Its a sad day today as the stalled progress in inter-Korean reconciliation in the last two years took a very visible turn for the worst today with the [seeming] destruction of the inter-Korean liaision office at Kaesong. This marked more than a year of complaints we have heard from North Koreans about the lack of progress and endless delays by South Korea on various projects. For South Korean, hemmed in by sanctions and cautiousness, there has also been frustration that they have not been able to advance relations.

The South Korean drama TV Series “Crash Landing on You” has been a big hit around the world. It is the story of a young and beautiful South Korean chaebol heiress starlet who accidentally lands in North Korea during a paragliding trip gone wrong and ends up falling in love with the young soldier.

Choson Exchange has been organising economic policy and business training programs by bringing foreign business leaders and professionals to North Korea and bringing North Koreans to international conferences and training for more than a decade. With years of experience in North Korea, we decided to put what we see on Netflix to the test with some comments from our volunteer.

Pre-COVID19, 2020 was supposed to be a big year for DPRK’s tourism industry. Going as far back as 2013, we worked with partners in the Wonsan area to train a cohort of policymakers and business operators who would go on to develop the plans for the Wonsan-Kalma-Geumgang Mountain tourism zone. This has been their key tourism development focus for the last 5 years - a belt on the East Coast of the country, away from Pyongyang, bordering South Korea and Japan, with inspiring coastal mountains, ski slopes and beaches. The zone was projected to open this year, but with COVID19, this is likely to be delayed.

During this period, we are exploring creative ways to reset our program directions and to prepare for quick implementation of programs post-lifting of the border lockdown. We continue to be in touch with Koreans bi-weekly to keep the momentum going for our initiatives. Some of the things we have ongoing are…

In these difficult period, we would like to remember a good friend and lawyer who tried to open up the DPR Korea though engaging with a fickle and challenging legal system: Michael Hay. Michael gave his life to work in the country, spending more than 2 decades working on the issue and more than a decade living in the country. While he did not manage to see the country transform into an open, integrated economic dynamo that he would wish to see, he leaves behind the legacy of having pioneered what many would have thought was impossible. We gave some comments on his passing

This is our year in review, a period of reflection for us as we see record breaking DPRK attendees at our programs, despite the mounting operational difficulties posed by a difficult geopolitical environment. In 2019, we continued our more than decade long initiative, and saw 400+ DPR Koreans attend programs. Read our 2019 Annual Report here.

This paper summarises the general economic posturing of South Korea (ROK) towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) under the last five presidents – Kim Dae-jung (1998 – 2003), Roh Moo-hyun (2003 – 2008), Lee Myung-bak (2008 – 2013), Park Geun-hye (2013 – 2017) and Moon Jae-in (2017 – present). This paper identifies both changes and continuations of key economic policies across these five administrations, and sheds light on how present and future ROK administrations could position their economic plans towards DPRK. Consistent policy themes across the decades also suggests areas in which institutions can step in to provide relevant capacity building programmes.