The Dear Leader is currently in Russia. As always he traveled by train, so the meetings with top Russian leaders, including President Dmitry Medvedev, are being held in Khasan, just over the narrow North Korean/Russian border to the south west of Vladivostok. Unusually the trip has been well publicised at home, leading to much heated speculation within North Korea. Are we really now on the road to the great and prosperous nation we were promised?
Other better informed sources see this more as a sign of desperation:
The main reason for Kim Jong-il's visit to Russia that began on Saturday seems to be North Korea's dire economic hardship, a senior Unification Ministry official said Sunday. The North Korean regime urgently needs money to celebrate regime founder Kim Il-sung's 100th birthday next year, when it has announced it will become a "powerful and prosperous" nation.
Kim's visit to Russia seems to have been triggered by the view that dependence on China alone is not enough to secure the cash he needs. According to Cho Bong-hyun of the IBK Economic Research Institute, "North Korea urgently needs to restore power supply."
Since the sinking of Navy corvette Cheonan in March last year, South Korea has imposed economic sanctions, leaving North Korea devoid of a major source of revenue. The North was forced to sell massive amount of anthracite coal to China last year, but this in turn exacerbated the country’s power shortage because it hampered the operation of domestic power plants.
This is why Kim made his first stop at the Bureya Hydroelectric Power Plant, the largest in Siberia, on Sunday, experts say. Kim reportedly discussed ways to export surplus electricity from the plant to North Korea.
In other words they didn't get what they wanted from the Chinese, and are having to look elsewhere.
But the Dear Leader may be in luck this time. The main topic for discussion, and the reason why Medvedev would travel all the way across Siberia, is the prospect of selling gas to South Korea:
Russia also wants to supply natural gas produced in Siberia to South Korea through a gas pipeline passing through North Korea. South Korea and Russia signed a memorandum of understanding in September 2008 for a plan to export at least 10 billion cubic m of Russian natural gas to the South, but it was put on ice over the North Korean nuclear issue.
But Gazprom vice president Alexander Ananenkov discussed the project with North Korean deputy premier Kang Sok-ju when he visited North Korea on July 4. A source familiar with North Korean affairs said, "Russia is persuading North Korea by pledging the pipeline construction project generates US$100 million of income a year for North Korea."
A gas pipeline to South Korea, going through North Korea? With Kim's foot poised above, ready to stamp on it any time he wants? Plus that US$100 million of income a year? No wonder the North Korean media are happy.
Update: apparently the summit with Medvedev was in Ulan-Ude, not Khasan.
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