getfiscal posted:

I think North Korea is probably a fine place to live for a lot of people, and as a Hobbesian like most of you I think that a confused rightist dictatorship is better than a civil war. Like turning Korea into Syria would be terrible. That's probably true of a lot of countries though, it doesn't make them socialist. I have no real tangible control over Canadian foreign policy though because there are like 30 million people here and I've never even been in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs office.

i'm just wondering what you're basing your information on that the dprk is clearly a rightist dictatorship. i mean, it certainly could be, but the more i learn about the government the less likely that seems. the cult of personality stuff with the kim family can be explained with some althusserian theory about ideology, etc. which i won't go into now since that's more of a half-developed thought, and i kinda see it as not a good thing, but maybe more of a neutral element.

getfiscal posted:

eccentricdeathmongrel posted:
getfiscal is one of the most skillful trolls i've ever witnessed. i remember browsing his post archive on revleft.org—stunning. he knows every trigger to pull.
It sucks so bad, it makes me sick, don't ever become a troll. I accidentally let it out in class one day and someone started crying. I'm like the Incredible Hulk except a nice Zapatista will talk to me and I end up asking them why they support Marcos' drug war and I have to pack my belongings into an old suitcase and move on from that friendship.

tpaine posted:

he died

rip

Ufuk_Surekli posted:

getfiscal posted:

believing that Kim Jong-un is a wise democratic leader guiding a state building socialism is a very reasonable thing to believe compared to that I guess, but still within the horizon of insanity.

can't speak for the others, but I just want to clarify that this is not something I am claiming

let's get this straight - I believe that DPRK Premier Pak Pong Ju is "a wise democratic leader guiding a state building socialism". Kim Jong Un is the chairman of the NDC

so do you want to talk a bit about how things have actually developed under Pak's premiership, or are you going to continue to toe the NATO gutter press line by misidentifying basic shit like who the head of government is

I have somehow been trolled by God greater than I could ever troll it to have reached this point of getting mad at someone for this. I am sorry. Continue on in life believing what you do, you are probably right. I'll read more about Pak's premiership and get back to you in a few years.

Comprehensive government statistics have not been made public since the 1960s. Even if production figures were available, the non-convertibility of the domestic currency and the distortion of commodity prices in the DPRK’s planned economy would still prevent us from computing something as basic as a GDP or GDP growth figure

There are many possible reasons the DPRK does not release public figures, I have no strong opinions except that the idea that it is because they are afraid of real data exposing their dysfunctional economy is clearly wrong (as the article gets into later).

So there are a few main sources. The most commonly used one is the South Korean Bank of Korea and the CIA (not kidding):

If statistics on the DPRK economy are mentioned at all in the Western press, they generally stem from "secondary source" estimations rather than "primary source" figures from the DPRK government. The most commonly used of those estimates are those of the South Korean Bank of Korea (BOK) and of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Yet there are a number of reasons why these numbers in fact are nearly unuseable as evidence for the above three claims.

First, the numbers are equivocal. CIA numbers do present the DPRK as comparatively poor in terms of PPP-based GDP per capita. The $1800 figure from 2011 would place it 197th of 229 countries in the world, located among mostly African economies. But as far as the CIA's general GDP figure goes, the $40 billion figure catapults the economy into a comfortable middle position (106thof 229), which is not really what one would expect from "one of the poorest countries in the world." Moreover, neither BOK nor CIA figures demonstrate that the DPRK economy is going "from bad to worse."The CIA's PPP figure has simply remained stuck at $40 billion for the past ten years...

Second, these numbers are rarely comparable with figures for other countries, for methodological reasons. Both institutions admit this, and yet many commentators seem to ignore it when they use them. The BOK'S GDP estimates, for instance, are unsuitable for international comparison with any economy except the South Korean one, because they were estimated on the basis of South Korean prices, exchange rates and value added ratios. Meanwhile, CIA estimates are unsuitable for historical comparison, because the methodology it used changed over time. Particularly striking is the sudden and unexplained "jump" from a $22.3 billion GDP figure in 2003 to a $40 billion one in 2004.

Third, these numbers are actually little more than wild guesses. Both institutions admit that they have far too little data to work with to provide reliable estimates. BOK officials, for instance, have conceded that the paucity and unreliability of price and exchange rate data for North Korea mean that an estimated GDP figure will "by nature be highly subjective, arbitrary and prone to errors.” The CIA, for its part, rounds PPP-based GDP figures for the DPRK to "the nearest $10 billion," telling volumes about the confidence with which it makes its estimates.

