“Economic Reform” Update

David Schofield thinks that in North Korea, economic reform is becoming just another scheme for enriching the elite at the expense of everyone else:

While the United Nations urgently appeals for food aid for severely malnourished North Koreans, that nation has reaped a bumper harvest and there’s food aplenty – provided you can pay for it, and most people cannot. In fact, South Korea is planning to import chicken and duck meat from the North – initially just 100 tons, but with more to come.
. . . .

Far from offering more opportunities and a better standard of living to the average North Korean, modest economic liberalization has proved a most efficient method to enrich further the country’s rulers and the highest strata of the elite, while postponing development and continuing the famine for millions.

The “market liberalization” scheme in North Korea created an immediate windfall for those who held hard currency (read: friends of the leadership), as the official exchange rate was adjusted to reflect more accurately the value of the currency. Today the North Korean won trades “unofficially” at around 1,600 won to the US dollar, up from 153 in July 2002.

Yes, it certainly seems suspect that a nation that has 500,000 starving people and which blocks aid groups from feeding them is exporting its nutrition as a cash crop. Interestingly, Schofield says that the reform has actually improved conditions for the rural population, while greatly worsening them for the urban population.