Sinŭiju Special Administrative Region is a special administrative region (SAR) of North Korea proclaimed in 2002 (but have not put into de facto operation till now), on the border with China. It was established in September 2002 in an area including parts of Sinŭiju and the surrounding area, in an attempt to introduce market economics, and is directly governed as in the case of "Directly Governed Cities". The special administrative region was modelled after China's Special Administrative Regions (SARs), Hong Kong and Macau, and, like them, has a "Basic Law" (기본법; Kibonpŏp).
Chinese-Dutch businessman Yang Bin was appointed to be the first governor by the SPA Presidium in 2002. Before he formally assumed his post, he was arrested by Chinese authorities and sentenced to 18 years in prison for tax evasion and other economic crimes. While the North Korean authorities soon announced that the development of the Sinŭiju SAR would continue and the SAR was put under the administration of its Commission of Foreign Economic Cooperation Promotion, the plans for the SAR seem to have been abandoned. As of April 2008, the SAR reforms still have not been put into effect, and it is widely believed that North Korea has abandoned the project after the governor's arrest. Sha Rixiang (沙日香) has been the governor since 2004.
Famous quotes containing the words special and/or region:
“Those of us who are in this world to educate—to care for—young children have a special calling: a calling that has very little to do with the collection of expensive possessions but has a lot to do with the worth inside of heads and hearts. In fact, that’s our domain: the heads and hearts of the next generation, the thoughts and feelings of the future.”
—Fred M. Rogers, U.S. writer and host of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. “That Which is Essential Is Invisible to the Eye,” Young Children (July 1994)
“It was the most wild and desolate region we had camped in, where, if anywhere, one might expect to meet with befitting inhabitants, but I heard only the squeak of a nighthawk flitting over. The moon in her first quarter, in the fore part of the night, setting over the bare rocky hills garnished with tall, charred, and hollow stumps or shells of trees, served to reveal the desolation.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)