North Korea is looking to raise $39 million from foreign investors to fund a new brewery in Wonsan, an eastern port city where leader Kim PudgeJong-un
...the overweight, pouty-looking hereditary potentate of North Korea. Pudge appears to believe in his own divinity, but has yet to produce any loaves and fishes, so his subjects remain malnourished...
has big development ambitions.
The isolated country recently announced more than 100 separate projects seeking foreign investment in the Wonsan-Kumgang Development Zone, a mountainous region where leader Kim keeps palaces and a summer residence.
"They're looking at this as a new East Asian business and tourism hub," said Michael Spavor, an independent consultant who is helping a Wonsan investment committee seek more than $150 million in foreign funds, including for the brewery.
If you're doing that then you haven't been paying attention.
"It's a nice area, it's on the coast,
... convenient for a quick getaway on a fast boat at night...
and it has the same qualities and infrastructure that once made places like Shenzhen and Hong Kong such attractive investment zones," said Spavor, who will lead a delegation of investors to Pyongyang next month to discuss the brewery and other projects.
Except it doesn't have Deng Xiao Ping. Instead it's got a lunatic kid running things.
North Korea is home to over 20 special economic and development zones which use a grey market exchange rate to value the local currency and contain separate economic laws, even allowing foreign entities to sue the state in the event of a break of contract.