| Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers holdings and Beeland Interests / Yonhap |
By Kim Bo-eun
Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers holdings and Beeland Interests, is set to visit to North Korea next month, according to a local report. The legendary U.S. investor earlier expressed interest in investing in the country.
He was invited by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, and the U.S. government approved the visit, according to a source cited by the Kyunghyang Shinmun. Rogers did not respond to an email query on the matter.
The invitation by the North Korean leader is seen to reflect Kim Jong-un's eagerness to open up the country's economy, at a time it is engaging in a process to trade its nuclear program for economic incentives. Last April, Kim stated economic development would be the regime's utmost priority. Economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council currently bar any investments from taking place.
Cheong Wa Dae viewed the potential visit to the North after a second summit between Washington and Pyongyang from Feb. 27 to 28 as a highly significant move.
While it is the U.S. State Department's official stance that sanctions on the North will not be lifted until it achieves complete denuclearization, views are that the U.S. could grant partial alleviation of economic sanctions if it pledges to take significant denuclearization steps at the upcoming summit.
North Korea is known to have been consistently calling for sanctions to be eased in denuclearization talks with the U.S. Attention is growing over whether it will get partial relief, which would enable the reopening of the inter-Korean Gaeseong Industrial Complex and the resumption of tours to Mount Geumgang ― two projects Pyongyang is eager to restart.
Rogers said North Korea would be the country attracting the most attention in the world for the next 20 years if the Korean Peninsula were to be unified and the North's economy opened up, on a show on local broadcaster KBS last month.
The capital and know-how in the South and natural resources and skilled and low-cost labor in the North would provide a huge opportunity, he said.
The investor compared North Korea's situation to China under Deng Xiaoping in 1981. Deng spearheaded market-economy reforms in China, which opened the country to foreign investment and the global market.
Rogers recently became the outside director of Ananti, which owns a large-scale resort at Mount Geumgang in North Korea.
He moved to Singapore in 2007, based on his belief that it would be a ground-breaking time for investing in markets in Asia.