[Cankor] Report #245

[cankor at cankor.ca]

Dear subscriber,

Welcome to issue #246 of the CanKor Report.

In this week's QUIDNUNC, Erich Weingartner responds to the question: How 
many people in North Korea have unfettered access to information about the 
world outside the DPRK?

Answers are sought to the question: How many NGOs continue to remain 
resident in the DPRK? Which ones?

Please do not hesitate to send to editor at CanKor.ca your replies or 
additional questions that may stump or amuse our many expert subscribers and 
contributors.

The CanKor team.

For articles not original to CanKor, direct links are available in the 
Contents section, should you wish to consult the originals on the internet.

If the links no longer function, you may refer to the full text articles 
appended to the issue.

For back issues, archives and other content, please visit our website: 
http://www.cankor.ca
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CANADA-KOREA ELECTRONIC INFORMATION SERVICE

CanKor # 246

Friday, 28 April 2006
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It would take at least four months for the DPRK to restock its military fuel 
supply in the case of full-time combat, says analyst Peter Hayes of the 
Nautilus node at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Japan adds twenty DPR Korean companies and research institutions to its 
export control list, over concerns that items exported from Japan could be 
used in weapons of mass destruction.

The DPRK claims "shocking evidence" that the CIA, among other "plot-breeding 
organizations", fabricates fake human rights abuse videos and manufactures 
counterfeit 100 dollar bills in US military bases in order to frame the 
DPRK.

The 18th inter-Korean ministerial meeting in Pyongyang shows positive 
results. This week's CanKor FOCUS features the text of the agreement that 
includes a deal "to cooperate in trying to resolve realistically the issue 
of persons missing during the Korean War and after the war." ROK Unification 
Minister Lee Jong-seok uses a quote by the late DPRK leader Kim Il Sung to 
persuade DPRK delegates to re-open and test drive the inter-Korean railroad. 
The DPRK agrees to receive former ROK leader Kim Dae Jung on a visit planned 
for June.

In this week's OPINION section, Financial Times columnist Victor Mallet 
claims it is time to admit publicly that the world has failed to persuade 
the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapons.  The long-term survival of the 
nuclear-armed DPRK regime, Mallet believes, depends on isolation and an 
artificial sense of a permanent war with the West. These will be diminished 
only by globalization and capitalism. By engaging the DPRK, the Chinese and 
RO Koreans are helping the DPRK to transform from a militarized state into a 
"more normal country" -- a precondition for the rational negotiations on 
which depends the solution to the nuclear crisis.

A South Korean opinion survey reveals that 48% of the young people who will 
get their first voting rights in the 2007 presidential election believe the 
ROK should side with the DPRK if Washington attacks nuclear facilities 
without Seoul's consent. 40% say Seoul should stay neutral, while only 11.6% 
would side with Washington.
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Contents:
1.   DPRK WOULD NEED MONTHS TO RESTOCK FUEL FOR COMBAT
     http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20060424/630000000020060424090211E1.html

2.   JAPAN ADDS 20 DPRK FIRMS TO EXPORT CONTROL LIST
     http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20060405a7.html

3.   DPRK ACCUSES CIA OF PLANTING COUNTERFEIT US DOLLARS
     http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2006/200604/news04/20.htm#14

FOCUS: 18th inter-Korean ministerial meeting produces results
4.   DPRK AGREES TO TALKS WITH ROK ON ABDUCTEES
     http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200604/24/200604242226350209900090209021.html

5.   SOUTH KOREAN ENVOY QUOTES KIM IL SUNG TO NORTH KOREANS
     http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200604/26/200604262218120509900090309031.html

6.   KIM DAE JUNG SET FOR RETURN VISIT TO DPRK IN JUNE
     http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200604/kt2006042422484011950.htm

7.   FULL TEXT OF INTER-KOREAN MINISTERIAL AGREEMENT
     http://english.yna.co.kr/Engnews/20060424/630000000020060424190428E7.html

OPINION
8.   NORMALITY IN DPRK CAN DEFUSE NUCLEAR RISK
     https://registration.ft.com/registration/barrier?referer=http://news.ft.com/&location=http%3A//news.ft.com/cms/s/5519fef8-d3b7-11da-b2f3-0000779e2340.html

