Abstract
A California non-profit's small wind power project offered a rare glimpse into daily life in a North Korean farming village.
The farm manager poses in front of the completed wind towers.
In the 1990s, relations between the United States and North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) have been tense, at times teetering on the edge of war. Nevertheless, the Nautilus Institute, a California-based non-profit, was able to take advantage of a humanitarian exemption in the U.S. sanctions regime to bring U.S. wind power technology to North Korea.
On October 6, a team of American energy specialists and their North Korean counterparts installed seven wind generators with just over 10 kilowatts of capacity at Unhari, a small coastal village 70 miles west of Pyongyang.
Small though the project is–it produces electricity for a village clinic, a kindergarten, and 20 homes–it marked the first time since the Korean War that American and North Korean technical teams have worked side by side on a construction project in the countryside. As such, it constituted a small but concrete step toward better relations that was carefully watched by both governments.
The energy crisis
The project permitted our team a rare glimpse into daily life in rural North Korea, where few outsiders are allowed to visit.
North Korea's infrastructure is in deep decline. We were struck by how drastically North Korea's energy crisis–its severe shortages of coal, oil, and electricity–has crippled the economy, including food production and distribution. These shortages result from a confluence of circumstances, including the drastic post-Cold War decline in petroleum imports after the heavily subsidized supply of Soviet oil came to an end, the accumulated inefficiencies of centralized command and control, and a series of natural disasters that have damaged coal mines, transmission lines, and generating facilities. These problems are further complicated by lack of maintenance and spare parts–which are in turn largely a consequence of fuel shortages in the transportation and industrial sectors.
In the area where we worked, rice is being planted and harvested by hand, in timeless, labor-intensive fashion. Even relatively well-to-do villages with functioning tractors do not have enough diesel fuel to operate them on a routine basis. Villages like Unhari save fuel for only the most essential functions. Meanwhile, the short-age of electricity limits the pumping of water–a critical issue in Unhari and at other farms dependent on irrigation for growing rice and maize. Threshing and food processing are similarly affected.
Muscle power and a twocylinder diesel tractor raise one of the towers.
The shortage of fossil fuels hits soil fertility with a double whammy. On the one hand, inputs of chemical fertilizer have been drastically reduced; on the other, crop wastes once used for composting are now burned in household stoves. Increased firewood collection puts ever greater pressure on an already deforested landscape. The lack of electricity and fuel makes it difficult to transport agricultural goods to the cities; we saw as many ox-drawn vehicles carrying grain as we did trucks–and not many of either.
Shortages of fossil fuels and electricity are entwined in a vicious circle. For example, some coal-burning electric power plants can't get the coal they need because it is transported by electric trains. But the trains can't operate because there is no electricity. Public transportation outside Pyongyang consists mainly of hitching rides on army trucks or on farm trailers pulled by tractors. Some people barter for rides, offering cigarettes to passing drivers, or in one instance, a fresh carp.
People appear to walk extraordinary distances, which must drastically reduce the time and energy they can spend in productive activities (every day we saw hundreds of people walking purposefully along the roadway many miles from the nearest town or factory).
The condition of the electric power grid is particularly appalling, with great fluctuations in voltage and frequency and frequent interruptions of service. Widely divergent frequency measurements reported in different parts of the country indicate that where there was once a unified national grid there are now a series of separate “islands.” North Koreans are already paying an enormous cost: the grid's virtual collapse has resulted in loss of productivity, the destruction of end-use equipment, and the near-impossibility of realistic planning. It is inconceivable that national reconstruction or economic transition can proceed until the grid is refurbished.
A member of a North Korean survey crew sights through a transit during a break.
As for the North Korean food crisis, we saw no evidence of famine in Unhari, which appears to be self-sufficient and has nearby urban markets for its produce. Nonetheless, we did see clear signs of scarcity in the surrounding area. Soldiers in uniform labored in the fields. People carried nets and fishing poles on the way to work or school, looking for targets of opportunity, and they picked edible weeds from train tracks and stream beds. On a major highway not far from Pyongyang we saw a substantial number of people stooped over on the road, picking up grain that had fallen off trucks. Trucks loaded with relief rice were invariably accompanied by armed guards.
If we did not see direct evidence of famine, it was nonetheless easy to develop a sense that in North Korea history is moving backwards. For instance, when the farm at Unhari began in 1974, there was regular electricity and the farm was substantially mechanized. A quarter century later, the same can no longer be said. In a once-modernized rural sector, most North Koreans appear to be reduced to working with their bare hands. The collapse of transportation and food distribution, the poor maintenance of buildings and vehicles, the high degree of dependence on imported equipment, the stoop-labor character of production, and the apparent need of many to scavenge for adequate nutrition were all evidence of pervasive decline.
