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Weekly on North Korea

ROK Ministry of Unification

Internal Affairs

o Chairman Kim Jong-il, accompanied by Ju Gyu-chang, First Vice Director of the Party's Central Committee and Mun Myeong-eon, Vice Director of the Party's Central Committee, conducted an on-site guidance of the Nakwon Machinery Yeonhap Enterprise, according to the Central Broadcasting Station on May 18.

o Chairman Kim Jong-il attended family art performances of military unit 630 and the air force command, which participated in the seventh People's Army's family artistic performance competition, according to the same station on May 15.

o North Korea held a Red Cross meeting at the People's Palace of Culture, according to the same station on May 19. The meeting on May 18-19 was attended by Jang Jae-eon, chief of the North Korean Red Cross Society, other red cross workers in Pyongyang and the provinces, a delegation from the International Federation of the Red Cross, and representatives of foreign diplomatic missions posted in Pyongyang.

o North Korea's two-way trade with China and Japan totaled $260 million for the first three months of this year, up 7.9 percent from a year earlier.

- The total figure breaks down to $110 million in exports, up 27.1 percent from a year ago, and $150 million in imports, down 3.2 percent.

o North Korea emphasized collectivism in an effort to strengthen its internal cohesion by stating that "socialism is based on collectivism and that undermining collectivism means abandoning socialism," according to the Pyongyang Broadcasting Station on May 17.

o North Korea held the seventh Pyongyang International Commodity Exhibition at the Three Revolution Exhibition Hall on May 17-20. Seven nations, including China, Syria and Thailand, participated in the event, according to broadcasting services on May 17.

o North Korea set up the Computer Software Arbitration Committee and held the first session on May 13, according to the Korean Central News Agency on May 15. The committee is a non-standing private-sector panel aimed at resolving disputes involving violations of copyrights in the software field.

Relations with South Korea

o North Korea said that the South Korean Constitutional Court's recent decision to reject the National Assembly's motion to impeach the president reflected a fundamental current of South Korean politics. Through a report by the Secretariat of DPRK's Committee for the Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland on May 15, it said that the decision was virtually a verdict handed down not by the constitutional court but by the South Korean people, according to North Korean broadcasting services on May 16.

o North Korea demanded that South Korea withdraw its decision to send additional forces to Iraq, saying the dispatch of troops is unjustifiable at a time when the world was denouncing the United States for abuses of Iraqi prisoners of war by American troops. The demand came through a statement by the spokesman of the Committee for the Peaceful Unification of the Fatherland on May 14.

External Affairs

o North Korea said that a six-party working-level meeting on North Korea's nuclear issue ended with little progress because of the hardly changed attitude on the part of the United States and of America's absurd remarks concerning uranium enrichment. The statement came on May 15 in a press conference from the foreign ministry's spokesman, according to the Central Broadcasting Station the next day.

o North Korea tried to strengthen its ties with European Union members through a mutual exchange of high-level officials from the government and parliament.

- Timing of Pyongyang efforts was concentrated generally on the period between May 1 when Eastern European states acceded to EU and May 12-14 when the first preparatory six-party working-level meeting for the plenary on the North Korean nuclear program was held.

o North Korea replaced its ambassador to Guinea Kim Gyeong-sin with Kim Bong-hi, 66.

- The new ambassador Kim Bong-hi has served until recently as Vice Chairman of the Joseon (North Korea)-Cuba Solidarity Committee and of the Joseon Committee of Solidarity with the People of the World. He also served as ambassador to Zaire in 1992 and the Congo in 1995.