9.   48% OF ROK YOUTH SUPPORT DPRK IN CASE OF US ATTACK
     http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200602/kt2006022117121711950.htm

QUIDNUNC: Readers ask and respond to common and uncommon questions
THIS WEEK: How many people in North Korea have unfettered access to 
information about the world outside the DPRK?
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1.   DPRK WOULD NEED MONTHS TO RESTOCK FUEL FOR COMBAT
     Yonhap News, 24 April 2006

It would take at least four months for North Korea to be able to restock its 
military fuels in case of full-time combat, according to a recent study on 
the country's energy capabilities. According to an analysis by Peter Hayes, 
professor at Nautilus Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, North Korea 
would need to double its imports and production to sustain combat. The 
study, completed last month, is based on estimates of how much fuel North 
Korea uses during military exercises, such as jet hours, the number of 
energy-using vehicles and their fuel use rate. It applies Pyongyang's fuel 
import and production rates of the year 2000.

"Based on our estimates of fuel use during exercises, fuel use by DPRK 
military for 30 days of full-time combat would be up to 200,000 tons," the 
study said. The fuel use figure is based on a wartime scenario in which 50 
percent of ground force equipment would be inoperable by the end of 30 days, 
aircraft cease operations in 24 hours, and 90 percent of naval forces cease 
operation in five days.

The study predicted it would take four more months to restock military fuels 
given North Korea's current supply rate, either by bringing in fuel stored 
in rear areas or from refining new fuel and then moving it into combat 
zones. Even if all the available refineries operate at 100 percent capacity 
and all supplies are diverted solely to the military, it would still take 
two months or longer to restock, Hayes said. North Korea's military 
accounted for 8 percent of the country's total energy demand in 2000, up 
from 4.2 percent in 1990. In terms of the types of energy used by the 
military, 66 percent was coal, 37 percent was oil products, and 8 percent 
was electricity.

In 1990, the military used 17.1 percent of the country's total refined oil 
products, 3.9 percent of the coal and 8.1 percent of the electricity. The 
study reaffirms the North's economy is stagnating from an energy shortage, 
compounded by a drop in oil imports, a decline in coal exports, the flooding 
of key coal mines and damage to major hydro facilities. Yet, Hayes argues, 
pressuring Pyongyang via energy will not be effective.

"We provided this analysis... in order to explain to decision-makers that it 
is very difficult to apply pressure to the DPRK economy or military via 
energy except during all-out war," Hayes told Yonhap News Agency through 
e-mail. "Therefore, realistic policy options on energy should revolve around 
cooperative engagement in very specific ways, not more confrontation," he 
said.

The military's fuel supplies would be less affected by pressure because of 
stockpiling, he said. Hayes argues in his study that energy is a core 
component in North Korea's denuclearization and that energy security issues 
for the North are non-proliferation issues. There should be international 
assistance to stimulate and sustain North Korea's energy sector and 
rehabilitate its decaying power grid, estimated to cost between US$5.5 
billion and $7.5 billion, according to the study. Progress can also be made 
by reducing vast waste of supplied energy, caused by equipment dating as far 
back as the 1940s and less than 50-percent-efficient coal-fired boilers, 
Hayes said.
*************************************************

2.   JAPAN ADDS 20 DPRK FIRMS TO EXPORT CONTROL LIST
     Japan Times, 4 April 2006

Japan has added 20 North Korean and four Iranian companies and research 
institutions to its export control list, over fears that items exported to 
them from Japan could be converted into weapons of mass destruction, the 
trade ministry said Tuesday. The North Korean bodies include trading, 
chemical and cement companies as well as Kim Chaek University of Technology, 
Pyongyang Maternity Hospital and Tanchon Commercial Bank. The four Iranian 
entities are mainly petrochemical, energy and electronics firms.