Mick Sagrillo and a North Korean technician attach a guy wire to an anchor.
We did see one sign of change in the rural landscape between our first visit in May and our second in September. A small cooperative of private vendors had sprung up like mushrooms in the countryside. On our daily journeys to and from Unhari, we saw booths in villages and small towns selling food, cigarettes, and other goods. We were told that these vendors were officially authorized if they purchased a permit from the local authorities. We were, however, strictly forbidden to photograph them.
Getting started
Co-author Peter Hayes first met with Kim Yong Sun, a senior North Korean leader, in 1991, to discuss the nuclear issue then at the center of rapidly escalating tensions between North Korea and the United States. But after the October 1994 signing of the “Agreed Framework” (in which North Korea agreed to freeze its nuclear activities and the United States agreed to aid North Korea in energy development), the threat of conflict was at least temporarily defused. Sensing the need to create alternative avenues for peaceful engagement outside government channels, Nautilus shifted its focus to cooperative projects involving non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
If we did not see direct evidence of famine, it was easy to develop a sense that in North Korea history is moving backwards.
Recognizing that energy problems were a major cause of North Korea's deteriorating economy, in 1996 Nautilus and its Party-based “NGO” counterpart in Pyongyang, the Korean Anti-Nuclear Peace Committee, proposed a project involving an exchange of technical visits and the use of renewable energy technologies to address humanitarian needs. The proposal foundered for nearly two years because of the stormy atmospherics between the two countries, and political and bureaucratic maneuvering inside both.
But in the fall of 1997, the obstacles on both sides receded. The first concrete step was taken that November, when a delegation of North Koreans, including three engineers from the Ministry of Electric Power, visited the United States to learn more about renewable energy and energy efficiency. (Even this visit required highlevel U.S. government approval and the diligence of a junior State Department official in Washington, who used his private phone late at night to sort out a last-minute visa snafu at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.)
The group was taken on a whirlwind, coast-to-coast tour that included visits to two of the Energy Department's non-weapons laboratories, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, as well as to electric utilities, solar-cell and wind-turbine manufacturers, and private foundations and advocacy groups. In Washington, D.C., the delegation made the first-ever North Korean visits to the headquarters of the Energy Department and the World Bank; at these places the unofficial nature of the visits allowed for frank and informal discussions with senior officials. The visit had its lighter moments, too, as when one member of the delegation cheerfully waved a cowboy hat while driving an electric car, and when, at a solar facility in the Mojave Desert, a crusty operating engineer in a hard-hat greeted the delegation with a few words of Korean he had learned from his local grocers. (He was warmly thanked and bedecked with a Kim Il Sung lapel pin for his efforts.)
The tour concluded with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Nautilus and the Peace Committee. We agreed to use American equipment to build a wind power project to provide electricity to a flood-affected village, with in-country support to be supplied by the North Koreans.
After an exhaustive application process that cited humanitarian precedents for exemptions to the sanctions against North Korea–and a high-level interagency review that examined potential military uses of wind power technology as well as its political implications–the Commerce Department, gatekeeper of the sanctions regime, granted Nautilus an export license. One item on our list–a 486 personal computer that the Peace Committee wanted for communications and data collection–was rejected on the grounds that it exceeded the permissible processor speed listed in Bureau of Export Control regulations. All the other equipment–wind generators, batteries, control and monitoring equipment–was approved. The license required Nautilus to file reports to the U.S. government concerning implementation and compliance.
One of the North Korean engineers attaches blades to the hub of a wind generator.
In February, the project was funded by the W. Alton Jones Foundation, which also supported the earlier visit by the North Korean energy delegation.
Nautilus in North Korea
The Nautilus team of Peter Hayes, project manager Jim Williams, wind power engineer Mick Sagrillo, village electrification specialist Chris Greacen, and energy analyst David Von Hippel, visited North Korea twice last year. In May, working with counterparts from the Peace Committee and the Ministry of Electric Power, we chose the “March 3 Cooperative Farm” in Unhari as the project site.
The farm, which was built on reclaimed tidal lands, grows rice as its principal crop and also harvests fish and shellfish. Corn is grown in an upland area some distance from the village. Individual farmers grow vegetables and raise small livestock in the private garden plots that cover virtually every square meter of the village not occupied by buildings or roads. The population of about 600 households is composed almost entirely of the families of soldiers who were discharged from the military in 1973 and sent to do the reclamation work. By comparison with other villages we drove by in the area, Unhari looks somewhat more prosperous, but it is not a Potemkin-style “Friendship Village” constructed for the benefit of foreign visitors. It is a working farm that makes its livelihood mainly by selling rice to the state.
