[USFK Forums] Pyongyang's shining moment [AP-CNN]

[C. Y. Lee]

[Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2005] This AP's news supplements yesterday's article being posted from the Korea Times:
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Pyongyang's shining moment

CNN.COM Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2005

Energy-starved N. Korean capital appears to be getting brighter PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- As dusk falls in North Korea's capital, lights beam from high-rises, apartments and shops, while street lamps cast an orange glow over scant traffic -- a surprising sight in an energy-starved country known for being shrouded in blackness at night.North Korean officials bragged of having developed ways to compensate for power shortages during a recent visit by South Koreans, who said Pyongyang appeared much brighter than in recent years.

The delegation was accompanied by an Associated Press reporter.Still, experts say the North isn't producing nearly as much power as it needs, which is why the government insists it be given a nuclear reactor for generating electricity in exchange for giving up its atomic weapons program.

It is unclear whether the brighter look of Pyongyang, the North's model city that is home to about 3 million people, was staged as a propaganda exercise for the South Koreans' trip or was a true indication of gains in power output for its struggling economy.

"I was astonished to see how much Pyongyang has brightened over the past few years," said Oh Yeon-ho, head of South Korean Internet newspaper OhmyNews, which organized an inter-Korean marathon in the city this month. "When I was here a few years ago, Pyongyang was in almost total darkness."

Darkness has been one of the best words to describe North Korea, both literally and as an allusion to the regime's totalitarian control of its 22 million people denied access to outside information. Satellite pictures of the nighttime Korean Peninsula have often been used to contrast the gleaming, capitalist South with the unlit, communist North.South Korea "is now a beacon of liberty that shines across the most heavily armed border in the world.

It is a light reaching to a land shrouded in darkness," U.S. President George W. Bush told American troops based in the South earlier this month.During the South Koreans' visit, Northern officials acting as monitors and guides claimed electricity output has improved in recent years from the building of small- and medium-size hydroelectric plants under the "wise guidance" of leader Kim Jong Il."

As U.S. imperialists are trying to strangle us with petroleum and gasoline that we don't have, we have built many hydroelectric plants," said Choe Song Hyok, a guide.But even while arguing that living conditions have improved since the late 1990s, the darkest days of the North's economic struggles, Choe acknowledged to the visitors that electricity supplies aren't sufficient.Power is one of the North's top priorities.

The country held a national meeting Saturday of electricity and coal industry officials attended by Premier Pak Pong Ju, who called for more production, according to the North's Korean Central News Agency.

They also lauded the North's late founding ruler, Kim Il Sung, and his successor, son Kim Jong Il, for their "energetic guidance" in building "many power stations and coal mines" and "making leaping advances in the electricity and coal industries," KCNA said.

Experts, however, are skeptical the North's electricity situation has improved. North Korea needs at least 4 million kilowatts of electricity but produces only about half that, South Korea's Unification Ministry says.

The ministry said the North is believed to have thousands of small- and medium-sized hydroelectric power plants, but said their output is limited."

There is no reason that would have contributed to improving the North's electricity condition since the United States cut off fuel oil shipments in 2002," said Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea expert at the South's Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.

Washington made that move after saying North Korean officials admitted to running a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 disarmament deal. Since then, international negotiations have sought to persuade North Korea to give up atomic arms.

South Korea has proposed giving the North 2 million kilowatts of power a year -- about half its needs -- if it disarms. But the North insists it needs a nuclear reactor for power production, which the other five countries at the talks agreed to consider only after it gives up atomic weapons.

Park Joon-young, a professor at Seoul's Ewha Womans University, said a brighter Pyongyang could only be a result of the North's government reallocating power from other uses.

"Kim Jong Il's offices take the highest priority in power provision, followed by government offices, military facilities, industrial facilities and then households," Park said. "If Pyongyang was brighter now than before, it must be because Pyongyang's priority rose."