NORTH KOREA, MONGOLIA EXPAND ECONOMIC COOPERATION

Economic cooperation between North Korea and Mongolia has been expanding sharply of late, with the rise in human exchanges between the two socialist countries.

A North Korean media reported on July 4 that the two countries signed an agreement on exchanges and cooperation in the field of IT in Pyongyang when a delegation of the Information Technology, Posts and Communications Authority of Mongolia visited North Korea.

On July 15, Lundeg Purevsuren, the national security and foreign policy adviser to the president of Mongolia, and his party arrived in Pyongyang to discuss increasing their bilateral cooperation.

In June, a Mongolian company bought a stake in a North Korean oil refinery to help the country ease its energy reliance on Russia and China.

HBOil JSC, an oil trading and refining company based in Mongolia, said it had acquired 20 percent of the state-run entity operating the North’s Sungri refinery. It intends to supply crude to Sungri, which won’t be fully operational for up to a year, and export the refined products to Mongolia.

The investment comes as Mongolia seeks to power its mining-led boom while offering sanctions-hit North Korea a bridge to economic reforms, according to a news wire report.

The Sungri refinery, in the Special Economic Zone of Rason City in North Korea’s northeast, has an annual refining capacity of 2 million tons and is connected to Russia’s rail network.

In other economic ties, Mongolian technicians and business people are staying in North Korea to develop massive stockbreeding zones in North Korea by reclaiming a large barren land in Kangwon Province. Mongolia is known to have advanced know-how in livestock farming.

According to a recent report by the North’s official KCNA, a project to reclaim the Sepho tableland as a giant stockbreeding base has made headway at a brisk pace in North Korea.

The 600-meter-above-sea-level tableland, covering tens of thousands of hectares spanning Sepho, Phyonggang and Ichon counties, is now being turned into artificial and natural grass fields. This is an example of the economic ties between the two countries, according to experts in Seoul.

The experts also found clues into their deepening cooperation as the two nations can mutually benefit from the exchanges.

As a landlocked country, Mongolia expects to use North Korea’s Rajin port as a sea route to export its mining resources. When Mongolia uses Rajin port on the North’s east coast, it will help Mongolia save on transportation costs to the largest extent.

Mongolia also expressed its hope to rent the North Korean seaport when Choe Thae-bok, the chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly, was visiting the landlocked country in November last year.

In Ulan Bator, Mongolia’s capital, the North Korean parliamentary leader was assured by Mongolian officials that Mongolia will cooperate with North Korea in areas such as trade, IT and human exchanges.

In fact, North Korea has pledged to develop the Rajin port as an international harbor by attracting as much foreign investment as possible.

Meanwhile, a total of 1,749 North Koreans are working in Mongolia with most employed in the construction sector, according to a news report.

The number of North Korean workers, tallied at the end of April, accounts for the second-largest foreign workers’ group in the central Asian country, after the Chinese, the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, citing Mongolia’s labor ministry. The figure represents North Koreans legally working in the country.

Chinese workers in Mongolia stood at 5,976 as of end-April, the RFA said.

Given that most foreign workers in Mongolia are employed in the construction sector, the majority of the North Korean workers are presumed to also work in that industry, the report added.

A previous report by a Mongolian newspaper has quoted a North Korean laborer in the country as saying that an average North Korean worker receives US$600-700 in monthly wages there.