Third Meeting of
DPRK-China Joint Guidance Committee Held
NK News. 8/15/12
Beijing, August 14
(KCNA) — The third meeting of the DPRK-China Joint Guidance Committee for the
joint development and management of the Rason Economic Trade Zone and
Hwanggumphyong and Wihwado Economic Zones was held in Beijing on Tuesday.
Present there were
members of the delegation of the DPRK-China Joint Guidance Committee led by its
DPRK side Chairman Jang Song Thaek who is department director of the Central
Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Ji Jae Ryong, DPRK Ambassador to
China.
Also present there
were members of the delegation of the China-DPRK Joint Guidance Committee led
by its Chinese side Chairman Chen Deming, minister of Commerce of China and Liu
Hongcai, Chinese Ambassador to the DPRK.
The meeting reviewed
the work done for developing them since the second meeting of the joint
guidance committee.
In the Rason Economic
Trade Zone, a master plan for developing the zone was mapped out,
reconstruction of ports and railways made brisk headway, the project for
reconstructing Rajin-Wonjong highway is nearing its completion and a work has
made brisk headway in various fields including tourism and agricultural
cooperation and measurement for the transmission of electricity from China was
finished.
In the Hwanggumphyong
Economic Zone, favorable preconditions were created for substantially starting
the development project including the fixing of the spot for border passage
according to the drafted detailed plan.
The meeting stressed
the need to quickly start the Wihwado Zone development and show the world the
will of both sides for the development of both zones.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-korea-north-chinabre87c0yg-20120813%2c0%2c3130799.story
China
signals strong support for decaying North Korea economy
Xiaoyi Shao and Nick Edwards Reuters 2:49 a.m.
CDT, August 14, 2012
BEIJING (Reuters) -
China on Tuesday promised to help major firms invest in impoverished neighbor
North Korea, signaling strong support for the North's untried young leader just
as he is believed to be planning reforms to his country's broken economy.
Vice Commerce Minister
Chen Jian, writing in Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, said
priority would be given to two economic zones China and North Korea set up just
over a year ago and which would represent a rare major foray by isolated
Pyongyang into international commerce.
The comments coincide
with this week's trip to China by Jang Song-thaek, the powerful uncle of young
dictator Kim Jong-un and seen as likely to be a driving force for reforms.
"We will support
big Chinese companies who are willing to invest in North Korea to broaden the
economic and trade cooperation with North Korea, to push the two sides to
upgrade two-way trade and investment structures and study the feasibility of cooperation
on big projects," Chen wrote.
In a statement issued
after a meeting between Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming and Jang, the
ministry said the joint economic zones had "entered a substantive
development phase".
Their development has
"important meaning for further consolidating and developing traditional
friendly relations and ... for promoting regional peace and prosperity",
it added.
North Korea's official
media said Jang had gone to China to discuss commercial projects between the
two countries.
The trip is seen as
the latest sign that Kim is looking seriously at ways to revive his reclusive
country's decaying economy which has been in decline for years and is unable
even in years of good harvests to feed its 24 million people.
North Korea already
relies heavily on China to support its economy, dragged down by decades of
mismanagement and international sanctions over its weapons programmes.
China, for its part,
lives in terror of a political or economic collapse in North Korea which could
send a wave of refugees into its poor northeast.
"Only North
Korea's economic opening up can truly ensure peace and stability on the Korean
peninsula," said Wei Zhijiang, an expert on the two Koreas at Zhongshan
University in southern China.
"China wants to
play an important constructive role in North Korea's economic opening up and
integration into the international community," he added.
Kim's father, who died
last December, flirted with reform but never really let it take root, wary of
anything that might undermine his family's iron grip over the state.
But the new leader has
presented a very different image to his father and is believed to want economic
and agricultural reform. Jang has long advocated such reforms.
In another sign that
Kim may be looking to end international isolation, he has sent the country's
nominal head of state Kim Yong-nam this month to Vietnam and Laos, where he was
reported to have discussed economic development.
In another tentative
sign that Pyongyang is opening up, officials from Japan and North Korea will
meet for the first time in four years in Beijing on August 29, Japan's top
government spokesman said. They will discuss the retrieval of the remains of
Japanese who died on the Korean peninsula during World War II and possibly
discuss North Korea's abductions of Japanese citizens.
Vice Minister Chen
said there were good opportunities to develop ties between the two nations -
Beijing is Pyongyang's only major ally - and to expand fast-growing bilateral
trade, which he said was up 24.7 percent in the first half of 2012 on a year
earlier, worth some $3.1 billion.
Total trade between
the two countries was $5.7 billion in 2011, up 62.4 percent, Chen cited data
from China's Customs Administration as saying.
ECONOMIC ZONES
Chen said the first
priority was to "actively and steadily push forward the development and
cooperation of two economic zones" that the two had established in June
2011.
The zones are in Rason
on the North's east coast, and in Hwanggumphyong, an area on the border between
the two countries that is yet to be developed.
"Governments
should bring existing economic and trade mechanisms into play appropriately and
push forward and improve the two-way trade and investment environment,"
Chen said.
