Posted on 02/24/2008 7:42:41 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
N. Korea Cashes In on Mineral Riches
By Blaine Harden and Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, February 24, 2008; Page A19
SEOUL -- North Korea's Kim Jong Il has a chronic cash-flow problem.
In the 1990s, his Stalinist state nearly capsized -- and millions starved -- for want of subsidies from China and the defunct Soviet Union. Since then, despite arms dealing and the receipt of international aid in return for talking about abandoning nuclear weapons, North Korea has often gone without rice, fuel and medicine.
In the past couple of years, though, Kim's government has quietly begun to milk a long-neglected cash cow: deposits of coal, minerals and precious metals that are among the largest in Asia.
As mineral prices soar on world markets, foreign access to mines in the North is accelerating at a rate unseen in the more than five decades since the division of the Korean Peninsula, according to South Korean government officials, Chinese mining experts and scholars who study North Korea.
They say that Kim's government is increasingly willing to lease mines to outside companies and to negotiate joint ventures with foreign governments.
"North Korea is trading what she has for what she hasn't," said Xu Wenji, a professor of East Asian studies at Jilin University in Changchun, China.
At the same time, mining operations have been delayed and derailed by erratic, maddening and corrupt behavior on the part of North Korean officials, according to businessmen in South Korea and China.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Ping!
> T E A M ~ A M E R I C A !
Then again, who needs rice, fuel, or medicine when you have the wonders of communism?
Well, at least Lil Kim wouldn’t create a national park on the land where the coal is! No one would ever do something that stupid!
Are you alluding to Asian astrology with this signature?...curious
But I like the other stuff, too.
Kim will be able to afford a new mansion for his retirement.
( Hope it's soon )
Another thread is running which says NK has 6 million starving.
Good. The UN can retire their ‘starving N Kor’ Committee.
And in Alaska the largest copper gold and other metals mine ever discovered on this planet is waiting to be mined.. Hamstrung by mere tree hugger disputations.. About 40/50 miles from Anchorage too..
http://www.dnr.state.ak.us/mlw/mining/largemine/pebble/
Brilliant idea! Make the 6,000,000 starving haul the coal. It will get moved much faster and you can feed them with mule meat. Or maybe those huge rabbits they imported from Germany.
The Washington Post story says “The estimated value of the country’s reserves is more than $2 trillion, according to the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.”
Could you give some public domain follow-up on this number? Thanks.
The exact figure is 2,287 trillion Won($2.41 trillion.)
Bump.
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