Kim shifts N. Korea focus to boosting economy
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — Kim Jong Un’s suspension of North Korean nuclear tests
has strings attached.
The leader’s statement at a ruling party meeting Friday includes a pledge to seek a “favorable” international environment for economic development so that he can put the economy “on an upward spiral track.” That builds on his 2012
vow to ensure that North Koreans would not “have to tighten their belts” any longer. It also means he is seeking the help of other countries for developing his economy, including the lifting of trade, financial and energy sanctions that hardened every time North Korea detonated a nuclear bomb.
Skepticism prevails on whether North Korea could emulate the kind of economic success that South Korea has achieved. And history has shown that overseas investors can suffer with no recourse if they fail in their risk assessment. Yet North Korea is viewed as a wild card and frontier mar- ket that could offer rewards for the business community because of its central location in a booming region encompassing China, Japan
and South Korea. “Everything about North Korea spells potential,” said Kim Young-hui, a North Korean defector studying at Seoul’s government-owned Korea Development Bank. “North Korea can be a bridge
linking the peninsula to as far as Europe via China. Imagine how much cargo could flow on that Asian highway.”
North Korea has struggled to revive its economy since a famine in the mid-1990s, while South Korea has taken off as an economic powerhouse. The Songun, or military-first policy, charted by Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, also dried up economic resources that otherwise would have benefited the economy.
China has been hoarding
the rare earths and other minerals in North Korea. Estimated to be worth as much as $6 trillion, North Korea’s reserves of gold, copper, zinc, coal, magnesite and molybdenite could attract buyers from countries other than China, allowing Kim to diversify his sources of income if he opens up his country. (In 2013 Kim executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, on cha r ges that included selling “precious underground resources for dirt-cheap prices.”)
The nation of 25 million also provides a labor force that remains largely untapped.