North Korea: State of Paranoia by Paul French

Author:Paul French [French, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2014-05-07T22:00:00+00:00

7

The reality of reform: a case study of Sinuiju

Caged investment

While the 2002 reforms to the wages and prices system, the PDS and the financial sector were adjustments to the command economy, modifications that ultimately further revealed the contradictions of the planned economy and aggravated the economic collapse, Sinuiju was different. Sinuiju, the third plank in Pyongyang’s economic reform strategy in 2002, was to be a special economic zone. Its creation attracted more headlines than the other economic reforms. The decision to launch the Sinuiju experiment clearly indicated that, with the demise of the USSR, China was now the favoured economic paradigm. The Special Economic Zones (SEZs) of southern China, which, combined with the astute use of FDI, have done so much to power economic growth in the PRC over the last fifteen years, were the model, even though in China they effectively symbolised the ending of the politics of selfreliance. However, Sinuiju was not a straightforward attempt to replicate the Chinese SEZs.

The Sinuiju experiment can be seen as a case study of the North Korean attempt to enact economic reform and remains pertinent to analysing further reforms since 2002 or any that may occur in future. As a ‘pet project’, it involved a personal political risk for Kim Jong-il, though we may never know to what extent his personal position was at stake. Kim was certainly closely identified with the Sinuiju project. Its ultimate collapse and resultant bickering would annoy China. The imprisonment of the project’s chief executive must also be seen as Kim’s personal failure. It seems unlikely that the entire DPRK leadership could have been in support of Sinuiju, which effectively would have created a capitalist enclave in North Korea and could have been seen as effectively ceding national sovereignty over 132 square kilometres of territory. Certainly it is hard to imagine that the military hierarchy was wholly supportive. That the idea was forced through reflects not just the dominant position of Kim Jong-il but also the distorting effects that Juche and the personality cult exerted on the country’s development. That such an ill-conceived, badly thought through and generally botched project could ever have got off the ground is testament to the lack of economic policy skills in the DPRK and the economic culture of a collapsing command economy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.