturing capacity to adequately supply itself with even the most basic of supplies. In 2017 the last WHO-certified drug manufacturer in the country was closed down, leaving citizens with only folk remedies and highly dubious “Koryo-medicine cures” made of everything from ginseng to rare earth minerals.

While there have been some statistical improvements, the lack of reliable sources of medicine and equipment, along with constant electricity shortages, has meant that the North Korean healthcare industry is moribund and unable to right itself.

Patients dealing with advanced cancer, mental health problems, or work-related trauma face a medical system that can’t cope due to its inherent structural inefficacies, and that may often actually be detrimental to the patient.

The rapidly declining availability of everything from food to hygienic supplies to antibiotics as a direct result of Pyongyang’s anti-COVID measures does not inspire confidence that the state of North Korean healthcare will improve in the near term, particularly as UN food aid has not been able to enter the country since March 2021 and the regime refuses to accept COVID vaccines that could help them end the lockdown.

And while Kim Jong-un has recently directed that future COVID measures be more tailored and “people-oriented” perhaps hinting at a loosening of some controls, only time will tell if these new policies will have any real impact at all. Currently, all that can be said is that the average North Korean has fewer medical options today than just a few years ago.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series, and can get access to the underlying data behind the supplemental reports.

Supporters at other levels will be sent each new article a day before it’s published and will also receive a mention as seen below.

 

I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, and Russ Johnson.

--Jacob Bogle, 1/17/2022

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Saturday, January 15, 2022

Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power - Health of the Man

Note: this was originally going to be a single article detailing healthcare in North Korea, with the first half being on the health of Kim Jong-un and the second half focusing on the general state of healthcare and medicine in the country. However, due to length, I have decided to split the article into two separate ones, divided among the same two topics: health of the man and health of the nation. "Health of the Nation" will be published in the upcoming days. 


Sensationalized headline by the celebrity gossip website TMZ repeating totally unfounded claims that Kim Jong-un may have died in April 2020. Image: Screenshot of April 25, 2020 ‘breaking news’ article headline.


Introduction

   The health of a nation’s leader and the health of the population are two factors that can have an outsized role in determining the course of history, yet it is often overlooked. Immediate, visible existential threats like invading armies or economic collapse occupy far more of a government’s attention, while invisible germs or quietly ticking clogged arteries remain out of sight and all too often out of mind.

However, history is filled with the turning tides of war, the rise and fall of empires, and revolutions that are either partially or largely based on matters of health.

U.S president Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919 that severely hampered his ability to promote the League of Nations Treaty within the United States, leading to its ultimate failure in the Senate. Without the support of the United States, the weakened League’s ability to enforce its own resolutions and maintain future peace enabled the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Japan’s invasion of Chinese territories, and eventually lead to the Second World War as Germany began to systematically violate treaties and ignore post-WWI obligations.

Adolf Hitler’s continual drug use after 1941 fueled his innate sense of infallibility and compounded his manic episodes. Coupled with his lack of military knowledge, his addled brain brought about some of the greatest military disasters in history.

 

   While the leaders of North Korea are painted in semi-divine terms by state propaganda, they are, in fact, just men. Kim Il-sung died of heart failure. Kim Jong-il suffered a major stroke and then died of a heart attack three years later.

And even though Kim Jong-un came into power at a young age, his health then as now has been the subject of much discussion and concern. The illness of any leader can cause instability within a country, and as Kim currently lacks any adult heirs, an unpredictable succession could have major consequences both domestically and internationally.

Surgeries, long periods of disappearance, and even rumors of his death have dogged his first ten years in power.

As such, while Kim Jong-un can boast some legitimate accomplishments in other areas, the history of his first decade with regard to his own health can only be given a middling score.


Health of the Man

Kim Jong-un with his walking cane visible in this KCNA image dated Oct. 14, 2014.

   Nearly everyone can find some genetic history of illness in their family. Heart disease, cancer, dementia, these things are common to have in your family. But most people manage to live long, healthy lives regardless and one’s lifestyle plays a huge role in this.

For Kim Jong-un, heart disease runs in his family. It’s also likely that other conditions like high cholesterol and atherosclerosis affected both his father and grandfather, but we have little direct evidence of this.

As a teenager, Kim’s lifestyle would have placed him on a better health footing than genetics may have suggested. He was athletically inclined, loved playing basketball (even had an aggressive streak), and he enjoyed spending time at the family’s seaside villa at Wonsan which offers multiple types of recreation.

But as he got older, he began to put on weight and when he came to power at the age of 27, he may have weighed as much as 90 kg (198 lbs) while being 5’ 7” tall. This would have given him a body-mass index (BMI) of 31, making him clinically obese.

Both his predecessors also put on weight as the years wore on, fueled by extremely rich foods and copious amounts of alcohol.

Kim Jong-il once remarked that he didn’t trust people who wouldn’t get drunk during parties. And he was known to be Hennessy’s largest non-corporate customer, importing $700,000 worth of Paradis cognac in one year alone to keep himself and his friends suitably lubricated.

This raises the specter of alcoholism within the family as well which would compound any predisposition to other illnesses. I don’t mention alcoholism just because Kim Jong-il enjoyed parties, but because his sister (Kim Jong-un’s aunt), Kim Kyong-hui, has struggled with the disease for many years and because alcoholism is known to be common among North Korea’s elite.

There is little to suggest that Kim Jong-un does not enjoy an equally spiritous lifestyle.

Pointing to this is the theory that Kim suffered from gout in the early years of his reign. After being out of the public eye for forty days, Kim Jong-un appeared in public again on Oct. 13, 2014 but needed a walking stick to help him get around.