Four, these numbers cannot accurately reflect fundamental differences between market-driven and socialist economies. How meaningful or useful are the GDP per capita figures of the CIA and the BOK in measuring quality of life in a taxfree country with public food distribution as well as free housing, healthcare and education? What do prices or income really mean in such a system anyway? The use of GDP figures is notoriously controversial when it comes to judging the well-being or economic development of a people, and this is even truer in the case of socialist economies.

Finally, there are good reasons to think that the numbers have been politically manipulated.According to Marcus Noland, executive vice-president and director of studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics:

process is not particularly transparent and appears vulnerable to politicization. In 2000, the central bank delayed the announcement of the estimate until one week before the historic summit between South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The figures implied an extraordinary acceleration of North Korea's growth rate to nearly 7 percent. This had never occurred before and has not been repeated since. Under current South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative, the central bank's figures imply that the North Korean economy has barely grown at all.As for the CIA numbers, suffice to say that they create a completely artificial impression of stagnation by systematically rounding the GDP figure to the nearest $10 billion.

As we can see, there are very serious grounds to doubt the reliability of secondary source estimates. This is why Noland has called the DPRK's economy a "black hole" and warned against trusting any figure on DPRK economy that comes with a decimal point attached. Rüdiger Frank, economist and Head of the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Vienna, concurs:

Too often, such numbers produced by Seoul’s Bank of Korea or published in the CIA World Factbook seem to be a curious product of the market mechanism. Where there is a demand, eventually there will be a supply: if you keep asking for numbers, they will eventually be produced. But knowing how hard it is to come up with reliable statistics even in an advanced, transparent, Western-style economy, it remains a mystery to me how suspiciously precise data are collected on an economy that has no convertible currency and that treats even the smallest piece of information as a state secret.

Ok so what we know about the DPRK is propaganda, basically of the same caliber as defector testimony. So what are some possible options? One is food:

Food production is one of a few areas for which decent statistics are publicly available. When the DPRK first called for food aid in the 1990s, it agreed to cooperate with inspectors from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in drafting an annual report for the donor community, the "Crop and Food Security Assessment Report" (CFSAR). There is a growing consensus that this cooperation makes the CFSAR a reasonably solid estimate of food production in the DPRK.

Trade is another:

Although the DPRK does not publish its trade volumes, data can still be collected through reverse statistics of its trade partners

Feron gets into some of the methodological problems with both but let's see what these measures tell us.

For food production:

According to the latest CFSAR, the food production for the year 2012 to 2013 was 5.07 mMT of grain equivalent. This corresponds to 95% of the estimated grain requirement of the DPRK for that year. Note that this figure does not mean malnutrition has been fully eradicated, especially among vulnerable groups. The estimate refers solely to an average grain requirement of 1640 kcal/day per person (174 kg of grain equivalent per year), excluding 400 kcal/day and other nutrient needs (e.g. protein) to be covered with non-cereal food sources. Moreover, the figure does not address the issue of distribution. But even though these are important caveats, seeing self-sufficiency within grasp remains a major cause of optimism, especially when the current 5.07 mMT figure is compared to the 3 mMT of the late 1990s.

As for trade:

According to i-RENK, the great majority of DPRK trade is conducted between the Koreas ($1.97 billion in 2012) and with China ($5.93 billion in 2012).Trade with the rest of the world was evaluated by KOTRA at around $427 million in 2012, from which trade with the European Union accounted for about $100 million,according to the EU's Directorate-General for Trade...even ROK figures clearly indicate that the DPRK is going through an unexpected trade boom, beginning, of course, from low levels of trade. Aggregate KOTRA and MOU figures indicate that the total volumes have nearly quintupled from $1.8 billion in 1999 to $8.8 billion in 2012

Feron finally considers the DPRK's own figures, something that is simply unimaginable because it is basically believing in e-meters. But let's pretend for the sake of humor.

Having established that the DPRK is probably close to food self-sufficiency and is experiencing a trade boom, we can consider primary sources from the DPRK itself, such as the annual budget sheets published by the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA). They are the closest we get to official and publicly available statistics on the DPRK economy. Remarkably, the latest ones hint that the DPRK has attained or is about to attain double digit growth....