He called for
expanding and deepening the cooperation between North Korea and China's north
eastern Liaoning and Jilin provinces which border the country, and to
strengthen cooperation on building infrastructure.
The two countries have
planned to develop a new industrial district on the Yalu River that runs along
their border, but the construction of a bridge that will be part of the project
has been suspended because of disagreements on how to proceed.
(Additional reporting
by Ben Blanchard, Chris Buckley and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing, Stanley White in
Tokyo and Jack Kim and David Chance in Seoul, Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
North Korea, Human
Rights and Chen Guangcheng
Roberta Cohen | May
16, 2012 12:00am
The bold escape from
house arrest of Chinese human rights dissident Chen Guangcheng captured world
attention and became a principal item on the US-China agenda. Is there anything
to be learned from this experience for dealing with human rights in North
Korea?
To begin with, it
would be a step forward (more accurately a great leap) if North Koreans were
able to become dissidents in their own country. Right now, it is not even an
option. Anyone who so much as questions government policies is hauled off for
interrogation, back breaking labor, and extensive imprisonment. Former
prisoners can become human rights advocates only after escaping North Korea.
Nor have human rights
yet become a legitimate, ongoing subject of discussion with North Korea. On the
US-China agenda are political, economic and strategic issues as well as human
rights. The US and China in fact invite outside experts to their human rights
dialogues; and some of the US experts are expected to raise difficult issues
American officials prefer to avoid. To be sure, getting to that point with
China took time and the achievements may sometimes be slim but a foundation
exists for talking to China about human rights and resolving cases like Chen’s
without upsetting the entire US-China relationship.
With North Korea, the
dynamic has been different. Containing North Korea’s nuclear ambitions has been
the overriding priority and all other issues have taken a back seat. Little or
no mention of human rights was made from 1995 to 2004 when the US was providing
large quantities of food and fuel to the North to have it freeze its nuclear
program. Nor did the US insist at that time on monitoring arrangements to
ensure that food reached the needy. Congress in fact reacted by adopting the
2004 North Korea Human Rights Act, which called on the Executive Branch to
“include” human rights in its negotiations with North Korea and improve food
monitoring as well. The Act authorized the appointment of a US Special Envoy on
Human Rights in North Korea.
Since that time, human
rights have gained a higher (albeit modest) profile but there is still no
established niche for discussion of such issues in US-North Korean relations.
Special Envoy Robert King to his credit has managed to raise some human rights
concerns with North Korean officials, spoken out publicly and has actively
engaged at the UN. But when the 2012 “Leap Day” agreement on denuclearization
fell through, the dialogue on human rights the Special Envoy was trying to
develop collapsed as well. So too did the US plan to provide food aid to some
900,000 hungry North Koreans. And efforts to increase people to people
exchanges went by the wayside which over time might have helped pry open North
Korea’s largely closed society.
The linkage of issues
to nuclear progress, understandable to be sure given North Korea’s provocative
behavior, still has the effect of holding all other issues hostage. The Six
Party talks which ended in 2008 (involving the United States, China, South
Korea, North Korea, Japan and Russia) failed to morph into a multilateral
process for Northeast Asia that could have formalized discussion of political,
strategic, economic and human rights issues in the way the Helsinki Final Act
did for the U.S. and former Soviet Union. Indeed, one of the lessons of the
Helsinki period was that only through the broad context of security, political
and economic issues could progress on human rights be made.
Some observations are
in order.
First, it’s time to
recognize that nuclear issues will be much harder to resolve if insufficient
attention is paid to the nature of the regime. As Nobel Laureate Andrei
Sakharov observed during the height of the Cold War, international trust and
disarmament are “inconceivable” without an open society and fundamental human
rights. That attention to human rights will undermine the reaching of a nuclear
agreement has become a shibboleth that should be put to rest.
Second, the United
States should seek to ensure that a range of issues is on the table in
bilateral and multilateral talks so that lack of progress in one area of
negotiation does not necessarily shut down all other avenues. This was the
experience of more than a decade of the Helsinki process; the possibility of
adapting it to Northeast Asia should be explored.
Third, raising human
rights with North Korea should go beyond discussing food assistance and the
need for stringent monitoring conditions. It should encompass the cases of
political prisoners, like the father of Shin Dong Hyuk who may still be alive
in Camp 14, or the wife and daughters of Oh Kil Nam, who were locked away when
he sought asylum in the West. Access for the International Committee of the Red
Cross and the World Food Program to the camps should be on the table. Some
150,000 to 200,000 are confined in penal labor camps and high rates of death in
detention are reported. The need to release children from these camps should be
way up on the agenda: their freedom will pose no conceivable danger to North
Korea’s state security. In 1981, North Korea acceded to two international
treaties on civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights
and thereby opened itself up to scrutiny and accountability. It’s time for the
U.S. to take it at its word.
Fourth, every effort
should be made to pierce the information wall around North Korea by radio
broadcasts, sending in DVDs and mobile media equipment, and promoting people to
people exchanges of journalists, lawyers, labor experts, human rights
specialists and others – irrespective of nuclear progress. These programs could
help North Koreans overcome the forced isolation to which their government
subjects them.