South Korean intelligence said that he had undergone a procedure on his foot; however, that belies what could have been a more complicated truth.

Media commentators and North Korea watchers speculated that he was more likely suffering from gout, a condition where uric acid builds up in the joints and causes a wide range of painful symptoms. Major contributing causes to gout include having a diet high in fats and sugars, drinking, and smoking.

Gout can also cause tophi, hardened deposits of uric acid on the joints. One place they tend to develop on is the Achilles tendon.

Kim continued to use the cane for three weeks.

Of course, none of this is conclusive that he had gout and it’s never a good idea to do armchair diagnoses, but it is one reasonable possibility to explain why someone with his history and lifestyle would also need a cane for weeks.

What is known without doubt is his family history of heart disease and stroke, and that he is obese, eats an unhealthy diet, smokes, and has a history of minor surgery.

 

   Kim’s smoking is both a family trait and a national pastime. Some 46.1% of North Korean men smoke cigarettes daily, compared to 15.3% in the U.S.

Kim has tried to stop smoking at least twice, in 2016 and in 2020. Each of those years was also times when the regime promoted anti-smoking campaigns. In 2020, Kim actually banned smoking in public places.

The issue of Kim’s smoking even came up during a March 2018 meeting with South Korea National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong, as Kim’s wife, Ri Sol-ju, said she had been wanting him to stop smoking for years. Unfortunately, smoking can be a very hard habit to break and he is still seen with a lit cigarette in many of the official photographs released by state media.


A portly Kim Jong-un walking around Ryomyong Street in Pyongyang. Image: KCNA, Jan. 26, 2017.

 

   By 2015, his weight had further ballooned, possibly to as high as 130 kg (286 lbs), giving a BMI of nearly 45. This level of weight gain, if the estimates are accurate, would drastically increase his risks for developing diabetes, liver steatosis (fatty liver) – made even worse by drinking alcohol – and would require his heart to work harder, almost certainly leading to heart disease at a younger age.

Making understanding his health situation more difficult is that speculations on the health of the Kim family, replete with lurid tales about their lifestyles, have long been fodder for tabloid writers and intelligence agencies alike. Western reporters often lack translators (or perhaps just the discipline) to correctly divine whether or not a story is coming from a satirical online discussion board or is legitimate breaking news, and foreign intelligence agencies lack the resources required (both human and electronic) to get close to the leadership to validate or refute every rumor that pops up.

South Korean media, in particular, have an unfortunate reputation for getting things wrong when it comes to North Korea or for taking a mere suggestion from an “unnamed intelligence officer” and running with it as though it were the gospel truth.

There have been numerous examples where stories of one or another North Korean official is reported to have been executed – with no substantial evidence, and then the story gets copied and repeated in otherwise legitimate media around the world only to have said official show up days or months later.

And things haven’t been any better regarding reporting on Kim Jong-un. In 2016 a baseless rumor about his death was picked up and reported as fact. Such shocking news caused defense stocks to temporarily rise and the South Korean won to fall.

The fake story even claimed that the Korean Central News Agency had announced the news. All anyone had to do was to check the KCNA website. Absolutely no such official story existed. And yet, by the next day, 115 articles had been written on the topic and it began to make the rounds internationally.

Needless to say, Kim wasn’t dead. But this highlights the dangers of not checking sources first and exchanging one’s journalistic standards to post sensational and clickbait-y stories.

Unfortunately, such lessons never get learned.

 

   In 2020, Kim Jong-un was not seen visiting the Kumsusan Memorial Palace (Kim Il-sung’s and Kim Jong-il’s mausoleum) for the April 15 Day of the Sun ceremony, the country’s most important holiday. It was the first time he missed taking part in the ceremony since coming to power.

Missing such an important event sparked many questions. Soon after, DailyNK reported, based on an unnamed source inside North Korea, that Kim Jong-un had undergone a heart procedure at the exclusive Hyangsan Hospital on April 12 and was recuperating. It gave few other details but was clear in that Kim was stable and resting at one of his villas.

It wasn’t long after this that other reports started claiming he was in critical condition, brain dead, in a coma, and even dead. Many of these false reports claimed to be citing DailyNK, even though nothing in the DailyNK article could be construed to mean he was near death.

This absolute journalistic negligence didn’t even stop when 38 North reported, with clear satellite images to back it up, that Kim Jong-un’s armored train had been sitting at Wonsan Palace since April 21 and reports by others that leisure boats from the palace had been moved around the bay. The combination of evidence made it almost certain that Kim Jong-un was not only alive but had moved from Pyongyang to spend the rest of his recovery time at his favorite residence.

The rumor mill didn’t finally stop until both U.S. and South Korean officials came out and said they agreed with the assessment that he underwent a medical procedure and that he was alive and there were no indications of anything more serious.

Kim finally reappeared in public on May 1 during the official opening of the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory. There was continued speculation about his recovery, but as Jefferey Lewis remarked on Twitter, “Well, I wouldn't say Kim looks healthy, but he definitely doesn't look dead.”

All three Kim’s have disappeared from view on multiple occasions, but those periods don’t always concern ill health. The birth of a new child, taking vacations, or simply needing time to reflect on new policies can drag even the most spotlight-loving dictator away from making daily appearances.

However, there has been one other recent absence that did restart discussions about his health.

 

   After missing for a few weeks, Kim Jong-un oversaw a parade celebrating the country’s 73rd founding anniversary on Sept. 9, 2021. The nighttime parade offered a lot for observers to discuss (like the inclusion of civilian emergency personnel) but it was Kim Jong-un’s physical appearance that also caught attention.

He had lost a noticeable amount of weight and had an overall better look and energy level than in the past. Further appearances substantiated the initial assessment that he had, indeed, lost significant weight.

