North Korea’s No. 2 Official to Visit Indonesia And Singapore

Bloomberg, by Sangwon Yoon - May 7, 2012

North Korea’s second-highest ranking official will travel to Indonesia and Singapore in what may be an effort by the totalitarian regime to seek support and guidance in improving its impoverished economy.

Kim Yong Nam, President of the Supreme People’s Assembly, will “soon” visit Indonesia at the invitation of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and also go to Singapore, the official Korean Central News Agency said yesterday, without providing further details. He is the most high-profile official to travel overseas since Kim Jong Un succeeded his father, the late Kim Jong Il, as leader in December.

North Korea’s isolation has deepened since the United Nations expanded sanctions and the U.S. scrapped a food aid deal in response to last month’s failed rocket launch. With an economy one-fortieth the size of South Korea’s, the government may use Kim Yong Nam’s trip to learn more about Singapore and Indonesia’s development, said analysts including Cho Bong Hyun.

“Kim is the diplomatic face of the country and his visit may be a way for the North to make arrangements for its officials to study these two countries’ economic policies,” said Cho, a researcher at the IBK Economic Research Institute in Seoul.

Singapore is North Korea’s third-largest trading partner after China and South Korea, according the U.S. State Department.

“North Korea has been trying to arrange educational exchange programs with the Singaporean government on finance, international law and ways to attract foreign investment,” Cho added. “Indonesia’s economic strong suit is using its national resources and North Korea can definitely learn from them.”

North Korea has become a magnet for Chinese enterprises thanks to its mineral reserves valued at more than $6 trillion, according to South Korean state-owned mining company Korea Resources Corp. Of the 138 Chinese enterprises registered as doing business in North Korea in 2010, 41 percent extract coal, iron, zinc, nickel, gold and other minerals, according to the U.S. Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sangwon Yoon in Seoul at syoon32@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net

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North Korea's President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly,
Kim Yong Nam, speaks during a ceremony to unveil a new bronze statue
depicting the late leader Kim Jong Il and his father Kim Il Sung at Mansudae Art
 Studio in Pyongyang in this file photo. Kim will visit Indonesia and Singapore in an
 effort to bolster trade with Singapore — the reclusive country's third largest trading
partner — and to learn about mining from Indonesia. (AP Photo)