Although Unhari was connected to the grid, the supply of electricity was too intermittent to be used for essential applications.
Peter Hayes and Jim Williams pose with the farm manager and a doctor and a dentist in front of the Unhari clinic.
Other villages were also considered, but Unhari met the requirements of humanitarian need and adequate wind resources. (We saw dozens of “home-grown” wind generators in the surrounding area, in villages and on public buildings; most, unfortunately, were inoperable.) Unhari had been severely damaged by floods and tidal waves for three years in a row, starting in 1995. Although it was connected to the grid, the supply of electricity was too intermittent to be used for essential applications. Unhari was also relatively convenient, a two-hour trip from Pyongyang by car.
During our visit in May, the Nautilus team worked with North Korean engineers and technicians for a week, assessing conditions at the site, raising a tower, installing anemometers and electronic data-logging instruments, and visiting homes and public facilities to identify the appropriate humanitarian uses for the electricity that would be generated by the wind system.
It took a while to convince local authorities that we needed to visit the village clinic, and that it should be included in our electrification plans. As it turned out, their reluctance stemmed from a combination of embarrassment at the clinic's poor condition and jurisdictional issues–the clinic was actually an outpost of the nearest hospital, not directly under village control. In the end, we did tour the clinic and found that it sorely needed electricity to power lights and grind herbs, to keep medicine refrigerated, and to heat the hot plate the village dentist uses to make dentures. Although there was an atmosphere of give-and-take on this and other matters, when we invoked our memorandum of understanding, our North Korean hosts honored its terms. In retrospect, having a joint document with objectives and responsibilities spelled out in advance was essential to the success of our mission.
Our May visit gave the newcomers on our team an opportunity to adapt psychologically to conditions in North Korea, including restrictions on our movements and the need to ask permission for many things, such as taking photographs. They also had to learn to accept no for an answer.
In May, we also visited Pyongyang, a showcase city of monumental buildings, hauntingly dark at night because of the energy shortage. The Nautilus team visited the Pyongyang Electric Appliance Factory to examine first-generation North Korean wind generators and to discuss the possibility of North Korean energy specialists obtaining technical training in the United States. We also discussed the possibility of joint-venture manufacturing of equipment such as wind generators and energy-efficient lighting after the lifting of sanctions.
On our return to the United States, we began to prepare for the upcoming installation, updating our designs and making contingency plans. We were able to ship a five-ton container of equipment and supplies via a South Korean shipping company that was already involved in delivering food to the North. This route was cheaper, faster, and more reliable than shipping via China–the route used for most relief supplies. In the meantime, our North Korean colleagues built a small powerhouse to our specifications, stockpiled construction materials in preparation for our visit, and faxed us wind resource data downloaded from the data-loggers we had installed in May. The wind resource data enabled us to fine-tune the design.
Tilting up windmills
Nautilus's second visit to Unhari took place from September 19 to October 6, when we returned to erect a small wind farm in the middle of a cabbage field. Our team worked with a dozen counterparts from the Ministry of Electric Power and other agencies, including the Center for Non-Conventional Energy and the Onchon County power bureau. The group was divided into three work teams–one to raise the wind turbine towers, one to install equipment in the powerhouse, and one to conduct a survey of energy use in the village and direct the connection of the village's electrical loads to the wind system. Each team was led by an American specialist with a North Korean engineer as counterpart, a translator from the Peace Committee, and two or three additional North Korean technicians. When extra manual labor was required for trench-digging or pouring concrete, as many as 40 of Unhari's farmers also helped out.
The construction work went smoothly. Our technical counterparts were competent, enthusiastic, and fast. Raising 100-foot steel towers with heavy wind generators on top, even when assisted by rickety tractors, is a physically demanding process; in overcoming together the inevitable small setbacks and cuts and bruises, a playful and apparently genuine camaraderie developed between the two sides. Juggling with dirt clods, bowling with discarded wire reels, and rolling dice made from paper scraps became popular pastimes in odd moments. On many occasions, our common scientific training bridged communication gaps when translators were unavailable or our technical terminology was beyond the limits of their knowledge. More than a few technical challenges were resolved through impromptu schematics and equations scratched into the sandy soil.
North Korean engineers instruct the local powerhouse operator in how to collect data.
