Pyeongwha Motors, the joint venture company between North Korea’s Ryonbong General Corporation and South Korea’s Unification Church which produces a small range of cars and people carriers at a factory near Nampo, has reported a profit for the first time in its history, remitting 640,000,000 Won (approx. $500,000) to its Seoul headquarters this month.
According to a release on the company website, 2009 has been a good one so far, with the company selling 706 vehicles in the first half of the year, surpassing the 653 that it sold in the entirety of 2008.
The company expects to have sold more than 1500 vehicles by the year’s end.
Pyeongwha (“Peace” in Korean) Motors was formed after the leader of the Unification Church, Rev. Moon Sung Myung, met Kim Il Sung in the early 1990s. An agreement was signed in 1998, and production began at the $55 million factory in 2002. A trickle of vehicles has been sold annually ever since, with the company importing kits from Italy’s Fiat and Chinese firm Brilliance, finishing them in Nampo and selling them domestically.
According to South Korea’s Yonhap, Pyeongwha’s spokesman Roh Byoung Chun called the remittance “symbolic” and noted, “We hope this can bring hope to people doing business in North Korea; that anyone can go there and bring back profits.”
The North Korean government, the owner of Ryonbong and therefore a 30% stakeholder in the venture, received $200,000.
The Yonhap report points out that, since most other joint ventures in the North manufacture there for export, not putting anything on sale in the country itself, this is the first time an inter-Korean venture has managed to turn a profit and remit it back to Seoul, a process which in itself took the better part of three months.
