Fundraising as Main Task

After our last training program, we have a good sense for what we can contribute, what is wanted, and a good working model for how to deliver in (both in terms of trainers and in the operational context of North Korea). Hence, our main goal now is to fund raise to make Choson Exchange more sustainable. While we can continue operating on everyone's own dime as we face rather low costs in North Korea, our main challenge is the need for at least one or two permanent staff who can maintain the channels of communication and ensure that logistics can be handled adequately. These are time-consuming and thankless tasks...but necessary.

If you have any leads on possible fund-raising idea, do contact us at CETeam@chosonexchange.org.

Post-Lecture Brief on North Korea's Economy/Business Environment

This is our report from our lecture series on Finance and Economic Strategy in Pyongyang. It captures things we learn that will enable us to provide better training, and helps to inform readers on North Korea's business and economic environment. Highlights are below. Need and demand for skills upgrading | Lecturers agreed that there is a strong need for training as participants' financial knowledge and skills, with a few exceptions, are shallow. This is also reinforced by our survey findings. More importantly, participants expressed strong interest in further training programs, which is not always the case in North Korea.

Managing Knowledge-Based Economies & FDI of key interest | Based on discussions with participants, knowledge-based economies and the management of FDI inflows are of great interest to our audience.

Newly-formed economic institution non-operational as yet | An institution meant to play a key role in economic development and was formed in recent years have not yet become operational.

Feedback on Korea Times Article

An article from Korea Times recently appeared on our work. We would like to add some comments to further clarify some of the statements that came out in the article: “Choe Thae-bok highly commended our work [this refers to the OpenCourseWare and Wikibooks initiatives we have, not the economic and financial workshops] and sent the president of Kim Chaek University and the vice president of the State Academy of Sciences to meet with us privately,” [...]

They were not in North Korea for political purposes, but their presence attracted enough attention from North Koreans. Reporters from the North’s official Korean Central News Agency also tagged along with them [The KCNA people only interviewed us on one of the days. Unfortunately, they were not so keen on the OCW/Wikibooks idea and just wanted to get comments on Pyongyang from people in favor with higher-ups] .

Apparently, the North Koreans were quite impressed by their academic backgrounds too [This point was made because we were surprised at what the North Koreans we met knew about US academic institutions, and their respect for them]. [...]

In Pyongyang, See and his group members taught North Koreans how to use computers for e-training in finance [this is a reference to OpenCourseWare]. They also offered lectures on the U.S. subprime crisis and the possibility of the Chinese yuan as an international trade settlements currency [We also presented and discussed Singapore's model of strong government with liberal markets]. [...]

“The North Koreans [we met - a subset of North Koreans for sure] were actually quite sophisticated people [some of them - others we trained can be very clueless]. They know what’s happening in the outside world,” said a financial analyst who went to Pyongyang with See, but preferred not to be identified.

“The financial institutions we met are very keen to have us train them and help build the institutions ― especially the newly formed State Development Bank. There is an incredible demand for training,” See said.

Post-Training Report to North Koreans

I have attached a report sent to our North Korean partner institutions indicating areas of training that is much needed in future sessions. This is a truncated report, and we will follow up with a more complete report later for Choson Exchange visitors. Our confidentiality policy means that we only broadly summarize some of our discussions with our North Korean counterparts. ------------------------------

There is room for extensive cooperation on training with Daesong Bank, the State Development Bank, and other financial institutions as our lecturers feedback and survey results from the training session at Kim Il Sung University e-library (12 participants with lectures recorded and re-broadcast on the intranet) indicate that skill sets for finance (e.g. modeling with excel) is severely lacking and awareness of global financial institutions and models is low.

We recommend more intensive training sessions in-country with a focus on building skill-sets in investment selection, accounting, macro-economics, financial modeling with computers and legal training. This should be complemented with further training abroad that emphasizes building networks and visits to key financial institutions to learn from them.

Above is a picture taken from our lectures on the Singaporean development experience

Finance & Economics Strategy Lecture (13-14 Sept) in Pyongyang

Lecture Series in Finance and Economic Policy 13 – 14 September 2010 Location: Pyongyang Audience: Academics, Government Officials and Business Professionals from Banking Circle

Topics

We will also include breakout sessions where participants are divided up among the three lecturers to discuss in greater depth the questions raised during the lecture.

Introduction to Choson Exchange: Objectives and What We Can Do | This will be a short introduction to our people, our interest in business, economics and law training, and how we can help.

Growing the Financial Sector in Singapore through Economic Strategy-Making | An Economist from Singapore will discuss how Singapore designs its economic strategies, how the government co-exists with and complements markets and how it uses economic strategy work to support the growth of the financial sector..

The OpenCourseWare Revolution: Using Computers for E-Training in Finance & Other Fields | This session will talk about how Choson Exchange can use OCW materials to deliver training electronically throughout the year and couple this with live lectures and language assistance to ensure effective delivery of education. We will run some demos of electronically-delivered lectures from some of the world’s foremost scientists and economist at Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The US Subprime Crisis & its Impact on Risk Management | A risk manager from an international investment bank will discuss the causes of the US subprime crisis and its impact on how the financial sector and investment banks evaluate the riskiness of their assets.

An International Banker’s View: The RMB as an International Trade Settlements Currency? | A banker with experience across 4 continents at an international bank will introduce China’s development from a banking perspective before explaining the potential for the Chinese Renminbi to be a currency for settling international trades. This lecture will also study the degree to which the RMB is internationalized, the impact this has on structuring trade financing and the benefits and drawbacks inherent in internationalization of currencies.

