Five things you may not know North Korea has imported from China
UPDATED : Saturday, 02 September, 2017, 2:00pm
China is widely known as North Korea’s primary trading partner – a status it attained as the Land of the Morning Calm increasingly opened itself to the world.
Although China has agreed to stop buying North Korean iron, lead and coal as part of UN-approved sanctions last month, North Korea continues to be a major importer of Chinese goods. Imports from China represented 85 per cent of North Korea’s overall US$3.47 billion in imports in 2015, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a US-based trade monitor.
A South China Morning Post examination of North Korea’s imports from China from the start of 2016 through mid-2017, showed that its importing of five rarely discussed items – out of more than 800 categories of imported goods – is about much more than mere survival.
(1) Gaming equipment
North Korea announced through its state-run media outlet Arirang Meari last week that the country’s new shooting simulation video game – in which US soldiers are the enemy – has “become very popular”.
The video game “Hunting Yankee” was the latest used by Pyongyang as to cultivate patriotism, which followed the war-themed games “Confrontation War,” “Guardian” and “Goguryeo Battlefield”, also released earlier this month.
It was unclear whether these games were designed to be played on computers or phones. Given that most North Koreans do not own their own computers for personal home use, the importing of “video game controllers and gaming equipment inside indoor entertainment venues” from China could offer a glimpse into the closed country’s gaming and entertainment culture.
North Korea has spent over US$2 million on purchases of entertainment items under this category in the past 1.5 years. This grouping includes not only hand-held game consoles but also pool tables, dice and card games and coin operated electronic game machines, according to Chinese customs data.
The quantity of imports in this category, however, is in sharp decline as the number fell from 7 million pieces in the first quarter of 2016 to just above half a million pieces in the latest quarter of 2017.
(2) Surveillance cameras
The world was taken by surprise when it first learnt that North Korea had bought 85,570 surveillance cameras from China from 2009 to 2011, according to South Korea’s Chosun newspaper. But it will now come as no surprise to observers that North Korea imported nearly 20 times that number in the 1.5 years to mid-2017, reflecting a trend toward tighter monitoring of activity within the country.
A total of 1,669,725 units were recorded under the “surveillance cameras, projectors and TV antennas” group of Chinese exports to North Korea. No breakdown was provided that would show how many of those items were surveillance cameras.
(3) Telephones
In case surveillance cameras are not sufficiently effective in monitoring North Koreans, analysts believe Pyongyang has increased imports of phones to increase ways of spying on people.
In the past year, a growing trend has been observed in the country’s imports under the category of “telephones, including those for cellular networks or for other wireless network” – meaning both corded and mobile phone devices.
North Korea imported 144,891 units of Chinese phones in the first quarter of 2016, but the number recorded in the past three quarters was kept at more than 400,000. Pyongyang bought 426,500 Chinese phones from April to June this year.
Phones may be used for more than communication. By giving citizens new networked technologies like mobile phones and tablets, the government is able to automatically censor unsanctioned content and observe everything citizens are doing on their devices remotely.
(4) Amusement park amenities
At least six known amusement parks reported opening in North Korea between the 1970s and 2012.
North Korea acquired “merry-go-rounds, swings, target boards for shooting, and other playground amenities” in the second and third quarter of 2016 and in the second quarter of 2017, according to the customs data.
It was unclear whether these new imports would go to old parks or be placed at new ones, but North Korea’s parks are built primarily for tourists, and reveals its ambitions of developing its tourism industry.
North Korea aimed to have the number of incoming visitors hit one million by the end of this year, although South Korean sources have estimated that 100,000 tourists visited the North in 2015, with 90 per cent being Chinese. Traditionally, only a few thousand Western tourists were understood to be visiting Kim Jong Un's Juche Korea.
(5) Musical instruments
North Koreans’ love for music seemed to have remain undimmed regardless of the turning of political tides as imports of musical instruments from China have been on increase in the past nine months.
There are seven music-related categories on the long list of Chinese imports in North Korea: “piano and other keyboard instruments; string instruments such as harp, violin and guitar; wind instruments; percussion; electronic instruments such as electronic guitar and keyboard; music boxes, fairground organs and accordions; and small parts of music instruments”.
The category seeing the greatest number of imports among musical instruments was “music boxes, fairground organs and accordions”, with 68,670 products being imported from China to North Korea in 1.5 years. In contrast, just 300 wind instruments and 503 pianos were sent into the country in the same period.
▲ Little known North Korean imports from China
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