422 views|Jul 31, 2020,07:34am EDT
Rare Insights On Business In North Korea
From Being In The Hermit Country
Donald Kirk
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I cover business and economy in South and North Korea.
NKOREA-POLITICS
Anyone thinking of doing business in North Korea would do well to begin by reading a delightful new book by Andray Abrahamian, who’s studied in Britain, the U.S. and South Korea and spent a decade introducing North Koreans to western-style capitalism.
The vehicle for this extraordinary entry into North Korean business, culture and society was a non-governmental organization that he set up in Singapore for the sole purpose of acquainting eager North Koreans with all the wonders of doing business in a competitive world. At seminars and workshops in Singapore and North Korea, Abrahamian miraculously overcame the bureaucratic barriers of an authoritarian, suspicious, often hostile system. In so doing, he managed to convey some of the principles of buying and selling, marketing, designing, doing research, mapping strategy and, finally, profiting and maybe even getting rich in a country still ostensibly dedicated to communism and the principles of self-reliance, that is, juche.
It's not clear from reading this book, published by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford, where Abrahamian did much of the writing, how much the North Koreans were able to put whatever they learned into practice. The title, simply Being in North Korea, suggests the author is making no extravagant claims, just that he picked up insights and understanding and ideas from relationships that could only have sprung from dedicated, often frustrating but exhilarating, inter-action with mostly young North Koreans. Few if any of them had ever been exposed to such tutelage by a foreigner.
Abrahamian had learned the language and many of the customs from years of study, much of it for a doctorate at the University of Ulsan, an adjunct of the Hyundai empire in the South Korean industrial city where Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Heavy Industries are among the world leaders in motor vehicle manufacturing and ship-building. How much he really knew hands-on is uncertain, but there is no doubt that he had mastered the art of navigating delicate relationships.
Incredibly, Abrahamian and a partner ran what they called “Choson Exchange”–Choson is the historic name for Korea, for 500 years under the sway of the Chosun dynasty—with the permission, if not the blessing, of North Korean authorities. They did so without signing on to the regime ideologically or politically, without spreading or adhering to the propaganda of the ruling Kim dynasty.
At the same time, of course, Abrahamian had to ensure he didn’t offend the regime. He did not get involved in issues of human rights, of the rights or wrongs of confrontation with the U.S. or South Korea or appearing to have any other mission than to spread the gospel of capitalism in a non-preachy way. An acute observer, he got to know Koreans well enough to report innumerable little encounters and observations that tell us much about the character of North Koreans beneath the rules by which they must abide to survive.
In the process, he had to have conveyed a message. “We wanted to support these people who were helping rewrite North Korea’s social contract,” he writes. “I often told workshop leaders the balance of content should be 80% applicable, 20% bad news: that some things would not be possible without the internet, without abandoning the minder system and other rules that separate North Koreans from the outside world.”
Andray Abrahamian
Andray Abrahamian ROD SEARCEY @2018
That’s quite a message, but the book goes beyond personal experiences. He tells the story of the failure of the Egyptian giant Orascom, which had come to North Korea to build the country’s 3G network—“the first major investment by a renowned, global corporation.” The whole arrangement fell apart when Orascom was unable to repatriate profits–“a really badly missed opportunity for North Korea.”
Readers will get some idea of the pressures and fears of North Koreans as they carefully follow the rules, avoid saying too much, certainly nothing critical, while absorbing all they can. You won’t find more than passing allusions to broad issues of human rights, the consignment of hundreds of thousands to vast prison camps. If anyone mentioned public executions, he’s not saying.
Choson Exchange, though, was spreading the word, and it was not the gospel according to Marx or Lenin or even North Korea’s rulers, though Abrahamian does write sardonically of the worship of Kim Il Sung, the regime founder, his son, Kim Jong Il, and his grandson, Kim Jong Un. And he cites the execution of Jang Song Thaek married to Kim Jong Un‘s aunt, who everyone had thought was “something of a prince regent, overseeing his young nephews’ development” with “a powerful business empire and plenty of strong ties to China.”
Being in North Korea is far from being a business analysis, but it probably tells more about what to expect there on a daily working basis than just about any other study. Entertaining, easy to read, this is a book about doing business in a country where people more than ever “have a vague sense that they are missing out on something huge.” North Korea “proclaims the country will ‘break through the cutting edge,’” he realizes, “but it just can’t happen so long as people are cut off from the information flows they need to participate in.”
Check out my website. http://www.donaldkirk.com/
Donald Kirk
I have reported from Asia since covering the "Year of Living Dangerously" in Indonesia, 1965-66, and the war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the late 1960s-early 1970s for newspapers and magazines, including the Chicago Tribune and the old Washington (DC) Star. I also wrote two books from that period, "Wider War: the Struggle for Cambodia, Thailand and Laos" and "Tell it to the Dead." In recent years I've reported from Korea for the Christian Science Monitor, International Herald Tribune, Forbes Asia, etc. while writing "Korean Dynasty: Hyundai and Chung Ju-yung," "Korea Betrayed: Kim Dae-jung and Sunshine" and, in 2013, "Okinawa and Jeju: Bases of Discontent." I've also reported a lot from Japan, the Philippines and Iraq and spent much of 2013 as a Fulbright-Nehru senior research scholar in India. Read Less
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