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China-Japan-Koreas | ||||
Report: NK Turning Into China`s `Industrial Waste Dump` | ||||
2009-12-01 | ||||
Daily NK, a media outlet on North Korean affairs, quoted a source in the North’s South Hamkyong Province as saying, “The soil survey research center at Hamhung Institute of Technology released a research paper on its study of land pollution resulting from burial of industrial waste from China and a letter urging countermeasures to the Central Committee of the (North Korean) Workers’ Party. The institute was dismantled and senior officials and researchers were all purged.” “The research paper details how China’s industrial waste is sent to North Korea and dumped,” the source said, adding, “It also strongly warns against the practice of North Korean factories lacking sewage treatment facilities and freely dumping sewage into rivers freely.”
The source also said North Korean scientists sent the research paper and the letter to committee secretary Choe Tae Bok. The committee soon closed the institute and purged its staff, saying, “The scientists violated rules by reporting the matter directly to the party secretary without going through the required process.”
Dong Yong-seung, head of the economics and security team at Samsung Economic Research Institute in Seoul, said, “Though no data is available that can tell us the exact situation, Chinese companies might believe that sending industrial waste to North Korea for burial is cheaper than disposing of it in China in compliance with Chinese environmental regulations.
Certain North Korean agencies that raised foreign currency earned double profit by reselling goods China and other countries paid to have thrown away instead of disposing of them. Former North Korean defector Kang Chol-hyon, now a researcher at the Institute for National Security and Strategy in Seoul, said, “Agencies that raise foreign currency bring in thrown away plastic containers, tires and cooking oil from China and elsewhere, and often sell them on the market.” | ||||
Posted by:Steve White |