Our preliminary visit in May allowed us to anticipate virtually every tool and part we needed to include in our shipment of supplies–critical because North Korea has no corner hardware stores where one can easily replace a missing bolt or find a length of wire.
Getting the shipment to Unhari, however, required a heroic effort by our hosts. The only working container-ship crane in Nampo, a major port city, broke down in early September. Although it had arrived well in advance of our visit, the South Korean vessel carrying our container, the M. V. Sona, sat in anchorage for more than a week waiting for the crane to be repaired. On the eve of the Nautilus team's arrival in the village, our Peace Committee hosts used all the leverage at their disposal to bring in a barge-mounted crane. When the floating crane arrived, another vessel already in the midst of unloading was abruptly ordered by the harbormaster to vacate its berth so the Sona could dock and unload our container. The shipment was waiting for us in the village when we arrived.
Our hosts were jubilant–and a little stunned at having succeeded in spite of the obstacles.
As a result, we were able to accomplish all of our main objectives during a 17-day visit. We installed seven wind generators totalling 11.2 kilowatts and connected them to a battery bank and power conditioning equipment that in turn allowed the wind system to supply electricity to the clinic, the village kindergarten, and 20 households. We also provided operations and maintenance training, and established procedures for the North Koreans to collect data on system performance and share it with us by fax after our departure. The village assigned one of its two electricians as the full-time caretaker and data collector for the system.
Surprisingly, we were also able to survey 67 households and complete an energy survey and baseline socioeconomic assessment of the village. We trained a North Korean survey team, which conducted most of the house-to-house interviews. But we were also able to visit a number of houses ourselves, to monitor the progress and methods of the team, and to confirm the survey results through inspection of energy-consuming devices.
The survey produced results that will certainly improve the international community's sketchy understanding of conditions in rural North Korea. Perhaps most significantly, the survey gave us an unprecedented level of access to ordinary North Koreans. At one house, our arrival interrupted preparations for a marriage feast that was to take place the next day. Almost instantly a setting of rice cakes and other Korean treats was laid out for five visitors by our smiling hostess. (We could only hope that this spontaneous act of traditional hospitality did not impoverish the wedding feast.)
Our project also had a Chinese component. With the concurrence of our North Korean partners, we enlisted the aid of an NGO in Beijing to help us solve the problem of how to provide energy-efficient light bulbs and refrigerators. Our Chinese counterparts were able to supply Chinese appliances, which operate at the same voltage and frequency as North Korean appliances. (That China is now mass-producing energy-efficient appliances is itself a testament to the effectiveness of the “Green Lights” program, a joint project of the U.S. Energy Department and the Chinese government.) Our North Korean hosts indicated that they were happy to have Chinese participation in NGO projects, and a new memorandum of understanding, signed on the last day of our visit, explicitly provides for trilateral cooperation in the next stage of our project.
Lessons learned
Although small in scale and technologically simple, our village wind power project was nonetheless politically and logistically challenging. Yet it was carried out successfully in less than a year by American and North Korean teams working side by side with a generally courteous, upbeat, and cooperative spirit. Perhaps the most important lesson we learned was simply that it is possible to “do business” with North Koreans. Our counterparts signed an agreement and honored their written commitments, which included erecting buildings, providing competent personnel, allowing necessary access, and making adequate logistical arrangements.
This demonstration of good faith implies that, at a higher political level, members of North Korea's leadership were willing to expend political capital to move bureaucratic mountains (and container ships!) to make the project succeed. For example, while the unprecedented household survey conducted by our team was essential to determine the electrical loads powered by the wind system, it inevitably touched on many sensitive aspects of the rural economy and village social structure. By permitting the survey, our hosts showed that they were willing to take risks in order to secure cooperation with the United States–including the risk of increased transparency.
By the same token, an American organization demonstrated to the North Koreans that it too would hold up its end of a bargain. We believe that many North Koreans–both in the village and in Pyongyang–doubted that the U.S. government would allow the project to be completed. Our hosts were genuinely jubilant at the close of the mission–and perhaps a little stunned at having succeeded in spite of the obstacles. It was evident that the wind-generator towers–visible for miles around in the flat coastal landscape–were placed where they could be seen as a symbol of the tangible benefits of cooperating with the United States.
During our brief time in the village, we also learned that while a technical project might be initiated by the Party in Pyongyang, it also required the active support of the specialized line agencies and local authorities who must mobilize labor and materials to make it happen. We saw this up close when our Peace Committee colleagues had to bargain with the farm manager to include the village clinic in the project, extend the household survey to randomly selected houses, and obtain farm labor at the peak of the harvest season. These negotiations may complicate decision-making and take time, but they also demonstrate the importance of technical logic and local welfare concerns relative to purely political considerations. The strong localism we saw first-hand is one factor that may explain the seeming resilience of the North Korean system a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and in the face of widespread famine.
