Daily NK: Rising banditry in N. Korea

As respect for the law disappears and a regular market economy is not introduced in North Korea, the trend to earn money by any means ““ fair or foul – has dominated. For instance, even in the daytime soldiers or gangsters stop trucks and rob them of their freight. Such incidents are occurring frequently. [Daily NK, Yoon Il Geun]

Amid a number of reports of this kind, you have to wonder about the broader implications of groups of armed men roving the countryside with guns, operating beyond the reach of the law or flirting with mutiny. For most of them, the motives probably have more to do with survival than anything else.

At the same time, you can see the potential for such groups to develop a political consciousness if they begin sharing their loot with the local population in exchange for shelter. Such a symbiotic relationship inevitably draws a government response against the local population itself, pitting it and “its” fighters against the state.

See also:  the rise of anarchy is also taking its toll on the North Korean rail system.

Update:   Here’s another one for the Phase II file.  Those of you who have read “Famine in North Korea” will recall that several years ago, the North Korean regime began squeezing the people to buy government bonds.  As you might have expected, the people who want to cash those bonds are finding that  they can’t get anything of intrinsic value for them. 

What’s an oligarchy to do?   If it’s an absolute last resort, you can expand the ruling  class.  And so the regime is now selling party memberships in exhange for its worthless junk bonds. 

That’s more significant than it seems at first glance.  This regime’s survival balances on  an fragile  system of preferences in the  distribution of its resources, with an obscenely  disproportionate share going  to a trusted few.  Expanding that ruling class dilutes the whole system of privilege and the ideological significance of party membership.  It means social mobility, the dissolution of the songbun system, the replacement of loyalty with money, linking success with a financial incentive,  and access to the levers of power by people who don’t conform to the ideological norms.