It was first reported that he may have lost between 10 and 20 kg (22-44 lbs.). More recent images of him at the end of 2021 places the weight loss at the higher end of that estimate and also show that he is managing to keep the weight off for now. Although he would still be considered obese for his height (his thinner weight is still between 117 and 120 kg (258-264 lbs.)), it is a good start.

His mobility and breathing have visibly improved as a result as well.

The weight loss doesn’t only have a positive impact on his health, which seemed to be deteriorating over time. Particularly after the DPRK-US summit process collapsed and as North Korea faces tremendous economic problems due to COVID-19, Kim must be seen as a vigorous leader. His “on the spot guidance” tours, pioneered by Kim Il-sung, are an integral part of his rule, and the only way to keep such an active touring schedule is to maintain a certain level of health.

Additionally, gossip within North Korea by average people about his weight had increased over the course of his first decade. Even though such talk against the “highest dignity” is illegal, gossip, jokes, and criticisms about him routinely spread. In a country of chronically undernourished people and after he raised the specter of additional “belt tightening”, being caricatured as the plump Supreme Leader poses a threat.

These concerns over the people’s opinion of Kim have not just shown up in secret government meetings. State media has publicly addressed his weight loss, implying that Kim was eating less to help the country, harkening back to the days of the famine when Kim Jong-il was reputed to only eat a single bowl of rice a day. So, his thinner look pays both political and health dividends for the leader.

 

   The leaders of North Korea are no different than any other person in their desire to live as long as possible, but they do have far greater resources to apply to accomplishing that. To reach for that goal, a secretive research organization was established during the rule of Kim Il-sung, the Longevity Research Institute, to help keep him happy, healthy and living as long as possible through the use of herbal and folk medicine mixed in with modern medical science (along with practices of questionable ethics and effectiveness).

The Institute continued its activities throughout the life of Kim Jong-il, with 130 doctors and scientists eventually being involved. While there has only been indirect evidence that the Institute is involved in Kim Jong-un’s life, it is likely they’re working hard to keep the third generation of Kim going.

 

   With all of the real (and imagined) health problems Kim Jong-un has faced, governments and pundits around the world have been contemplating his eventual death. What would the aftermath of his sudden death mean? Can there be yet another dynastic succession? What about who controls the nuclear weapons? Who could maintain internal stability?

These and other questions were all raised during his 2020 absence and literally thousands of articles and reports were written to try to answer them.

I myself wrote three. One for AccessDPRK, one as part of a digital symposium by The National Interest, and one discussing the future of the Kim family cult after his death for Asia Times.

The opacity of North Korea’s governing system and a lack of knowledge about any official succession or continuity of government plans renders discussions about Kim Jong-un’s incapacitation or death little more than speculation, but his health must be considered to be part of North Korea’s national security planning. And until his children reach adulthood, there will be an extra layer of doubt and concern over his health and what might happen in the future.


Conclusions

   With no clear heir, the status of Kim Jong-un’s health does become more pressing. Although Kim does not engender the same devotion and loyalty as Kim Il-sung, and although it is unlikely that he has the same level of absolute control over the state as previous generations of Kim have held, Kim Jong-un is still the center spoke for a nuclear-armed nation.

With the family medical history such as it is, his recent weight loss could be the first concrete sign that his health has been precarious, and that he is now taking steps to ensure his survival and the continuance of the regime.

There are also hints that Kim has begun to make subtle reforms to the country’s laws and to the rules of the Workers’ Party that would theoretically enable someone other than him or a direct heir to one day rule the country. These changes may only be temporary steps to shore up the regime in the event of his demise, changes that could be reversed once an official successor is named, but they are nonetheless incredibly important and exhibit a level of foresightedness in the face of his medical history.

To directly address Kim Jong-un’s health, his surgeries point to a relatively young man that may be facing some serious medical issues. His weight loss is a concrete step toward warding off everything from heart disease to diabetes, but he will need to go further still. He must eventually stop smoking and his diet is going to have to change substantially if he wishes to live – healthily – into his 80s.

Another move would be to lower his stress levels. Genuinely placing focus on the people’s health and wellbeing and working to finally solve longstanding issues like food shortages would benefit Kim and the 25 million others living in North Korea. Of course, if history is any guide, this is unlikely.


~ ~ ~ ~

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series, and can get access to the underlying data behind the supplemental reports.

Supporters at other levels will be sent each new article a day before it’s published and will also receive a mention as seen below.

 

I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, and Russ Johnson.

--Jacob Bogle, 1/15/2022

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Monday, January 3, 2022

AccessDPRK in 2021

This last year marked a milestone for AccessDPRK, and thanks to your continued readership and the support of my Patreon supporters, 2022 will see some great additions to the project.


The biggest event of the year, of course, was the publication of the Phase III map.

The journey that led to the 2021 map began in December 2012, and after 7,000 hours of work, I was finally able to publish the final version of this nationwide map. 

The Free Version contains over 61,000 locations of interest. The Pro Version includes an extra 3,400 locations along with added information on thousands of others. In terms of locating military bases, industrial facilities, and cultural sites, it's the most comprehensive map available to the public...anywhere.


For the AccessDPRK blog, I was able to write 21 articles and analyzed 116 images for those articles. I also started the Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power biographical series which takes a look at his first decade ruling the country. The series is broken down into twelve topical articles and eight have already been published.

The top 5 articles of the year were:

  1.  What's Inside North Korea?
  2.  Is Wonsan Prison No. 88 Closing?
  3.  What Lies Beneath the Underground Republic
  4.  Border Blockade
  5.  The Unique Buildings of NK's Missile Program
AccessDPRK articles were also cited by Chosun Ilbo, One Earth Future Foundation, i News and various other UK papers.

