DPR Korea: UN agency suspends operations over hard currency payments, local staff

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has suspended its operations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and will withdraw all but two of its international staff by the end of this week over the failure to implement conditions set up following reports that UN funds improperly went to the Government.

“It became clear in our exchanges with the Korean Government that there was a desire to re-open issues that we considered non-negotiable and in that circumstance we had no choice,” UNDP spokesman David Morrison told a news briefing at UN Headquarters in New York today of the conditions which included ending all hard currency payments and discontinuing sub-contracting of national staff via government recruitment as of 1 March.

The conditions, adopted by UNDP’s Executive Board in January, also included adjusting the content of current programmes to support sustainable human development goals.

“There was a meeting with the DPRK authorities on 1 March and it became clear to us that we could not be in compliance with the conditions set out by our own Executive Board,” Mr. Morrison said. The DPRK has been subject to UN Security Council sanctions since October following its proclaimed nuclear test.

“The two conditions with dates had to do with the use of internationally convertible currency in some of our payments and the practice employing as national staff Korean Government employees on secondment from national ministries,” he added.

UNDP’s programmes in the country are now undergoing external audit after press reports suggested its own audits raised concerns about payments being channelled to the Government. Mr. Morrison said agency spending on the DPRK over that past 10 years totalled $47.5 million, of which about 40 to 60 per cent was spent in the country.

Out of the current nine international staff in Pyongyang, the DPRK capital – eight UNDP and one-UNDP administered staff – seven, including the Resident Representative, will leave the country by 17 March.

The agency will leave two international staff, the Deputy Resident Representative and the Operations Manager, to complete the suspension and support the independent external audit. UNDP is also putting in place measures in Pyongyang for safekeeping of records to ensure that they can be made available to the auditors.

Most of the 22 national staff, comprised of 16 office staff and six project staff, will cease to work for UNDP by 15 March. UNDP has requested that four national staff remain for the period that the Deputy Resident Representative and the Operations Manager are in Pyongyang. These staff will provide basic support services. UNDP will continue to lease the office premises for the duration of the suspension.

After the issue came to light in January, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon promised an external, system-wide probe of UN activities in the field, targeting as his first priority countries where hard currency transactions, independence of staff hiring and access to review local projects were an issue and beginning with the DPRK.