North Korea Needs Foreign Investment, But Has Done Little to Attract It
A commentary by Andrei Lankov
2016-09-20
korea-investment-09202016.jpg
North Korean crafts on display at a China-North Korea trade show in the Chinese border city of Dandong, in file photo.
AFP
Early this month, the Hyundai Economic Research Institute published a report which deals with North Korea’s attitude toward foreign investment. The report’s findings are by no means a revelation. In a nutshell, it says that the North Korean leadership is very much interested in foreign investments, but still unable to attract much.
In recent years, Kim Jong Un’s regime has begun carrying out economic reforms–without admitting this openly. North Korean state media, of course, continues to loudly insist that North Korea is the “fortress of socialism," but the actual economic policies of Kim Jong Un, in fact, have many similarities with the Chinese reforms of the early 1980s. Predictably, the market-oriented policies are beginning to bear fruit: The North Koreans live better now.
However, there is one serious problem with the reform policies of Kim Jong Un: The country still cannot attract foreign investment, and without such investment, reforms are significantly less likely to generate the high level of economic growth, which is vital for political stability.
http://www.rfa.org/english/commentaries/parallelt-thoughts/korea-investment-09202016152846.html
