By Troy Stangarone
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As nighttime satellite imagery suggests, power is a scarce resource in North Korea. Beyond the elite, Pyongyang has largely failed in providing power to the rest of the country. According to estimates from the International Energy Agency, only 11 percent of rural North Koreans have access to electricity and only 36 percent of the country as a whole does.
Of course, North Korea isn't the only country that largely remains dark at night. This is common in rural parts of Haiti and a number of countries in Africa. However, North Korea is an outlier in Asia. The only other country in the region with rural access to electricity even below 50 percent is Myanmar where 46 percent of the rural population has access to electricity.
Given North Korea's underdevelopment, the United States and South Korea need to consider how best to pursue economic growth in North Korea should Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons and open the door to economic engagement. Including, how stringently to hold North Korea to international standards.
So far the discussion of economic engagement with North Korea has moved on separate tracks in Seoul and Washington. While Seoul contemplates the types of economic projects that it would like to pursue with North Korea should sanctions be lifted, the United States more vaguely discusses the promise of the North Korean economy should Pyongyang make the strategic decision to give up its nuclear weapons.
Having a more unified approach to economic engagement with North Korea would help to ease the potential for tensions in the alliance if progress is made on the denuclearization front, as well as ensure that there is a common vision on how to support marketization and more inclusive economic growth.
How to expand access to electricity in North Korea is just one area to consider.
New research suggests that there may be a way to produce energy at night when the sun cannot power solar cells. In a recent paper published in Joule, Dr. Aaswath Raman and his colleagues demonstrate how to produce power from the nighttime sky.
When the sun goes down, buildings and other objects begin to cool and often drop below the temperature of the surrounding air. This difference in heat can be used to produce electricity.
The device developed by Dr. Raman and his colleague is currently only able to provide enough electricity to power a single light bulb, but with wind and solar power often unable to provide power at night this new technology could serve as an important form of supplemental power. It also has the advantage of being produced from more resilient materials so it should have a longer life span than solar cells or wind turbines.
Rural electrification issues aren't likely to be on the agenda for talks between the United States and North Korea on dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons programs, but they will have an impact on the success of any agreement's ability to provide economic benefits to North Korea.
Where and how North Korea provides power to its population will shape its future economic development and help to determine which segments of the population will be able to engage in economic activities. There have been suggestions that in any new deal, Pyongyang would want to retain the ability to produce electricity from nuclear power and not completely give up its nuclear technology even if it abandons its nuclear weapons programs. This would be the least efficient way to power North Korea and likely leave rural North Koreans in the dark.
Efforts to generate power from temperature differences at night may be a long way off, but along with other renewable energy sources they offer an interesting opportunity to address the issue of rural electrification, North Korea's desire for energy independence, and economic growth without nuclear or coal-fired plants.
Small scale wind and solar power can be quickly and relatively cheaply deployed. North Koreans have already begun to turn to solar power to make up for the deficiencies in North Korea's ability to produce energy nationwide.
The North Korean government will also have its own vision of how it wants the economy to develop and the benefits of economic growth to be divided. Any engagement will naturally have to be a compromise between North Korea's vision and that of countries such as the United States and South Korea.
But Seoul and Washington should know where they will and will not need reforms to engage economically in North Korea. Who gets to turn the lights on at night is only one of those potential areas.
Troy Stangarone (ts@keia.org) is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute.
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