The ministry annually updates the list, which covers entities that could be 
suspected of developing missiles and nuclear, biological and chemical 
weapons. This year, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry deleted one 
North Korean and Iranian entity each, and two Indian bodies from the list, 
bringing the total to 185 in eight countries and Taiwan. The five other 
countries covered by the export control list are Israel, Syria, China, 
Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Among the targeted countries, North Korea has most companies and 
institutions on the list with 58. They include Choson Central Bank, a public 
library, a road construction office and the city construction bureau of the 
country's capital Pyongyang, according to METI.
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3.   DPRK ACCUSES CIA OF PLANTING COUNTERFEIT US DOLLARS
     Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), 19 April 2006

The people's security institution in the DPRK tasked to protect by law the 
socialist system, the life and soul of its people, tightly holding the arms 
for state security, is following with a high degree of vigilance all sorts 
of dastardly plots and operations of the enemy's intelligence and 
plot-breeding bodies against the DPRK. It will regard any involvement in 
them in any form as an infringement upon the sovereignty and security of the 
DPRK and force their perpetrators to pay a high price for their crimes. A 
spokesman for the DPRK Ministry of People's Security declared this in a 
statement issued Wednesday in connection with the fact that forces hostile 
to the DPRK including those in the USA and Japan are working hard to 
fabricate what they call "evidence" and "proofs" by employing every 
conceivable means and despicable method to brand the DPRK as a "criminal 
state" and "lawless state" over "human rights abuse", "drug smuggling" and 
"counterfeit notes."

The statement said: The CIA and plot-breeding organizations in Japan are 
working with blood-shot eyes to produce animation files aimed at attacking 
the DPRK after setting up organizations specializing in gathering photos and 
animation files related to the "human rights situation" and "drug and 
counterfeit notes" in the DPRK. They are now spending a colossal amount of 
fund for this operation.

In order to make the source of those information sound plausible, they are 
mass-producing video tapes and CDs for the above-said purpose even by use of 
animation processing technology on "makeshift stages" they have set up in 
the US forces' bases in a third country and in south Korea. They are even 
manipulating the sale of such things behind the scene to mass media in the 
USA, Japan and south Korea. Those media of the USA and Japan are 
reprocessing the animation files and photos obtained in a more sophisticated 
manner before airing and distributing them. The GNP and other right-wing 
conservative forces in south Korea, as if they had waited for the 
opportunity to come, are becoming zealous in using this information for 
deterring the inter-Korean relations from improving and realizing their 
ambition to return to power.

We have obtained the following shocking information: The CIA secretly enlist 
experts on counterfeiting notes claimed to be the "most sophisticated in the 
world" and invite them to issue lots of fake currencies at "counterfeit 
notes printing houses of north Korean-style" operating in US military bases 
in different parts of the world. Then they let these notes find their ways 
to the DPRK and go out of it in the course of commercial transaction in a 
desperate bid to term it "producer of counterfeit notes." Such illegal 
practices on the part of the USA and the Japanese plot-breeding 
organizations are absolutely intolerable as they are shameless acts of 
defying elementary international law and a wanton violation of the 
sovereignty of the DPRK. The DPRK, too, has the right to strongly react to 
this vicious false propaganda launched by the hostile forces against it, 
according to its relevant law.
*************************************************

FOCUS: 18th inter-Korean ministerial meeting produces results

*************************************************

4.   DPRK AGREES TO TALKS WITH ROK ON ABDUCTEES
     by Brian Lee, Joong Ang Ilbo, 24 April 2006

Seoul appears to have dented at last Pyongyang's stonewalling refusal to 
discuss the fate of Korean War-era prisoners in North Korea and South 
Koreans kidnapped after the war to train North Korean spies. A communiqué 
issued at the end of an inter-Korean ministerial meeting in Pyongyang said 
the two countries would "cooperate in trying to resolve realistically the 
issue of persons missing during the Korean War and after the war."

Although tentative, the statement represents real progress, an official in 
Seoul asserted, noting that North Korea in the past has refused to discuss 
the matters with Seoul. Pyongyang has not admitted to kidnapping any South 
Korean civilians and asserted that any South Koreans who stayed in the North 
after the war had done so of their own free will.

The communiqué was silent on North Korea's request for additional massive 
amounts of rice and fertilizer, donations that public opinion here has 
forced Seoul to link with the fate of prisoners and abductees. Before 
leaving for Pyongyang on Friday, Lee Jong-seok, Seoul's unification 
minister, said he was prepared to offer more aid if the abductees were 
returned. Officials here offered no hints about how yesterday's agreement 
would be implemented. Seoul's Defense Ministry estimates that more than 400 
POWs are still being held in the North; civic groups say the number could be 
about 600.

