It has been learned that North Korean trading firms are making all out efforts to fulfill a "loyalty foreign-exchange earning campaign" designed to colorfully celebrate Kim Jong Il's 60th birthday, falling on February 16 next year. Particularly as one's 60th birthday carries special significance in the Orient.

"Having decided to mark Kim's 60th birthday in a scale much bigger than the past, North Korean authorities have raised the trading firms' foreign exchange earning targets for this year 10% above the level of last year," said a South Korean trader who has recently been to the North. "Trading companies of the North are hence wholly occupied in the loyalty foreign-exchange earning campaign these days." All the foreign exchange they earn goes to Office No. 39 of the Workers' Party, an outfit taking charge of Kim Jong Il's funds.

"Those trading firms are obligated to fulfill by January next year the foreign exchange quotas allotted to them in connection with Kim's 60th birthday," added the trader. "To materialize exports adequate to meet the quota before the deadline, they are assuming a positive attitude toward trade with the South."

North Korean trading firms are reportedly offering South Korean importers such specialties as pine mushrooms from Mount Chilbo in North Hamgyong Province, which are now being harvested in earnest, and blueberries from the high elevated areas of Mount Baekdu at favorable prices. "They can earn more money by exporting them to Japan," said another South Korean trader with the North. "In view of the campaign's deadline just around the corner, however, they are inclined to sell them to South Korean traders at cheaper prices."

Trading companies of the North engaged in processing on commission, also apparently motivated by Kim Jong Il's 60th birthday, ask their South Korean counterparts to place more orders with them than before. A major business conglomerate's official in charge of trade with the North said, "The attitude on the part of North Korean firms we deal with has changed markedly since early last month. The most conspicuous change is that they have begun making requests for more orders using in telex messages such expressions as 'we're sorry for...’ and ‘thank you for…,’ an unprecedented practice on their part."

(Lee Kyo Kwan, haedang@chosun.com )