The year-on-year growth of the state budgetary revenue stands out for our purposes, because one can assume it loosely corresponds to a GDP growth figure. We can see, for instance, that the growth of achieved revenue drops sharply from +16% in 2005 to a little over +4% in 2006 – perhaps because of the sanctions for the first nuclear test. Although direct comparisons between SPA and BOK data should actually be avoided insofar as they do not measure exactly the same sort of growth, it is still notable that the BOK numbers also report a sharp drop from +3.8% in 2005 to -1.0% in 2006.

Interestingly, however, the two trajectories diverge after this. BOK values from 2008 (+3.1%) to 2012 estimate a dip in 2009 (-0.9%) and a timid recovery up until 2012 (+1.3%). SPA values, however, accelerate by almost a full percentage point per year from 2008 (+6%) to 2013 (+10.1%). Why does the BOK estimate growth to be so weak and erratic when the SPA reports it to be so strong and sustained? There seems to be a world of a difference between the southern narrative of near stagnation and the northern picture of double-digit growth.

Feron then questions why there is such a divergence:

So, how is possible to justify negative economic growth based on those events? From the BOK perspective, the 2009 dip is due to "decreased agricultural production due to damage from particularly severe cold weather" and "sluggish manufacturing production owing to a lack of raw materials and electricity." Accordingly, the agriculture, forestry & fisheries sector and the manufacturing sector were said to be down by respectively -1 and -3%, compared with 2008. Based on satellite images, the BOK estimated cereal production to have slowed from 4.3 million metric tons of grain equivalent in 2008 to 4.1 mMT in 2009. Lack of raw materials and electricity, for its part, could be explained by the difficulty of securing imports because of tightening sanctions and because of the depreciation of the won compared to other currencies in the wake of the reform. The revaluation was also reported in the Western and South Korean press to have wreaked havoc in the economy, as the crackdown on smugglers and private traders reduced the supply of a range of goods and thereby allegedly triggered "runaway inflation."

Yes this is literally how the BOK comes up with numbers.

Feron goes into all the reasons these are dumb and instead looks at trade data for reasons already mentioned:

If a reduction of Sino-Korean trade volumes from $2.79 to $2.68 billion could reduce GDP growth by 4% in 2009, where would this leave us for 2010 or 2011, when trade volumes leaped respectively to $3.47 billion and $5.63 billion? Surely this suggests that the DPRK's GDP growth should be substantial at this time. Yet BOK figures inexplicably continue to indicate negative value for 2010 (-0.5%) and only timid growth for 2011 (+0.8%). Would the SPA's revenue growth figures for 2010 and 2011 not be far more plausible in this case, at respectively 7.7% and 8.6%87? These considerations leave the BOK's pessimist assessment of the DPRK economy on very shaky ground indeed.

This is not enough to say we trust the DPRK's numbers but again we have to confront the ideology at work here. Despite the 'data' that getfiscal has read being built on basically pure fantasy and anti-communism from the CIA, this is considered 'normal' and measured. Even if the reverse were true and we uncritically supported the DPRK's figures, the data shows this is actually closer to a reasonable position than taking the western figures at face value. Of course, no one actually thinks this and people itt take a variety of sources and their own humble limitations into consideration. But from the point of view of anti-communism, this is a heresy and so the fantasy figure of the rabid pro-North Korean fanatic has to be invented because it is the inverse of the faith based position of the anti-communist. Freud would surely have a lot to say about the pathological displacement at work here.

One more thing. Getfiscal's idea that the market runs amok in the DPRK is contradicted by the 2009 currency revaluation. As already stated, the BOK assumed the currency revaluation of the won would be a disaster based on neoliberal economic principles. I remember when it happened and it was supposed to lead to the overthrow of the system by the new petty-bourgeoisie. So what actually happened?

