Pyongyang: exécuté pour une réforme

AFP

18/03/2010

Pak Nam-ki, un responsable nord-coréen des finances, a été exécuté après la mise en place d’une réforme monétaire à l’origine d’émeutes dans le pays communiste, rapporte aujourd’hui la presse sud-coréenne.

Cet ancien directeur du parti communite pour la planification et les finances, limogé début février, a été exécuté la semaine dernière dans une caserne de la capitale Pyongyang, a rapporté l’agence sud-coréenne Yonhap.

La presse sud-coréenne avait indiqué debut février que Pak Nam-ki, 77 ans, avait été démis de ses fonctions par le numéro un nord-coréen, Kim Jong-il, à la suite de la réévaluation du won en novembre, qui a provoqué une flambée de prix, aggravé les pénuries alimentaires et suscité des troubles dans le pays.

Un décret du 30 novembre a mis fin à la circulation des billets nord-coréens et imposé leur échange contre des nouveaux au taux de 100 anciens pour un nouveau, soit une réévaluation de 100% de fait. Mais les quantités échangeables ont été plafonnées, ce qui a eu pour effet de ruiner les économies de la population, causant un vif mécontentement. Cette première réévaluation du won en 17 ans qui visait apparemment à juguler l’inflation et à enrayer les transactions au marché noir, a au contraire alimenté l’inflation et accentué la pénurie en produits alimentaires, selon Yonhap.

Inquiets de perdre une partie de leurs économies alors que la somme qu’ils étaient autorisés à changer était limitée à 100.000 wons, certains Nord-Coréens se sont précipités sur le marché noir pour les échanger contre des yuans chinois ou des dollars américains. Des émeutes se sont produites dans le pays, avait rapporté le quotidien sud-coréen Chosun Ilbo, dont l’une les 5 et 6 décembre dans la ville de Hamhung, qui s’était soldée par l’exécution de 12 « meneurs ». Afin de calmer la population, les autorités avaient cependant relevé à 500.000 anciens wons la somme pouvant être changée.

Chosun Ilbo: North Korea Executes 12 After Currency Riot in Hamhung

freekorea.us

December 15, 2009

Now that many North Koreans have burned the savings that the regime suddenly declared worthless this month, the Chosun Ilbo reports that public outrage has forced Kim Jong Il to raise the exchange limit to 500,000 won. The decision coincides with the first report of a significant outbreak of anti-regime violence, followed by a brutal reaction:

The announcements came after rioting by market traders in the Hamhung region was reported on Dec. 5-6 amid sympathy from ordinary people, sources said. The riot by was apparently of such proportion that 12 “masterminds” were summarily executed, with authorities on heightened alert for mass defections, suspending issuance of border passes and reinforcing border guards. [Chosun Ilbo]

The Chosun Ilbo doesn’t tell us much about its sources for this grim news, which comes eerily close to what I’d predicted when the Great Confiscation was first announced. These are not the first summary executions that have been reported in the last two weeks, and it’s almost a sure thing that other North Koreans who raised their voices in protest died in front of firing squads or disappeared quietly into the night.

This is an extraordinary event. For the first time in recent North Korean history, popular resistance has forced the regime to reverse an edict. Also for the first time, ajummas in the markets, traders, and ordinary people dare to speak openly of their hatred for this regime:

Mr. Kim (62), who ekes out an existence working in the Hyesan jangmadang, complained to The Daily NK, “I dragged my worn out body to the market every day for seven years. I am resentful and feel victimized that the money I made with my blood and sweat has vaporized into nothing overnight.”

Another inside source told The Daily NK in a phone conversation, “My sister had been selling rice in the market and had saved 500,000 won to procure some additional rice, but she lost all of her capital in the currency reform.”

In North Korea, the upper-classes who have a significant income tend to keep their savings in Chinese Yuan or the dollar due to continuing inflation and their experience of losing money during the 1992 currency reform, so they have not been seriously affected this time around. At the other end of the scale, farmers and the lower-classes have not been heavily impacted by the reforms either, due to the fact that they had limited savings anyway.

However, the middle-classes who work the stalls in the permanent markets were the ones who held a large quantity of North Korean currency in cash. The reforms hit this group like a whirlwind.

In many instances, people have been making appeals and hiding the political nature of their grievances. However, some have resorted to suicide, burning old currency and criticizing the authorities. [Daily NK]

No doubt, it’s easier to survive a North Korean winter with $200 in your pocket than $40, if you still have another 400 won to exchange. No doubt, the hardships of many will now be easier to bear, but the anger of the people will persist, because it was terror and mutual isolation — and not the absence of plenty of other grievances — that held the anger back. The most common form of protest appears to be destroying old currency, an act that necessarily requires the mutilation of the portraits of Kim Il Sung printed on the old notes:

An inside source reported that someone had dumped a knapsack full of 100 and 100 won bills of the old currency in the North Ham’s Chongjin Suseongchun River on the early morning of December 4. The Defense Ministry is searching for this offender to deal sharply with them. Although Chongjin city and the province’s Defense Ministry assembled a professional gruppa team to catch these offenders, as of this report they have not been caught.