Other points in the communiqué were rhetorical; the two nations called for a 
peaceful resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue by a speedy 
implementation of an agreement in principle reached last September, even 
though Pyongyang has been boycotting those negotiations. The next 
ministerial talks will be held in July in Busan, the two sides said; they 
will address Seoul's proposal for a sand and gravel joint venture at 
economic talks next month.
*************************************************

5.   SOUTH KOREAN ENVOY QUOTES KIM IL SUNG TO NORTH KOREANS
     by Lee Young-jong, Joongang Ilbo, 26 April 2006

One month before he died, North Korean leader Kim Il Sung said that using 
the railroad leading to the South to transport Chinese products could earn 
the North $400 million per year, according to an official biography. South 
Korean Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok used those words to pressure the 
North Korean delegation during inter-Korean talks, telling them it was one 
of the dying leader's last requests, said a government official.

"The remarks by the minister made the North's delegation speechless," the 
official said. Mr. Lee pressured his North Korean counterpart, Kwon Ho-ung, 
North Korea's senior cabinet counselor, to produce a concrete date for the 
reopening of the railroad and a test drive. However, the North made no 
concrete concessions about the railroad.

Mr. Lee also told the North Koreans that the issue of Kim Yong-nam, a South 
Korean who was kidnapped in 1978, has now become a matter of concern. The 
Japanese have investigated the kidnappings, because Mr. Kim later married a 
Japanese woman also believed to have been abducted by North Korea. The 
couple's daughter lives in North Korea. Mr. Kwon replied that relevant 
government bodies were currently investigating the case, a remark that 
seemed to acknowledge that Kim Yong-nam does exist.

A government official said yesterday that during four hours of direct talks 
between Mr. Lee and Mr. Kwon, topics were brought up by the South that could 
have agitated the North. He was not any more specific.
*************************************************

6.   KIM DAE JUNG SET FOR RETURN VISIT TO DPRK IN JUNE
     by Seo Dong-shin, Korea Times, 25 April 2006

North Korea has accepted former President Kim Dae-jung's planned visit to 
Pyongyang in June, the South's unification minister indicated yesterday. The 
North basically shared the South's view on Kim's planned visit, the 
minister, Lee Jong-seok, told reporters after the end of the 18th 
inter-Korean Cabinet talks. Details of the visit, including protocol, will 
be discussed at working-level meetings between the two sides, he said.

On the fourth and last day of the four-day talks, the Koreas agreed to work 
toward "practical resolution" of the issue of prisoners of war (POW) and 
abducted civilians. The agreement was included in an eight-point joint press 
statement signed between Lee, the South's chief delegate to the talks, and 
his North Korean counterpart Kwon Ho-ung. According to the statement, the 
two sides will discuss measures to further expand economic ties, such as 
jointly developing mining resources and extracting sand from the western 
mouth of the Han River, during the economic cooperation talks scheduled for 
May.

The two Koreas will also continue efforts for denuclearization of the Korean 
Peninsula and early implementation of the Sept. 19 joint statement so that 
the nuclear issue would be resolved in a way that befits common interests 
and security. Regarding the possible return of South Korean abductees in the 
North, they agreed to cooperate to "practically resolve the issue of people 
whose fate became unknown during and after the 1950-53 Korean War." North 
Korea has denied having abducted any South Koreans after the war, while the 
South estimates that there are 485 South Korean civilians abducted after the 
war and still held in the North.

The Koreas have shown step-by-step improvement in discussing the issue in 
recent years. Last February, the two Koreas' Red Cross officials agreed to 
discuss and resolve the issue of confirming the fate of the people who went 
missing during and after the war within the framework of the separated 
families issue. It was the first time that the subject of South Korean 
civilians believed to have been abducted by the North after the war was 
mentioned in an inter-Korean accord. Seoul is said to have coaxed the North 
on the issue, offering more economic aid and repatriation of former North 
Korean spies in the South.