Thematic Workshops | Participants will be broken up into smaller groups in order to have in-depth discussions with lecturers on the above topics. The topics are meant to motivate discussions on deeper structural issues, and the workshops allow us to create an informal atmosphere for discussions. Workshop themes include:

- Financial Sector & Economic Development - Financial Sector Stability – Tools for Proper Credit Evaluation - Making Trade Work – the Role of the Financial Sector

Roundtable Session | At the end of the first day, we will collect questions from participants on economic and financial topics. These will be organized into thematic issues, which will be discussed at a roundtable involving all lecturers. This format is meant to generate debate among participants as the diverse backgrounds of our lecturers mean that they might not necessarily share the same viewpoints on financial or economic issues. Roundtable session includes:

- The Future of the Financial Sector

New Team Member - Clint Rogers

Clint is our latest member and will coordinate our academic visits program and special projects from 2011 onwards. Soojin an I spoke to him and we were both impressed by his entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to education. His bio is as follows:

Dr. Clint Rogers has a heart for engaging in international collaboration (intercultural/interfaith/interdisciplinary) & poverty alleviation (physical, mental, and emotional/spiritual) in creative ways - using technology and collaborative techniques that are born for this moment. He holds a doctorate in Instructional Psychology and Technology, was the first to teach web analytics at a university, and has worked with world-class entrepreneurship, development, and web promotion efforts. He was invited to join the international business mastermind group led by Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes, serves on the board of directors for several hyper-growth companies, and has been requested as a speaker to organizations, businesses, and universities around the world. Clint is commonly asked to present on synergistic cross-cultural collaboration, innovation, global virtual teams, mobilizing online movements, fostering human potential, social entrepreneurship, and the impact of media and technological diffusion on international development. He is active in consulting, teaching, traveling and research, is currently coordinating the Consortium of Universities in ICT4D (Information and Communication Technologies for Development), and supervising dissertations of some of the brightest students around the world. The last course he taught was on using ICT for international collaboration -- over 60 Masters and PhD students from over 20+ countries participated, and he taught it while traveling through more than 10 different countries.

Meeting at DPRK Embassy in Singapore

We had a meeting with diplomatic staff at the DPRK Embassy in Singapore. The meeting was arranged by our advisor Wee Lin and the purpose of the meeting was to keep the embassy informed of our work in North Korea and to discuss the best partner institutions in North Korea and outside of North Korea for our upcoming legal training program.

We also want to make this project transparent and wanted their opinion on what funding sources for our project would be acceptable to them. We gave the staff a brochure of our work and promised to keep them informed if any future event takes place in Singapore.

Warm Welcome to Advisor Peter Drysdale

I was at a conference in Australia recently and had the opportunity to meet Professor Peter Drysdale, a leading economist in Australia. Peter was previously in charge of training for North Koreans in economics and policy-making in the early 2000s with a focus on economic reforms. The programs, sponsored by the UN, were held both in Australia and Pyongyang and catered to participants under the age of 35. We are proud to have him on board as an advisor to Choson Exchange. Bio:

Peter Drysdale is Emeritus Professor of Economics and a Visiting Fellow in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at The Australian National University. He is Head of Australia’s East Asia Forum. He is widely recognised as the leading intellectual architect of APEC. He is the author of a number of books and papers on international trade and economic policy in East Asia and the Pacific, including his prize-winning book, International Economic Pluralism: Economic Policy in East Asia and the Pacific. He is recipient of the Asia Pacific Prize, the Weary Dunlop Award, the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun with Gold Rays and Neck Ribbon, the Australian Centenary Medal and he is a member of the Order of Australia.

Revised Itinerary for September Meetings

Sep 9Arriving at Pyongyang Discussion on the itinerary - Status of other requested meetings Sep 10 Visit to Kim Il Sung University and meeting with the professors of Financial College and Law College of Kim Il Sung University. Sep 11 Grand People’s Study House & Other Usual Touristy Stuff (Optional) Preparation for following week Sep 12 Morning: Kumsusan Memorial Palace Afternoon: Korean Central Art Museum Night : Walking along the street of Pyongyang. Sep 13 Morning: Opening Ceremony of 7th PISTBF Afternoon: Meeting and lecture at Korea Daesong Bank Evening: Welcome Party for the Participants of 7th PISTBF **During the meeting and lecture at Daesong Bank, Mr, Calvin Chua is to have a meeting with Paektusan Academy of Architecture and students may visit Kim Hyong Jik University of Education. Sep 14 Meeting and lectures at Korea Daesong Bank Meeting with Korea Writers’ Union Meeting with Ministry of Education Sep 15. Morning: Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies Afternoon: Closing Ceremony of 7th PISTBF Pyongyang Middle School No.1 Sep 16 Returning by train or by air

- Daesong will provide the training space. Audience will be a mixed group of professionals, academics and government officials.

General Update – New Partnerships & North Koreans Abroad

Over the last two months, we have established a series of exciting partnerships to improve our ability to deliver quality training. We will work with an international financial institution to share knowledge and to develop some course content. In addition, we are also discussing with several law schools from around the world how we can work together to start a legal training program. We are also in touch with a few companies to discuss partnerships in support of our programs. Most exciting is that we might start our program sending North Koreans abroad to participate in conferences and academic programs earlier than expected. This year, we expect to send two North Koreans to the Asia Society Asia 21 Fellows program in Jakarta, Indonesia. This experience will help us better develop our screening process to identify individuals worth supporting.

We have also established contacts with Swedish, German, Swiss and Australian authorities in charge of their North Korean technical assistance programs. In addition to coordination and collaboration in the future, we plan to learn from them what works, what does not and what needs to be done to raise the effectiveness of training programs.