In addition the defense ministries took on this view: “In order for the people to fully participate in this currency exchange their understanding must change so that they can be righted politically.” Those who throw away or burn currency will be viewed especially harshly as the ministry is setting up an “immediate reporting system” for them. Offenders will also spend a month in a contingent alerted situation.

An inside informant shared insight that “Of course this is partly about punishing those who go against the currency reform, but more importantly is the fact that the face of Kim Il-Sung is printed on the old currency.”

Currently even damaging photos of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il in newspapers or books by folding them is considered a governmentally illegal act. We can begin to see how much more difficult the lives of the North Korean citizens will be as antagonistic actions come in forms of severe punishment and searching for culprits. [Open News for North Korea]

The latest move will further complicate North Korea’s chaotic process of resetting wages, prices, and taxes, a process that goes on in tandem with a wave of “inspections” and confiscations of imported goods and cash from customs houses. The market continues to have the last word, however, as North Koreans have already shown considerable reluctance about accepting the new currency, and food prices have risen dramatically. Can the North Korean people escape the effects of so much economic disruption? Andrew Natsios fears the worst:

“This could start widespread starvation deaths in the hungry season, after the last harvest runs out,” said Andrew Natsios of Georgetown University, author of The Great North Korean Famine. “There are a number of alarming things happening at once, and people may not be able to cope.” [….]

“It’s the worst harvest since the mid 1990s,” said Natsios. “And all the estimates say there will be a doubling of food prices over the next year, including rice, which is North Korea’s staple food.”

There is also a cut-off of cross-border trade with China, which has its own food production problems. And South Korea has halted a program that supplied fertilizer to Pyongyang.

In Geneva on Monday, a North Korean diplomat denied Koreans are hungry and face imminent starvation.

“The issue of serious malnutrition is a thing of the past,” North Korean Ambassador Ri Tcheul told the UN Human Rights Council. “We will in the near future meet the domestic need for food on our own.” [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

These reports do not give us a strong sense, to say the least, of the “exceptional centralized food distribution system and collective spirit” Christine Ahn has informed us about. It is as if the bindings of fear that held the remnants of North Korea’s society and economy together are suddenly unraveling. Factory workers aren’t even showing up for work anymore. Looking in through the fog from the outside, the blurry image that comes into view is a nation on pause, with all of its daily economic interactions frozen, as if waiting to see what dramatic event will upset all hope and expectations next.

North Korea Eases Won Move After Riot, Executions

thejakartaglobe.com

December 15, 2009

Seoul. North Korea is backtracking on details of its shock currency revaluation following a riot by market traders that led to 12 executions, reports said on Tuesday.

South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper said the hardline communist state had taken a series of steps to placate its people over the 100-to-one revaluation announced two weeks ago.

It said concessions followed a riot by merchants in the eastern city of Hamhung on December 5-6. Twelve “masterminds” of the unrest were later executed.

It was not possible to confirm the reported riot or executions. But there have been accounts of widespread anger since the regime revalued its currency earlier this month, requiring old bank notes to be exchanged for new ones at the rate of 100 to one.

North Korea shut street markets to buy time to bring down prices that have surged since the recent currency revaluation, a Seoul-based rights group said.

The three-day closure, which began on Monday, came after markets sold most goods for more than double the revised prices set by the communist regime and announced on Dec. 9, Good Friends said on Tuesday. The government may readjust the state prices, according to the group.

The North Korean won slumped 96 percent against the US dollar after the new notes were introduced, according to reports by Yonhap News Agency and Good Friends last week. A bank in Sinuiju, near the Chinese border, offered to buy dollars for 35 new won, or 3,500 old won, Good Friends said. Before the revaluation, the official rate was about 140 old won.

Analysts said the revaluation move was aimed at curbing inflation and clamping down on a growing free-market economy to reassert the regime’s control.

But the initial limit of 100,000 won on the total cash that each person could exchange effectively wiped out many people’s savings in the impoverished nation.

Already the authorities have raised the limit to 500,000 won. The North says eventually citizens will be allowed to exchange all old bills for new if they deposit the money in banks.

People reportedly shun banks because they fear investigations into the sources of their savings, or restrictions on withdrawals, as in the past. In response, Chosun said authorities promised no probes into savings of up to 1 million won and unlimited withdrawals if savings of more than 1 million are properly explained.

A high-level North Korean source said authorities “are backtracking under pressure from market forces. We’re now living in an era where it’s not as easy as it used to be to deal so recklessly with people’s property.”

Free markets sprang up after the state food distribution system collapsed during 1990s famines.

AFP, Bloomberg

Informations

Hamhŭng is North Korea’s second largest city, and the capital of South Hamgyŏng Province. In late 2005, nearby Hŭngnam was made a ward (kuyŏk) within Hamhŭng-si.^[1]

~ par Alain Bertho sur 18 mars 2010.

Publié dans émeutes, 폭동, riots