In addition, Seoul will provide 200,000 tons of fertilizer aid to the North, 
Minister Lee said. North Korea asked the South for 300,000 tons of 
fertilizer aid and 500,000 tons of rice aid during the talks. But a South 
Korean official involved in the talks said on condition of anonymity that 
while Seoul would review the possibility of an additional 100,000 tons of 
fertilizer aid, the rice aid was not an issue to be agreed upon at the 
Pyongyang talks. Despite earlier expectations expressed by Seoul officials, 
the minister failed to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during the 
visit.

"It's true that we asked the North for a meeting with Kim," the official 
said. "But the North officially told us in a polite manner that it is 
difficult because Kim is now in another part of the country." The two sides 
agreed to hold the next round of the Cabinet talks in July in Pusan.
*************************************************

7.   FULL TEXT OF INTER-KOREAN MINISTERIAL AGREEMENT
     Yonhap News, 24 April 2006

The following is the full text of a joint press statement issued by South 
and North Korea at the end of their four-day meeting in Pyongyang, North 
Korea, Monday. The 18th inter-Korean ministerial meeting was held in 
Pyongyang on April 21-24. During the meeting, the two sides agreed to make 
positive efforts to elevate bilateral relations to a level befitting the 
spirit of the Korean people's togetherness as well as assess achievements 
made following the joint declaration of the June 15 summit, and the 
following are the points of the agreement.

1. South and North Korea agreed to promote the Korean people's 
reconciliation and trust by taking practical measures which recognize and 
respect each other's ideology and system in line with the June 15 (2000) 
joint declaration.

2. South and North Korea shared the need to take practical measures to ease 
military tension and ensure peace on the Korean Peninsula and agreed to 
cooperate in their implementation.

3. South and North Korea agreed to make positive efforts to implement "the 
Sept. 19 (2005) joint statement" in order to resolve the nuclear issue in a 
peaceful manner in ways that benefit the interest and security of the Korean 
people, as well as continue to make efforts to realize the denuclearization 
of the Korean Peninsula.

4. South and North Korea agreed to hold a festival in the South to mark the 
sixth anniversary of the June 15 joint declaration as part of efforts to 
promote the unity of the Korean people in a meaningful way through the 
participation of the two sides' delegations in the festival.

5. South and North Korea agreed to realize economic cooperation which can 
contribute to the Korean people's joint prosperity.

The two sides agreed to take practical measures of mutual benefit which can 
expand investment and cooperation in terms of region, business type and 
scale under the firm belief that inter-Korean economic cooperation is a 
cooperative business by the Korean people and for their joint prosperity.

In this regard, the two sides agreed to hold the 12th meeting of the 
inter-Korean economic cooperation promotion committee sometime in May to 
discuss ways of extracting aggregate in the estuary of the Han River and 
jointly developing resources, as well as implementing trial runs of trains, 
the opening of railways and roads across the border and discussing the 
Kaesong industrial complex and cooperation on light industry and resources.

6. South and North Korea agreed to cooperate in resolving the issue of the 
people unaccounted for during or after the Korean War in a practical manner.

7. South and North Korea agreed to promote cooperation in such various 
projects as prevention of natural disasters, enhancement of health and 
preservation of cultural assets.

8. South and North Korea agreed to hold the 19th ministerial meeting in 
Busan on July 11-14 in 2006.
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OPINION

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8.   NORMALITY IN DPRK CAN DEFUSE NUCLEAR RISK
     by Victor Mallet, Financial Times, 25 April 2006

Diplomats will wince at the barefaced honesty, but it is time to admit 
publicly that the world is making no progress in persuading North Korea to 
abandon its nuclear weapons. Amid the rhetoric and angst over Iran (which is 
years away from manufacturing a nuclear bomb and denies it wants to), North 
Korea (which boasts of its nuclear deterrent) is quietly getting away with 
it. Even the doves in the US state department are beginning to realize that 
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's negotiators have been stringing them 
along, perhaps for more than a decade and certainly since the start of the 
six-party talks three years ago.

The latest North Korean excuse is that talks cannot resume until the release 
of Dollars 20m frozen in North Korean accounts at Banco Delta Asia in Macau, 
designated by the US Treasury as a "primary money-laundering concern", even 
though the sum is equivalent to just a week of the electricity supplies 
promised to Pyongyang by South Korea under an agreement at the six-party 
talks last September.

