New Focus on North Korea’s changing economy

They paint a vivid picture of an economy in a halting transition:

* For better or for worse, loan sharks who trade in currency and their connections to the regime have become an important part of the new economy.

* How businessmen make donations to regime projects to buy indulgences — letters of appreciation — from the regime, and use them as amulets against its enforcers of dependency.

* The decay of the Public Distribution System (PDS) continues to progress.  Teachers has been among the most favored recipients of state rations until recently.  Now, they moonlight as traders in the jangmadang to get by.  Who in North Korea still lives on the PDS?  From what I’ve read recently, it seems to be going the way of the pay phone, even in Pyongyang.

* There is also a fascinating report about the Ryugyong Corporation, which controls North Korea’s illicit drug business at all levels of vertical integration.  The report paints a surprisingly nuanced view of how Kim Jong Il would control these illicit activities overseas.  There was more negotiation and less outright coercion than I would have thought, and the report seems credible and well-sourced, although the estimate of “tens of thousands” of dollars a year seems implausibly low.