The blog's 142 articles now contain the equivalent of 937 printed pages of material and include 938 images. I also added 65 images this year through Twitter that are not duplicated in the articles on this blog. In total, I've added nearly 500 Twitter images, providing a very large range of visual material for those interested. 

Web traffic to the site increased by nearly 20% year-over-year. On Twitter, I added 185 new followers and AccessDPRK-related tweets earned 346,000 impressions. The year's most 'popular' tweet was one in response to North Korea's September 2021 cruise missile test and reported range.


As announced at the start of 2021, I also began working on a book. Thanks, in particular, to my Patreon supporters I was able to purchase several books and journal articles to help research for mine. The future book's current layout is broken down into three main sections and will contain seventeen chapters. Of course, this is subject to change.

 
Looking to 2022

The amount of work required to research and write the biographical series necessitated that I largely take a break from other parts of AccessDPRK, but once the series is finished, I will be focused on completing the watershed map and the map of DMZ trenches. I will also work toward editing and publishing the rest of the 31 'city briefs' that I have written on various towns across the country.

Afterward, I would really like to place more focus on research and writing my book. Although that may mean less blog activity, I will still be looking out for new changes in North Korea and if a topic piques my interest, I'll write a post about it. I currently have a list of 20 article ideas & drafts, so there shouldn't be a dramatic decline in regular content output. It just won't be my main focus.


Patreon

I set up a Patreon account in 2020 and have gained some great supporters. Currently, you can help support the project for $3, $5, $10, $15, and $20 monthly, each coming with its own rewards.

I am constantly thinking about new rewards to add, one of them being that I am working on a kind of virtual tour of the country. But you can already get early access to new articles, monthly digests that feature information I haven't discussed publicly, you can have me analyze places you're interested in, and get access to multiple exclusive datasets. Plus, blog and Twitter mentions for any support at $3 or more.

If you believe in sharing facts-based information with the public about all aspects of North Korea (defense, culture, economy), please think about helping out. Every dollar really does help make this possible.

With that, I want to give a huge THANK YOU to my Patreon supporters throughout the year: Amanda O., Anders O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, Planefag, Rinmanah, Russ Johnson, and ZS.

Lastly, I want to wish everyone a wonderful upcoming year!


--Jacob Bogle, 1/2/2022
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Saturday, December 25, 2021

Update on the Pakchon Uranium Mill

The Pakchon Uranium Concentrate Pilot Plant is the first uranium concentration plant in North Korea and is one of only two known to exist, the other being the Pyongsan plant

Operations at Pakchon take uranium-bearing ore (usually from coal) and concentrate it into 'yellowcake' which has a uranium concentration of 99% pure U-238, a low radioactivity, long half-life form of uranium. From here, it is sent to other sites (such as Yongbyon) where it is converted into highly enriched U-235 which can be used for bomb production.

However, its operations have been scaled down and it has been in caretaker status since perhaps as far back as 2002.

But although uranium production has been shunted to the more modern Pyongsan, Pakchon's caretaker status certainly doesn't mean abandoned. Recent satellite imagery suggests at least some limited operations are still ongoing and that the regime has been fairly active in maintaining the complex. The continued importance of Pakchon in the country's nuclear program is evidenced by the fact that the United States was interested in having it permanently closed and dismantled as one of five nuclear facilities offered up by North Korea in exchange for sanctions relief. 

When I first wrote about the site in 2019, I noted two buildings that were either being demolished or that had been left to fall apart. Since then, commercial satellite imagery from Sept. 14, 2021 shows that one of those buildings has been completely reconstructed. Additionally, a repaired section of roof on the main milling building can be identified.

The imagery also shows that the complex's administrative section has seen construction and that the waste material reservoir is still being used.

The nearby mine that provides uranium-bearing ore has also been continually active. Whether it's sending its full production to the Pyongsan Uranium Mill or diverting small amounts to Pakchon, I can't say, but the improvements made at Pakchon suggests that the ore from the mine would likely one day be sent back to Pakchon if it becomes reactivated in the future.


Taking these changes one-by-one, the first I'll talk about is the reconstruction of the thermal building which provides extra electricity for the plant. 

Thermal plant as seen on March 19, 2012.

In the above image from 2012, the thermal plant complex is clearly visible. Coal is housed in the bulk storage building where it is then moved uphill via a conveyor belt to the generating hall. The coal ash is then dumped outside of the building in a pile next to the conveyor where it accumulates until removed.

In 2019, the generator hall was being demolished.


By October 2019, the generating hall had been torn down to its foundations.

There is a gap in the Google Earth imagery, but by September 2021, a new structure can be seen.


The absence of a conveyor system, either above or below ground, suggests that construction to modernize the plant may not yet be complete.

Nearby are two other unidentified support buildings that have been left to fall apart.

Building #1 has a partially collapsed roof while building #2 is missing its roof entirely.

 

In this image, from right to left, you can follow the production process as described by the Center for Strategic International Studies.

The September 14, 2021 image also shows that a section of roof has been repaired in the section of the production building that is responsible for drying and filtering the yellowcake uranium before it is shipped out.


Pakchon's waste reservoir is split into two reservoirs, an upper and a lower one, divided by an earthen dam. The area of the reservoir that is filled with waste is approximately 3.4 hectares, with the upper section usually being filled with water and the lower section containing sludge and newer waste materials.

While the size of the reservoir hasn't changed in at least 17 years, the sludge pool has seen continued activity, particularly in the last few years. 

Beginning in 2019, a new staging area was constructed to accommodate vehicles and other equipment involved in the management of the reservoir. The staging area covers roughly 2,900 sq. .m. 


