Great Confiscation Updates
The Daily NK reports that the regime is trying to blame the need for the Great Confiscation on foreign enemies and domestic capitalists:
It continued, “Our people have suffered from famine due to natural disaster and imperialist anti-republic maneuvers and irrational residents’ attempted activities to gain not social and national benefit, but private benefit.
“This phenomenon has been generated temporarily during the completion of our socialist country, and the Party and the Fatherland have been getting through these difficulties on the principle of putting the priority on the people’s convenience.
The South Korean government is watching North Korea closely for signs of internal unrest, notes the Donga Ilbo:
The South Korean government believes riots could erupt in North Korea following the communist country’s currency revaluation last week, an official in Seoul said yesterday. The fear is that North Koreans could riot over losing their hard-earned cash or clash with authorities in the process of a government crackdown. The government official said Seoul is paying keen attention to the unstable internal situation in North Korea following its surprise currency reform.
Elsewhere, Yonhap notes that officially, the South Korean government denies knowledge that the North Korean military is on any heightened state of alert.
I find myself in rare agreement with Rudiger Frank, quoted in the Chosun Ilbo:
“Temporary discontent will be quelled and the North Korean regime will emerge victorious over the short term,” said North Korea expert Rudiger Frank, an East German who studied at Kim Il Sung University. “But the experience of former socialist countries is that disappointment and discontent pile up silently and gradually lead to revolutionary circumstances.” Frank said public discontent ends up erupting at times like a leader’s death, famine, external shock or domestic unrest.
More rare agreement, with the U.S. Institute of Peace:
If the DPRK government had improved and restored the inconsistent Public Distribution System and other public services on a national basis (a massive undertaking), a revaluation may have triggered greater state control by minimizing the benefits from the non-formal market system and making the North Korean people dependent on the state again. It does not appear that the DPRK government has improved these national systems. In an apparent effort to restore discipline through this revaluation, the DPRK government may have initiated a period of economic, social, and political destabilization by undermining a widely used coping mechanism for the people, as well as a growing number of officials.