Rajin-Sonbong: North Korea’s (New?) Strategy to Attract Foreign Investment

I’ve been watching North Korea ramp up efforts to attract foreign investment since Jack Pritchard and I heard last November in Pyongyang from the chairman of Pyongyang’s Foreign Investment Advisory Board a presentation of new laws that provide for repatriation of investments, tax benefits, and wages of 30 Euros/month that undercut the $57/month wage rate at the Kaesong Industrial Zone.

Although catastrophic failure of currency revaluation implemented from late November of last year has severely eroded the credibility of the government’s economic policies, there are serious efforts underway to realize new foreign investment at Rajin-Sonbong port at the northeastern tip of North Korea. The location is significant because Rajin-Sonbong has been the focus of similar past failed efforts in 1991 (when the area was first announced as a free trade zone at the time of the launch of the UN-sponsored Tumen River Area Development Project) and 1996 (when North Korea held an international investment forum that was subsequently eclipsed by the famine). 

Following a rare visit by Kim Jong Il to Rajin-Sonbong in January, the local leadership has been replaced with cadres who have prior international experience at the central government level, led by former minister of foreign trade Rim Kyung-man. Reported investments include a 50-year lease of one pier to the Russians and a 10-year lease of a second pier to the Chinese. The pro-North Korean Chosun Sinbo reports that a new company, Taepung International Investment Group, has been set up with initial capital of $10 billion to finance investments in sectors including food supply, railways, roads, harbors, electricity, and other energy supplies. North Korea has also set up a new State Development Bank to support this effort. Given the strategic importance of Rajin port as a year-round ice-free port with the capacity to service both landlocked Jilin province and the Russian Far East, the North Koreans are offering opportunities at Rajin that the Chinese and Russians have long coveted.

Although there were false reports in late 2005 that the dirt road inside North Korea between Quanhe-Wonjong border crossing and Rajin might be paved in a deal with the Hunchun local government, preparations to improve the road are now underway and the North Koreans have built a large customs facility at Wonjong designed to handle goods coming to and from Rajin port to China.

All these activities beg the question of why now? North Korea’s internal economic policies in recent years have focused on reassertion of state control over economic activities. Marcus Noland and Stephan Haggard describe the November 2009 currency revaluation as a confiscatory measure designed to attack the markets. North Korea faces stricter international economic sanctions on suspected shipments of fissile materials under UN Security Council Resolution 1874. 

Is the effort to attract new foreign investment a measure designed to circumvent the pressure from international economic sanctions? Could the promise of new investment by the Chinese be part of a deal whereby China provides cash necessary for the stability and survival of North Korea’s leadership in exchange for a return to the Six Party Talks and to denuclearization? Was North Korea’s currency revaluation such a big failure that Kim Jong Il has finally realized he has no choice but to follow the Chinese model? Or is the push for foreign investment just another phase following previous phases of apparent economic opening in the 1970s and 1980s through which the North induces foreign investment, but international investors are left holding the bag? Is the Kim regime selling off rights to a part of the family estate in order to earn the cash flow necessary to survive? I have my own admittedly jaded views on these questions, but I invite Asia Unbound readers to weigh in with their own interpretations.