One other section of the Pakchon complex that has seen recent activity is in the administrative area. In 2019 a new theater/assembly hall was constructed over the course of the year.

The new hall is on top of substantial construction work that happened between 2008 and 2012, when nearly every current structure visible was either renovated or added.

Additionally, the fish farm that exists next to the administrative area had more modern facilities built in 2019-2020. These fish farms can be found throughout the country and help provide needed protein to local workers, military personnel, and the fish can even be exported to earn the country foreign currency.  


While none of this activity suggests full-scale operations have resumed at the concentration plant, it does support the idea that, like Punggye-ri, the site remains part of the country's nuclear program and may be ready to resume limited production should the order come.

As Joseph Bermudez wrote for CSIS back in 2019 about the low-level activity that can be observed, "the most likely explanations for this activity would be small processing runs of iron-bearing ore of some type, caretaker maintenance work, or decommissioning of equipment within the plant." 

However, with the newer imagery and changes, I would like to suggest that some of the activity could be part of pollution mitigation efforts or reprocessing older ore/waste material to extract small amounts of formerly discarded minerals (an activity seen at certain mining sites in recent years).


I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, Rinmanah, and Russ Johnson.

--Jacob Bogle, 12/24/2021
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Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Kim Jong-un's First Decade - A Decade of Market Growth

This is the fourth and final of the supplemental articles for the Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power series. It details the various infrastructure changes and weapon developments of North Korea's conventional forces over the last decade.

Undated image from the North Korean government (via Naenara.com) of the interior of a marketplace in Pyongyang.

Introduction

Modern markets in North Korea trace their history back to the chaos of the famine of 1994-98 that killed upwards of 1 million people through starvation and related diseases.

As the central government’s ability to feed the people through the Public Distribution System failed (previously a citizen’s primary source of food), people had to make the decision to either abide by state ideology and starve or they could take matters into their own hands.

Since the vast majority of men were either serving in the military or still forced to report to derelict state factories for “work”, women took the lead and created the foundations of today’s market system that has spawned an entirely new generation, the jangmadang generation (those who came of age after the famine and during the period of marketization).

What began as highly illegal activity in the black markets has, twenty-three years after the famine, evolved into a series of legal and quasi-legal markets that has resulted in an entire generation never knowing reliance on state rations and who are unlikely to give up that freedom (and a greater selection of goods) to go back to the old days of the Public Distribution System’s monopoly.

The evolution of markets has weakened the regime’s internal travel restrictions and prompted an interest in entrepreneurship that can be seen in the creation of private transportation companies and a booming housing market, enabling the development of a middle class for the first time in North Korea’s history.

The regime has grappled with this loss of control through cracking down on market activity and, at times, trying to bring it under central authority by giving it a level of legitimacy (particularly in Kim Jong-un’s first several years as leader). But while Pyongyang is still trying to adapt to the reality that markets are likely here to stay, the wheels of commerce have not stood still. Today there are at least 477 markets throughout the country providing everything from rice and corn to home goods, foreign entertainment, and medicine.

Although there has been considerable research into early market development and its impact on people’s lives, I want to take this opportunity to show the growth arc of markets over the last decade and to reiterate that, absent the recent effects of COVID-19, market activity has not stalled or reached a saturation point but remains a dynamic economic force both because of and in spite of the regime.

 

A quick note: I have tried to tailor this report to focus on the markets and on how economic policies have affected them. More details and a broader view on economic policy under Kim Jong-un will be the focus of an upcoming regular article of the series.

 

Early Policies under Kim Jong-un

Perhaps due to his preoccupation with consolidating power or perhaps because he realized the state still couldn’t be the sole provider of people’s needs as in the days of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un initially took a wait-and-see approach to the markets with the occasional foray into reform.

Exactly how open he was to reform is up for debate, but there is clear evidence that he was not only willing to continue the tacit approval of the growing market economy as his father had been forced to in the wake of the famine, but he was also willing to become the first North Korean ruler to implement market-oriented reforms (at least for a time) that positively affected the average person.

The government has tried to integrate the market economy into the centralized command economy by allowing the markets to exist while taxing them and regulating the kinds of goods that are allowed to be sold. As Prof. Andrei Lankov summarized in his 2016 report The Resurgence of a Market Economy in North Korea, “The government’s approach to the private sector has been mixed. It generally accepts private enterprise as a necessary evil, but for political reasons, it is not prepared to legalize it completely. Kim Jong-un’s government is more tolerant of private enterprise than its predecessors.” However, “the outright legalization of the private sector appears unlikely.”

Kim has also sought to compete with the markets by modernizing an ever-growing number of state-owned department stores. While these stores are not part of the ground-up marketization that has spawned hundreds of trading locations across the country, they have helped to fill a need for those who have managed to make it into the monied-class through private economic activity, particularly in Pyongyang.

With this mix of private and state options that currently exist, those with enough disposable cash can have access to bulk rice and illegal South Korean TV shows via the trading stalls and can then go purchase $1,000 designer handbags in department stores – with the added bonus of not risking getting arrested as the store's products are fully sanctioned.

But legitimizing the markets themselves was only one part of the economic puzzle that has led to a relatively robust market economy.


Chart showing the relative stability of the black market value of the North Korean won prior to the COVID-19 trade restrictions. Image source: DailyNK/Bloomberg.

The government has also taken a lax approach to the black market exchange rate of the won. Officially, 100 won is roughly equal to $1 USD, but in the markets, it’s well over 5,000:1.

Instead of instituting more disastrous currency reforms as it did in 2009, it has allowed the black market rate to serve as the won’s true indicator of value while being more aggressive in regulating the use of foreign currency. So, people have been able to save and invest using the North Korean won and those savings have not been at risk of arbitrary confiscation or a dramatic devaluation at the hands of the central bank in years.