The reform did suffer some problems of implementation, as the government publicly admitted, but Western claims of chaos and unrest (or even of the sacking and execution of a responsible official) were based on second- or third-hand reports of isolated, unverifiable or uncorroborated incidents. Note also that the above-mentioned "runaway inflation" reports are not based on holistic CPI figures, but on foreseeable price hikes of selected consumer items on the black market(making it unattractive vis-à-visthe public distribution system was the whole point, after all). Western beliefs that the shadow economy was so big that any attack on it would dislocate the main economy appear to have been proved wrong in retrospect as prices and exchange rates stabilized after a short period of transition. Keeping in mind that, in all likelihood, the reform partly aimed at freeing up capital and stimulating domestic production, we would have to compare nationwide production figures in all sectors before and after the reform to establish whether it actually had a positive or negative impact on the main economy. Since we don't have these figures, we cannot really pass a verdict on the reform's legacy. But note that according to Jin Meihua, a research scholar on Northeast Asian Studies at the Jilin Academy of Social Sciences writing thirteen months after the revaluation, exchange rates with the Chinese yuan, prices of rationed rice and prices of rice on the open market all more or less halved from 2009 to 2010, dropping respectively from 1:500 to 1:200, from 46 to 24 won a kg, and from 2000 to 900 won a kg. These figures imply that the turbulent period that followed the reform did not last long, and that prices and exchange rates soon stabilized enough to double the spending power of consumers of rice and Chinese imports.

The idea that black markets are too powerful to control and are becoming increasingly important rather than less is based on pure fantasy. All the problems of markets and controlling them as the DPRK economy has recovered from the collapse of the USSR are publicly admitted by the DPRK, as is their complete openness about the purpose of SEZs within socialism. Again, SK shutting down the Kaesong SEZ this year was not a deathblow to North Korean socialism, if anything

A further observation that can be made is that Pyongyang is much less dependent on inter-Korean trade as a source of foreign currency than Seoul apparently believed. It is probable that the KOTRA methodology contributed to create this false impression as its statistics systematically ignore most of the developing world. At any rate, when hawkish conservatives came to power in Seoul in 2008, they decided to pressure Pyongyang by using inter-Korean trade as a carrot to control it . This strategy turned out to be grossly miscalculated. Pyongyang simply turned to Beijing, and trade volumes with China soon left those with South Korea far behind. Instead of increasing Seoul's influence in Pyongyang, the confrontational move drastically reduced it, wasting a decade of trust-building efforts by South Korean doves.

Which reveals one of the most interesting aspects of anti-DPRK propaganda from so called socialists. Not only does it mirror CIA propaganda, it mirrors far right propaganda in South Korea which does not even represent the majority opinion there. Western socialists outside of the CPGB-ML simply have no interest in what socialists within South Korea have to say, and asking such a question is a heresy that is equivalent to blind faith in the words of DPRK government officials.

Feron concludes by talking about the increasing material wealth on display in Pyongyang as well as the potential wealth of North Korean mineral deposits. That stuff is not so important but what is important is that when Kim Jong-un was elevated to leadership of the WPK and the NDC, western scholars predicted that he would not last and the regime would collapse. Obviously this did not happen but such predictions are immune to falsification. The response is either the far right: "it's still gonna collapse" or the far left: "the dictatorship is too stable" represented by Park Geun-hye and Bruce Cumings respectively. The majority opinion of the world, which is that the DPRK is a functional system of parliamentary democracy, *or even that the people of the DPRK support their system regardless of its character*, is simply unallowable in elite discourse as Chomsky would say.

Edited by babyhueypnewton (May 29, 2016 06:31:58)

thirdplace posted:

Petrol posted:

It's quite a leap from recognising the grey economy of the DPRK to dismissing the the entire state structure and its ideology as a farce.

There's a lot of space between the Western propaganda version and "actually Kim Il Song is just a party functionary and Prime Minister Pak Chuy Umph makes the decisions so long as he can get them through parliament." I understand and appreciate the second paragraph here where you correctly place mr. fiscal there, but that belies your first paragraph (and a lot of the other replies to him, which frankly, strawman him to a ridiculous degree once again). My local school board isn't sovereign, but that doesn't make it a farce, or part of a vast act of performance art designed to fool foreigners.

Well I don't think I was "strawmanning" him, if we really have to use the reddit language of rhetoric. He was asked why he thought DPRK is a rightist dictatorship and he responded with stuff about what he'd read about the grey economy. If DPRK is a rightist dictatorship then its entire state structure and ideology is a farce, right?

Anyway, as BHPN points out (with references), what DPRK official figures exist seem pretty close to what we can make reality out to be, so even if a dominant grey economy of the kind getfiscal describes was proof of a rightist dictatorship, it's a moot point, because it's not really like that.