North Korea wants to learn from Vietnam economy

“It is encouraging if North Korea tries to learn from Vietnam’s experiences,” said presidential spokesman Cheon Ho-Seon.

A Hong Kong-based weekly magazine reported on Sunday that the North’s leader Kim Jong-Il intends to visit Vietnam to assess its “Doi Moi” economic reforms introduced in 1986.

Yazhou Zhoukan magazine said Kim made the remark while meeting Nong Duc Manh, secretary-general of Vietnam’s Communist Party, in Pyongyang earlier this month.

It cited an interview with Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem who accompanied the secretary general.

“Chairman Kim Jong-Il highly evaluated the achievements Vietnam’s Doi Moi has made in the past 20 years while meeting with Secretary General Manh,” Khiem was quoted as saying, adding that Kim accepted Manh’s invitation to Hanoi.

The current trip to Hanoi by North Korean Prime Minister Kim Yong-Il aims to prepare for the leader’s visit, the magazine said.

Vietnam’s reforms ushered in dramatic growth but left the authority of the ruling communist party unchallenged.

North Korea’s command economy contracted for nine years in succession in the 1990s after the break-up of its ally the Soviet Union and the loss of crucial aid.

It suffered famine in the mid- to late-1990s in which hundreds of thousands died and still relies on international aid to feed millions of people.

In 2002 the regime introduced some reforms focused on introducing flexibility in state-set prices and granting workplaces and workers material incentives.

But it partially backtracked in 2005 by banning the private sale of grain and reinstituting centralised food rationing.

Following seven years of expansion the North’s economy shrank 1.1 percent last year, due partly to floods and the international standoff over its nuclear programme, South Korea’s central bank has estimated.

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