This sense of stability has further strengthened the marketization process up and down the entire system.

In 2012, in one of Kim’s first major economic changes, he allowed farmers to keep their surplus produce to sell or trade and to keep any profits. Prior to the famine, selling food from state-controlled farms was highly regulated. Now, farmers would have incentives to keep working on government farms (instead of leaving to tend to their own illegal plots). Under this plan, improving agricultural output to alleviate food shortages was the state’s goal. However, it had the secondary effect of filling the markets with more and more foodstuffs and enabled farmers who’d otherwise be forced to rely on less than $15 a month in wages to earn enough money to live and not merely subsist.

Initially, it was projected that (so long as they met state quotas) most farmers would end up being able to sell 30-50% of their harvest in the markets. Enabling food to be sold and distributed locally is also highly beneficial during times of food scarcity as it improves the efficiency of distribution and ensures supplies still exist even as prices rise.

With the addition of new initiatives by the regime to dramatically increase the allowed size of ‘kitchen gardens’ from 100 sq. m. to 3,000 sq. m., by 2015, data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and anecdotal reports from within the country seemed to show that these early reforms by Kim Jong-un were bearing fruit.

 

Another major part to why markets continued to thrive has been the end of the Songun (military-first) policy. Instituted by Kim Jong-il to give the military a greater role over economic planning and the prioritization of resources when the regime saw itself under extreme external threat, the policy created massive distortions in the economy and diverted needed investment away from light industry and agriculture.

Kim Jong-un has worked to dismantle Songun in favor of his Byungjin Line or “parallel development” that seeks to pursue nuclear weapons without neglecting the domestic economy. A refocused approach to bolstering light industry and improving the quality of consumer goods has led to some improvements in the quality and diversity of available goods while also seeing factories in various sectors modernized.

 

Market Growth

In 2018 the Center for Strategic and International Security released a report on North Korea’s markets. Their reporting revealed that there were at least 436 officially sanctioned markets in the country and that the government received $58.6 million each year from stall rental fees and taxes.

Additional CSIS reports showed that a substantial portion of citizens earn at least 75% of their income from market activities. This finding fits well within what others have reported including New Focus International and defector testimony.

Based on the AccessDPRK Mapping Project (2021), this supplemental report provides an update on the number of markets in the country.

There are at least 477 markets in North Korea with 20 being identified as informal street markets and 457 being official markets. Of the official markets, some are still open-air sites with no permanent buildings. Because of this, it can be difficult to ascertain changes to the level of activity occurring there. So, I will only be focusing on the 441 markets that have permanent vendor stalls, as their construction and removal can be tracked across time, providing better direct evidence for the health of the economy in each city.

– A note on methodology, formal markets tend to have a defined boundary wall. Within that boundary can exist vendor stalls plus open ground for overflow capacity. Often, they include both. In cases where a substantial portion of the market is just open space, I have only included the areas occupied by stalls as the market’s “area”, as those stalls are responsible for most of the everyday economic activity that occurs and are the only thing that can be routinely measured. –

This chart shows the total area of the new markets constructed each year.

Since 2011, I have noted thirty-nine newly constructed markets. Of those with precise construction dates (there’s occasionally gaps in Google Earth imagery) two were built in 2011, four in 2012, three in 2013, five in 2014, four in 2016, three in 2017, five in 2018, six in 2019, three in 2020, and one is known to have been constructed in 2021. As this shows, there has been no real decline in the growth rate of markets over the course of the decade until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2011, 2,650 sq. m. worth of new markets was constructed and by 2019 that had grown to 23,260 sq. m. of additional market space. But that dropped precipitously following COVID-19 with only 7,450 sq. m. of space added in 2020 and just 630 sq. m. verified in 2021.

A further 114 markets have also grown in size since 2011. In total, there is 1,502,270 sq. m. (16,170,299 sq. ft.) worth of vendor stalls within the 441 market sites reviewed. That’s a net increase of 236,320 sq. m. (2,543,727 sq. ft.) since 2011. There are also tens of thousands of square meters in various overflow spaces outside of the main market buildings, but as these spaces aren’t always clearly delineated and often spill out into the streets or surrounding fields, trying to measure them can become somewhat arbitrary.

The largest single market in the country by area is the Sariwon market located in Kuchon-3 district (38.501407° 125.778737°). With at least 29,000 sq. m. of space, it’s over 8,000 sq. m. larger than the next largest market in North Korea. The market was constructed in a former stadium and includes a large central building surrounded by dozens of smaller structures that hold vendor stalls and other facilities.


Some other market-related stats are:

  • The newest market is in Hamhung. Constructed between 2020-2021, this small market (39.953089° 127.560062°) provides facilities to the growing districts around the Chemical Materials Institute and Tonghungsan Machine Plant.
  • There are 26 markets greater than 10,000 sq. m. in size.
  • There are 95 markets with less than 1,000 sq. m. worth of vendor stalls.
  • The smallest market (as best as I can determine using Google Earth measurements) is in the town of Hwaam (40.675307° 126.451652°) and only has ~130 sq. m. of active space. It does have some overflow area, but currently, there is just a small cluster of permanent structures.
  • Although it wasn’t until 2002 that the government allowed officially sanctioned markets to operate, based on the available Google Earth imagery, at least 56 market sites with permanently constructed buildings had already been in existence prior to 2002. These include markets in Anbyon, Sinpo, Wonsan, and at least eleven in Pyongyang. These are, of course, in addition to the many open-air street markets that also existed at the time that were later converted to permanent sites.
  • Based on a 2014-16 survey, there are over 600,000 individual vendor stalls within official markets. Today, that figure is likely closer to 750,000 as substantially more markets have been identified and others have grown.

