Chuck Gould wrote:
Tom Francis wrote:
Might want to watch this. It's kind of long, but worth the effort.

http://maccise.com/2006/07/welcome-to-north-korea.html

Speaking of North Korea, I'd be surprised if there are any recreational
boats in that country at all. Ol' Kim probably goes boating in
something armor plated, with 50-calibers mounted on the decks, and a
Kevlar clad crew.

Chinese boats, even mainland Chinese boats, are pretty well accepted in
the marketplace these days- and many of them are decently or better
built. I suspect that anybody trying to bring in boats from North Korea
wouldn't find a receptive market right now, and it wouldn't matter how
much boat you could buy for how little.

North Korean don't need to export to western market. They could have
exported very low-priced recreational boats to China. Their labor cost
is even lower than that's in China, and can be competitive in China
market. With large number of Chinese buying cars nowaday and having a
car is no longer as high a "status symbol" as before, I will not be
surprised to see Chinese start buying recreational boats. Currently,
North Korean is exporting a lot of stuff to China (at a very
competitive price); there is no reason why North Korean cannot export
other items such as recreational boats.

But the weather is cold in North Korea and will limit the number of
months when they can produce boats without additional heating; this may
be the factor that prevents them to be an actor in boat-building
industry, right? I am just speculating.

Jay Chan