Xi arrives to find Kim’s North Korea transformed

In Kim Jong-un’s own words, North Korea has undergone a “miraculous transformation”.

After his country was ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, Kim tightened the borders, ramped up domestic production and bet big on Russia, hoping to turn his country around.

In many ways, he has, as Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, found out this week on his first visit to the hermit kingdom since 2019.

Electric cars drive down Pyongyang’s roads. Pizzas can be ordered on delivery apps. Young people play video games.

While North Korea maintains an appalling human rights record and remains one of the poorest countries in the world, with more than half the population living below the poverty line, its economy is now growing at its fastest rate in a decade.

“It is arguably in a far better position than at any point in Kim Jong-un’s reign, perhaps even that of his father,” said Shreyas Reddy, the chief correspondent at NK News, the leading news and analysis website covering North Korea.

But China is not the only country credited with making it happen.

Some 30 years ago, North Korea’s economy collapsed and the country was plunged into a famine that killed up to a million people.

When Covid-19 hit and the regime closed its borders, it brought back echoes of the mid-1990s and many were terrified that history was about to repeat itself.

However, Kim used the pandemic to reinforce his grip on power, tightening restrictions on foreign media, incentivising domestic production and advancing his nuclear ambitions. The evidence of this is clear today, at least in the capital, Pyongyang.

“The Covid-19 restrictions were a bonanza for Kim Jong-un’s regime survival,” said Leonid Petrov, a leading North Korea expert and dean of the International College of Management in Australia.

“Five years of no foreigners coming into the country and no North Korean citizens allowed out of the country was a fantastic time to discipline people and keep working on projects, which would require substantial mobilisation of people without being asked any questions,” he added, referring to the country’s militarisation and, in particular, its nuclear programme.

But it was the relationship with Russia that turbocharged growth, underpinning what Kim described in March as a “miraculous transformation”.

According to Yury Ushakov, a Russian presidential aide, trade between Russia and North Korea reached $34.4m (£25m) in 2023, a ninefold increase from the previous year.

During Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June 2024, it was revealed that bilateral trade had grown a further 54 per cent year on year in the first five months of 2024.

This included fuel and food deliveries, with North Korea also importing Russian beer, rapeseed oil, tobacco products and pork.

Isolated from the world, Russia needed soldiers and munitions, which North Korea duly supplied.

Simon Cockerell, the general manager of Koryo Tours, one of the major foreign tour companies in North Korea, was one of the lucky few who managed to visit during the brief reopening in April last year. It was his 184th trip to North Korea.

“More prestige neighbourhoods were built, more traffic, more electric cars, electronic payment systems were introduced, big upgrades in things like leisure facilities for the proto-middle class and a visible expansion of that class,” said Mr Cockerell of his most recent trip.

“One of the guides I was with in April ordered some pizzas for our group using her phone, which would be commonplace anywhere else, but this was mind-blowing,” he added.

North Korea has also developed its own version of Uber known as Samhung, but other common amenities elsewhere, such as the internet or cash machines, remain outlawed.

As Russia and North Korea expanded their partnership, Beijing’s influence slipped – both within the regime as well as amongst ordinary North Koreans.

“Certainly views of Russia have increased. There’s been a lot of press and propaganda made of their deepening relationship with Russia,” said Mr Cockerell.

Meanwhile, relations with China have always been more “complicated” and “business-based”, he added.

China is still North Korea’s largest trading partner, accounting for as much as 95 per cent of the country’s imports, and has historically been the main point of contact with the outside world for most North Koreans. North Korea is also the only country with which China maintains a defence treaty.

Mr Petrov said that Mr Xi’s decision to travel to North Korea this week – a rare move by the Chinese leader who hardly leaves the country – was motivated by a desire to keep North Korea within “China’s orbit of influence” amid its expanding relationship with Russia.

It was the first time Mr Xi had left China this year after he had received a slew of world leaders in Beijing, including Donald Trump, Putin and Sir Keir Starmer.

State media images showed Mr Xi and Kim beaming as they shook hands, with the Chinese leader receiving a lavish welcome ceremony with a red-carpet military salute and cheering crowds.

He travelled with his wife, Peng Liyuan, and several other top officials for the two-day trip that he said aimed to bring ties between the nations to “new heights”.

Mr Xi pledged to expand cooperation between the two countries in trade, agriculture, construction and technology.

He also repeated claims that “no matter how the international situation changes” the friendship between Pyongyang and Beijing “will not change”, according to Chinese state media.

In March, flights and passenger train services between Beijing and Pyongyang resumed after a six-year hiatus owing to pandemic-era border closures and their aftermath.

Mr Xi’s decision to travel to North Korea was also probably motivated, in part, by the country’s estimated $6tn (£4.4tn) deposit of rare earth minerals, which are used in a wide range of technology, from electric vehicles to missile guidance systems, Mr Petrov added.

“It’s strategic for China’s industries, such as producers of cars, computers and microchips – everything requires the constant and stable supply of cheap rare earths and North Korea has a substantial amount of it, so keeping North Korea loyal and friendly was the primary goal,” said Mr Petrov.

Much of North Korea’s growth has been concentrated in Pyongyang. Given the lack of access, especially in recent years, to other parts of the country, it’s difficult to determine how much of the development stretches beyond the capital.

“Changes that happen in North Korea happen in Pyongyang most visibly because it is the most visible place and so it’s easy to observe things there and assume that they happen everywhere but that isn’t often the case,” said Mr Cockerell.

Major cities, especially on the border or in special economic zones, will typically undergo development programmes as well, such as the Rason Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the north, which also opened its borders for a brief period last year.

The Rason SEZ, the first of nearly 30 zones that have opened in the country, operates differently to most cities in North Korea in that it exists primarily to entice foreign investment from China and Russia.

Kayl Grau, a 23-year-old university student in Australia, was one of the few who made it to Rason last year and was surprised by the widespread use of technology among North Koreans.

“I was shocked to see them casually playing mobile games and using modern messaging apps that can send photos, videos, audio, cute animated stickers etc,” Mr Grau said.

“They had multiplayer games, including their own version of Clash of Clans, and they had a version of WeChat/WhatsApp. They also had delivery apps similar to TaoBao or Amazon,” he added.

He said that most people had smart phones with a digital app store and digital banking capabilities, though they could only connect to the local intranet. There was also a local supermarket that was selling TVs and computers.

“The students we talked to when we visited the school said they had a [personal computer] at home and there was a computer lab at the middle school where the students learn computer networking and programming skills,” he said.

It was on this same school visit that Mr Grau and his group watched schoolchildren perform a song and dance routine to a video of animated ballistic missiles.

“It was mental,” Mr Grau recalled, adding that the parts of the school he visited were plastered with posters of different types of missiles and war scenes.

Despite the recent economic growth in North Korea, experts hesitate to label it a success story.

The regime remains one of the worst human rights offenders in the world with no freedom of speech or movement and a growing list of crimes punishable by hard labour or even death.

“There are more smartphones, electricity and electric cars, but essentially North Korea is the same dictatorship with a centralised economy, closed borders and the Kim dynasty, which does not permit any change or any democratic institutions. Everything depends on the ruling clan,” said Mr Petrov.

“The North Korean regime is safe both militarily and economically, and now has substantial diplomatic support and recognition, and Xi Jinping’s visit just testifies to that.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]