 

Different approaches to the measurement of market sizes and the addition of new markets constructed since the 2018 CSIS market report makes directly estimating government revenue from that report difficult. However, using their published estimates for government revenue from each market, the range of annual revenue each square meter of market space brings in is between $26.56 and $36.05. Applying those figures to the current amount of active stall space as measured in this supplemental report, the central government receives between $39.7 million and $54 million in revenue. If one were to include open-air markets (which are variable in size) or include the overflow spaces as part of the revenue-making area, as of 2021, the government brings in over $60 million each year.


Later Changes and the Effect of COVID

Street vendors selling produce near the highway running from Nampo to Kaesong. Image source: Uwe Brodrecht, Oct. 13, 2015, via Commons (CC 2.0). Image has been cropped.

 Although Kim has been incredibly open about economic and food troubles compared to his father, he still has an obligation to strengthen the state, stamp out threats to the regime, and manage the expectations of the people. Those threats include private markets and even a rising standard of living.

The desire to control the markets is more than just about the drive for greater economic control from Pyongyang. Markets form a core part of nearly every DPRK citizen’s daily life. They are a source for networking, sharing gossip (including views that could be viewed as treasonous), and are a key source of electronic devices and digital media that further erode the information cordon that has existed for generations.

Market activity has helped to raise people’s expectations of what a decent life is, and if the government can’t assist in raising standards of living, people tend to decide those in charge are expendable. This threat is why Kim Jong-il, at best, engaged in benign neglect of growing market forces within the country but would not have countenanced anything as dangerous as reform, as reform brought with it its own risks to the stability of the regime.

Kim Jong-un, on the other hand, has calculated that he must allow for reforms, though limited, to continue the country’s economic growth as he has staked a good portion of his legitimacy on improving the economic condition of the country, repeatedly calling out failures and promising a final end to food shortages.

This has created an internal contradiction, where reforms must take place for the people to survive but they must also be applied as sparingly as possible if the regime is to maintain its ultimate authority rooted in the systems created by Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism. To address this, new economic initiatives are often kneecapped to limit their spread and others are announced but never followed up on.

Kim “seems to be doing everything [he] can to keep up Stalinist appearances and…probably believes that he cannot abandon socialist rhetoric without risking his legitimacy,” as Peter Ward told 38 North in December 2017.

Market regulations, agricultural and industrial reforms, changes to how banking and the accumulation of savings work, have all been tweaked over time. And some have had limited success in the places where they’ve been tried, but Kim has yet to commit to anything more than shallow reforms.

One group that has taken advantage of ‘reforms on paper’ is corrupt officials. These individuals, many at high levels of government, are an indispensable cog in the way markets currently work in North Korea. Bribes yield permits and licenses, and further bribes shield entrepreneurs from the more serious repercussions that would otherwise result in their activity. These bribes and kickbacks end up becoming a major source of income for thousands of security officials and bureaucrats, creating an undercurrent pushing markets forward and diminishing any momentum that Pyongyang builds to limit those activities.

The problem of corruption has been publicly discussed by Kim Jong-un more than once, and he has recognized the problems to his regime it creates. How to deal with mismanagement and embezzlement without also crushing the market system that corruption has actually assisted in creating is something yet to be resolved.

Occasionally, large-scale crackdowns are conducted and anyone who gets caught up in them will just have to face reality. But more often than not, on a day-to-day basis, most authorities remained happy to turn a blind eye in exchange for bribes and kickbacks so long as the right signals from Pyongyang existed.

 

After ending the Songun policy and ostensibly fulfilling the goals of Byungjin (by developing miniaturized nuclear weapons), by 2018, Kim Jong-un stated that the Party’s focus should be primarily on economic matters once again.

This didn’t necessarily mean making trade easier. It meant growing the economy while reasserting the state’s control. Nonetheless, the evolution of Pyongyang’s approach to markets from illegality to tacit approval, and to the flirtations with quasi market-socialism that finally seemed to be coming into its own. However, in the final nail to the coffin of Kim being a “Swiss-educated reformer”, his authoritarian streak suddenly became much more pronounced at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 was an obvious threat to the country’s survival as North Korea has one of the poorest healthcare systems in the world and relies on international aid to keep illnesses like tuberculosis in check. At the same time, the strict internal travel regulations and the ability of the state to micromanage huge portions of a person’s life meant that North Korea was also uniquely prepared to enforce lockdowns and quarantine measures, both on a per-city level and could even shut off entire provinces from the rest of the country if it wanted.

But the regime didn’t want to only rely on masks or temporary lockdowns, and it offered Kim a prime opportunity to stem the unpleasant tide of outside information and the further erosion of central authority.

In January 2020 it sealed its borders to levels not seen since the days of Kim Il-sung and began to restrict any cross-border trade or communications using the false threat that the surfaces of objects (even dust) were a major carrier of the virus – it’s not.

Kim Jong-un embarked on two tracks in the wake of COVID-19, constructing a border blockade to stop the virus and using the enhanced security measures to go after other ‘threats’ –  growing markets and increasing levels of outside information.

The blockade has meant the de facto suspension of trade with China as movements across the border were prohibited beginning in January 2020. And it has meant physical barriers in the form of miles and miles of double fencing across a large section of the Sino-DPRK border along with hundreds of new guard posts to secure the fence. It has also taken the form of electronic countermeasures to block cell phone signals, track those making calls into China, and to seek out potential defectors.

The combined effects of this blockade have resulted in around an 80% decline in trade, the country’s only lifeline, and there have been fewer defectors making it to South Korea than at any time since the flow of defectors began in the 1990s.