It has fallen to a retired official to tell the uncomfortable truth. In 
recent interviews with the Financial Times and The Oriental Economist, a 
Japanese newsletter, Richard Armitage, former US deputy secretary of state, 
was pessimistic about prising Mr. Kim away from his nuclear arsenal. Asked 
if he expected the talks to succeed, Mr. Armitage doubted there would be a 
breakthrough in the near future. "I don't see it," he said.

Admitting the failure of Plan A - the multilateral negotiations - is easy; 
devising a sensible Plan B is harder. One suggestion is to accept North 
Korea as a nuclear weapons state and focus on dissuading Pyongyang from 
using them or selling the technology to others. Another option is a US 
military strike against North Korean nuclear facilities, although that would 
be at least as risky as an attack on Iran. A third possibility is to target 
the regime with more economic sanctions, a popular idea because of the 
evident inconvenience caused to North Korean leaders by the freezing of the 
Macau accounts.

A better strategy is to examine why the multilateral talks have failed and 
why the North Korean economy is in better shape than it was a few years ago. 
The answer is that China and South Korea, two of the six nations involved in 
the talks (the others being North Korea, the US, Japan and Russia), are more 
interested in shoring up the Kim dictatorship with investment and trade than 
in depriving it of nuclear weapons.

In the words of Mr. Armitage, China is "enormously investing" in North 
Korea, while the two halves of Korea are engaged in a slow, de facto process 
of unification. In Washington last week, Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, 
gave only token support to the drive to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. 
As for South Korea - supposedly a key US ally - a recent opinion poll showed 
that nearly half the country's young voters would side with the North if the 
US attacked Pyongyang's nuclear facilities. The South Korean government and 
the private sector are vigorously promoting economic exchanges across the 
demilitarized zone.

Instead of despairing at this neighbourly rapprochement, the rest of the 
world should welcome it as part of the solution. The long-term survival of 
the nuclear-armed North Korean regime depends on isolation and an artificial 
sense of permanent war with the west, both of which are diminished by 
globalization and the influence of Chinese and South Korean capitalism. That 
is why it would be wrong to underestimate the significance of Mr. Kim's 
mysterious trip in January to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, where the post-Mao 
economic modernization of China was launched in the late 1970s.

Smothering North Korea in the embrace of China and South Korea, two of the 
world's most successful economies of the past 20 years, will not persuade 
Mr. Kim to abandon his nuclear ambitions overnight, but it will help to 
transform a paranoid, militarized state into a more normal country. And 
normality is a precondition for the rational negotiations on which a 
solution to the nuclear crisis depends.
*************************************************

9.   48% OF ROK YOUTH SUPPORT DPRK IN CASE OF US ATTACK
     by Park Song-wu, Korea Times, 21 February 2006

Almost half of juniors surveyed, who will get their first voting rights in 
the 2007 presidential election, said in a recent poll that South Korea 
should side with North Korea if Washington attacks nuclear facilities in the 
North without Seoul's consent. In the survey of 1,000 youngsters aged 
between 18 and 23, conducted by The Korea Times and its sister paper the 
Hankook Ilbo on Feb. 16-19, nearly 48 percent of respondents said that if 
the USA attacked nuclear facilities in North Korea, Seoul should act on 
Pyongyang's behalf and demand Washington stop the attack. But 40.7 percent 
of them said Seoul should keep a neutral stance in the event of such 
attacks, while 11.6 percent said South Korea needs to act in concert with 
the United States.

A political expert in Seoul said that the poll results should not be 
interpreted as meaning young South Koreans are anti-American.

"To me, the survey does not hint at our youngster's hatred for the United 
States," Kim Soo-jin, politics professor of EWHA Women's University in 
Seoul, said in a telephone interview. "I interpret it as their opposition to 
any attempt to solve the nuclear crisis by armed force."

Regarding South Korea's aid programs for North Korea, 46.2 percent of the 
interviewees said they think the current level of support is acceptable, 
while 28.1 percent of them said that it should be reduced. South Korea plans 
to provide North Korea with 1.2 trillion won ($1 billion) in aid this year, 
including rice and fertilizers. The total sum amounts to 0.16 percent of 
South Korea's gross national income.

