With the arrival of the pine nut harvesting season, the Ministry of External Economic Relations recently ordered provincial trade bureaus to quickly buy up pine nuts for export to China, Daily NK has learned.
A source in Yanggang Province told Daily NK last Thursday that provincial trade bureaus nationwide had been ordered to buy up all the pine nuts in their provinces.
“In Yanggang Province, they were gathering up pine nuts in every forest,” he said.
In short, North Korea plans to cheaply purchase all the available pine nuts so they can be secretly trafficked to China, even as the authorities strictly ban private traders from smuggling the nuts.
In fact, with private smugglers unable to approach the border, the Ministry of External Economic Relations gave the first order to quickly buy up pine nuts for state-led smuggling in August. It then issued the same order on Sept. 5.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, private smugglers traded pine nuts on their own, forcing state-owned companies tasked with earning foreign currency to pay high prices for the pine nuts they sold to China.
But with the border closed for nearly three years due to the pandemic and smuggling halted as a result, the price of pine nuts has not climbed very much.
According to the source, city and county-level companies in Yanggang Province tasked with earning foreign currency are working hard to leverage the opportunity to buy pine nuts at bargain prices.
Meanwhile, local people — no longer able to engage in smuggling due to the border closure, even if they have pine nuts on hand — are biting the bullet and selling their previously highly priced nuts to the companies for a pittance, and are trying to turn over even more nuts to the companies so they can earn a few pennies more.
The source said Yanggang Province’s local branches of the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security have been ordered to earn money through the collection and sale of pine nuts to China.
“The authorities have quietly ordered city and county branches of the Ministry of State Security and Ministry of Social Security to secretly get moving, telling them that they could survive on the money until next year’s pine nut season,” he said.
With various government agencies and trading companies buying up pine nuts, local people are finding it fortunate the state is buying up nuts this year — even at bargain prices — after two years of letting whatever pine nuts they had rot unsold at home.
Daily NK’s source said that the Ministry of External Economic Relations has designated the Samjang Customs House in Taehongdan County in Yanggang Province as the point of exit for the pine nuts.
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