 

The effect on the markets is both commercial and ideological. Basic necessities are now running out and there is a real risk for nationwide food shortages because trade has been so severely restricted. Kim has also cracked down on electronics and media that are so often found in the marketplace in an attempt to shore up the ideological ‘purity’ of the population.

Stories of imprisonment and even executions for possessing foreign media (particularly South Korean content) have spiked since 2019 and the markets have served as a source of this illicit material since their inception.

Small crackdowns have always occurred, typically in the lead-up to holidays and other important events,  but as COVID has provided an additional excuse, Kim has begun larger and larger crackdowns with more severe punishments. DailyNK has provided numerous reports of these actions including one on December 17, 2021 as part of the regime’s attempt to curb capitalistic ‘disorder’ and to improve the people’s ideological fortitude for the 10th anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s death.

These crackdowns have also been focused on the informal markets that still exist in the streets of many North Korean towns. These are still black markets and aren’t part of officially sanctioned economic activity.

The black markets offer those who can’t afford to pay rental fees the ability to still sell and barter. As the situation within North Korea becomes worse due to the lockdowns, black markets are starting to play an ever-increasing role in people’s lives as the sanctioned markets run out of goods.

As they have been described to DailyNK, “Street merchants are people who get by barely by selling food, water and other goods near railway stations, bus terminals, or markets with a lot of pedestrians…Even among all merchants, they’re the most underprivileged.”

The loss of revenue to these black markets, their inherent threat regarding the spread of outside information and cultural trends, and the fact they’re populated by the more vulnerable population make them an easy target for the regime as the recent crisis grows.

After a few years of expanding freedoms, the experiment with sanctioned market activity seems to be entering a more challenging era. As The Economist stated in July 2019, “state media have called for more central control over investment and jobs in the name of fighting corruption. They also argue for the restoration of state control over the food supply and the revival of the public distribution system.”

Exacerbated by floods, the pandemic has only made the food situation worse, and markets are beginning to run out of products. The situation is so dire that Kim Jong-un himself addressed the matter, calling the food situation “tense” at a meeting of the Workers’ Party, and the United Nations and various NGOs have also been sounding the alarm.

Unfortunately, while the regime could take active steps to alleviate the threat posed by the virus and ease the food shortage, Pyongyang has refused delivery of any COVID vaccines and has expelled every NGO worker in the country, along with almost all foreign diplomatic staff. This makes it impossible for international aid to be distributed. But it also gives Kim the time he needs to finish his anti-reform agenda as the pandemic situation can be described to domestic audiences as just as dangerous as ever, especially in light of new variants.

 

Conclusions

Both common citizens and government officials have used the markets to make fortunes despite of the wide range of government regulations and economic sanctions. Through their informal trade relationships with Chinese partners and the creation of quasi-legal private-public enterprises, North Korea’s economy has been able to not just weather these challenges but has managed to grow (by as much as 4% in 2014).

However, North Korea’s closure of the border with China and Russia and the subsequent halt in trade due to COVID-19 has placed great pressure on the markets and their ability to get goods to the people. Inside sources have long been reporting on shortages of daily necessities like toothpaste and international organizations are anticipating massive food shortages should the border blockade continue much longer. But one thing is certain, after being closed off from the world for over a year, the markets and consumers are ready to reengage in the ground-level capitalism that has sustained the population for a generation…if given the chance.

Under a more liberal approach to economics in the first few years of Kim Jong-un’s rule, the markets continued to grow and standards of living improved as well. But as Kim rediscovers central planning and his love for authoritarianism in the wake of COVID, the condition the market system will emerge after the country reopens is in doubt.

However, as upwards of 50% of North Korea’s GDP is generated by private enterprises, if the regime truly wishes to put an end to market activity, it’s going to have a very difficult time putting the genie back in the bottle. I suggest that it is more likely the government will seek to further constrain the markets but will still recognize their indispensable nature in creating a growing North Korean economy.

Many of Kim’s orders recently have had to do with ideological and social correctness, purging impure elements, and stopping the flow of information – particularly among the country’s youth. He seems less concerned with the dollars (or won) being earned so long as they’re not connected to informational feeds that undermine the state and so long as the state receives its share.

Regardless, until international trade can resume, prices will keep rising and shortages will get worse. The North Korean people have shown themselves to be capable of weathering all manner of difficulties, but there always exists a breaking point. Kim is playing a dangerous game by prolonging the pandemic crisis and attacking market activities as even he doesn’t know where that breaking point is.

Over the years, North Korea has slowly reframed its national identity from one of a Marxist state to an ever more ethnonationalist one, centered on the perceived uniqueness of the Korean people. Kim Jong-un has continued this identity shift, stressing that any reforms made are not capitalistic or even based on the reforms taken in other countries, but are expressions of North Korea doing things “in our own way”.

Perhaps, if he can manage to separate the ideology and identity from the realities that are demanded by economic growth, he may be able to guide the country toward being a more prosperous state without losing the highly centralized authority the regime must keep. Then again, reforms never last long in the Hermit Kingdom and his recent actions do not inspire confidence.

Clearly, the misallocation of resources on things like nuclear weapons and missile tests slows economic growth. And the extremely poor state of the country's electrical grid, transportation systems, and healthcare network means North Korea is, in many ways, still trying to fully recover from the downfall of the 1990s, but economic progress could nonetheless be seen in the crowds of people pouring into markets both old and new. Crowds still gather in the midst of the pandemic as people struggle to maintain their livelihoods, but it seems that the regime is in no mood to help. 

 

~ ~ ~ ~

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series, and can get access to the underlying data behind the supplemental reports.
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