Peaceful unification was the most preferred method of reintegrating the two 
Koreas, receiving the approval of 54.1 percent of respondents. But 35.5 
percent said they have no problem in maintaining the status quo if the two 
sides can coexist peacefully. Nearly 40 percent of respondents chose China 
as the partner most important for South Korea to keep friendly relations 
with. The United States came next with 18.4 percent and North Korea came 
third with 18 percent. The United States has traditionally been considered 
the most important ally of South Korea since Washington's participation in 
the 1950-53 Korean War to defeat the North's invasion.

As for the US Forces Korea's possible engagement in a conflict between China 
and Taiwan, 56.2 percent of respondents said that South Korea should declare 
its neutrality as there is actually no way to bar Washington's move. Nearly 
22 percent of those who answered said South Korea should cooperate with its 
ally, the United States, while 16.8 percent said Seoul should oppose the US 
intervention as South Korea could be involved in the conflict. As potential 
voters in the 2007 presidential elections, 20.1 percent of respondents 
picked Rep. Park Geun-hye, chairwoman of the largest opposition Grand 
National Party (GNP), as the most appropriate candidate to become the next 
president.

Lee Myung-bak, Seoul city mayor and a GNP member, placed second with an 18.5 
percent approval rating, followed by former prime minister Goh Kun (14.6 
percent) and chairman of the ruling Uri Party Chung Dong-young (8.5 
percent).

A law revised last year lowered the voting age by one year to 19, making the 
2007 presidential election have an additional 4.2 million voters, who were 
born between December 1982 and December 1988.

In the 2002 presidential election, the voter turnout of those aged between 
20 to 24 stood at 57.9 percent. In the upcoming local elections in May, 
young people favored Kang Kum-sil, former justice minister and a Uri Party 
member, as Seoul mayor even though she has not yet declared her candidacy. 
She topped the list of possible candidates with a 36 percent support rate, 
followed by a far runner-up, Rep. Hong Joon-pyo (8.4 percent), a veteran 
politician of the GNP.

Half of the respondents considered themselves "progressive" (50.1 percent), 
while 21.1 percent of them said they are "conservative." Many of the 
respondents had rosy expectations for the future of South Korea. Nearly 43 
percent of them said the country's future is bright, while 15.7 percent saw 
it negatively. Media Research was commissioned to conduct the survey. The 
poll has a plus or minus 3.1-percent margin of error and a 95 percent 
confidence level.
*************************************************

QUIDNUNC
In this section of CanKor, we invite readers to send questions, answers, or 
responses. Answers should be under 150 words and may be edited for space.

*************************************************
HOW MANY PEOPLE IN NORTH KOREA HAVE UNFETTERED ACCESS TO INFORMATION ABOUT 
THE WORLD OUTSIDE THE DPRK?
*************************************************

North Koreans with truly "unfettered" access to information are likely to be 
very few indeed. Access to external media is tightly controlled, as is 
access to visiting foreigners. Nevertheless, there are at least two ways in 
which the outside world seeps into North Korea. One is via the northern 
border, where Chinese media are accessible to North Korean traders and those 
with the means to purchase Chinese-made radios and TVs. The other is the 
stable of civil servants working in government ministries that maintain 
regular contact with the outside world, such as foreign affairs and trade, 
interpreters, staff of embassies, etc. One of the pleasures of my time 
working at the WFP in Pyongyang was to observe the way local staff relished 
all the newspapers, magazines, CDs, movies and videos that arrived on a 
regular basis via diplomatic pouch from our respective home countries, or 
the way interpreters asked to listen to BBC news on the short-wave radios in 
our vehicles. These mostly young sons and daughters of the elite had for the 
most part a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of the outside world.

Erich Weingartner, Editor of CanKor.
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WHAT NOW?
How many NGOs continue to remain resident in the DPRK? Which ones?

[Answers should be e-mailed to: editor at CanKor.ca]
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End CanKor # 246

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CanKor is an electronic information service for readers interested in the 
issues of peace and security on the Korean peninsula, published by 
Weingartner Consulting. Financial support is received from the Canadian 
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