Surrounded by members of the Nautilus and North Korean teams, the farm manager flips the switch on a 4.5-kilowatt turbine.
As the description of equations drawn in the dirt indicates, the common thread of scientific training on both sides greatly facilitated technical communication across language barriers. The engineers and technicians we met were well-educated, nimble-minded, and eager learners. Often, when an American team member tried to bend his back to manual labor or to perform a task already demonstrated to the North Korean team, he would find himself gently urged to hand over his tool to a Korean, who would then wield it expertly. If this combination of competence and “can-do” attitude is common among North Korea's technical class, it augurs well for reunification, and it stands as a counterpoint to the argument that North Korea has only a poor, unskilled, and demoralized labor force.
At the same time, differences in engineering and safety culture practices occasionally led to minor conflicts. For example, our teams held very different ideas regarding the best way to ground a wind system for protection against lightning strikes. In another case, an important piece of equipment was slightly damaged in shipping. The Nautilus team's conservative judgment was that, for safety reasons, the equipment should probably not be used. But that was in direct conflict with the North Koreans' desire to forge ahead despite the damage, which admittedly had only a slight chance of producing a dangerous situation. It was necessary in both cases to take some time out to reconcile our different approaches, and occasionally, to let tempers cool. But good will prevailed, and both sides converged in the end on an agreed set of safety guidelines.
Formal contingency plans may help avoid these kinds of problems in the future. Nonetheless, unanticipated problems inevitably arise. Although we must recognize that American-style engineering practices may not be technically or economically appropriate in all situations, we must also realize that the political cost of failure is very high, and neither side can afford to permit problems to occur that could lead the other to point fingers later on.
In March, an equipment failure occurred at Unhari that led to the disabling of a 4.5-kilowatt turbine and its transformer, representing two-fifths of the output of the system. Nautilus is currently designing both interim and long-term solutions to the problem, which, in our judgment, resulted from a manufacturer's design flaw, and we plan to return to Unhari as soon as possible to carry out repairs. This incident highlights the fact that projects like ours do not simply start and end, but generate their own dynamics with many possibilities for engagement. Still, given the high cost of a “house call” to North Korea–at least $20,000 in our case–U.S.-based NGOs working in North Korea must have great stamina if they are to succeed in cooperative engagement over the long haul.
Our project also uncovered other potential problems for NGOs. One moderately severe health problem on our team–which fortunately was safely resolved–highlighted the fact that obtaining emergency medical services in North Korea is an iffy proposition. Transport is often unavailable, communications by telephone is sometimes impossible, and a Medevac plane arriving in North Korean airspace risks being shot down. NGOs working on the ground in North Korea need to insist on the establishment of protocols for emergency evacuation and emergency communication.
Nautilus asked for copies of laws and codes regarding building, electrical wiring, workplace safety, and environmental standards, but they were never supplied. This left us working in the dark, at risk of unknowingly violating North Korean laws, with unknown consequences. Again, gently insisting that North Korea provide such information in compliance with international practice would not only enable NGOs to be more confident, it would also help to integrate North Korea into the international community.
The future
The massive problems currently faced by North Korea can only be adequately addressed by intergovernmental actions. Unfortunately, it seems possible that, by mid-year, U.S.-North Korean cooperative engagement may fall victim to partisan politics in Congress. That outcome can be avoided if the policy review being conducted by former Defense Secretary William Perry, widely anticipated at this writing, stimulates the United States to preserve the original Agreed Framework by supplementing it with new commitments by both sides.
At such a critical juncture, NGOs can play a low-cost, high-leverage role in helping to shape the course of future actions. They can help to build confidence on both sides by developing small, on-the-ground projects with rapid results. They can also model businesslike, give-and-take relationships, as Nautilus has attempted to do, keeping all the concerned governments fully informed of activities and interactions.
NGOs can also help update the world's psychic map of North Korea, replacing stereotypes with real information. They can align key players in each capital and provide communications channels between them. And they can build personal relationships and trust to bridge the gap between the centralized and personalistic decision-making system in Pyongyang, and its decentralized and legalistic counterpart in Washington. In short, they can act as “translators” at crucial points.
NGOs may not have the capacity to propel the ship, but they can help navigate and sound warnings to change course to safer waters. Even a change of a few degrees can make the difference between a successful voyage and running disastrously aground on the reefs of international politics.