North Korean market traders are fighting The Man

Via Yonhap:

“It’s not that hard nowadays to see women stand up to despotic wardens and security agents while shaking their fingers at them at jangmadang,” the Radio Free Asia (RFA) said, citing a source in Pyongyang who recently visited China. “In such cases, nearby observers also join in and push the officials, something that was very rare to see just a few years ago.”

Now North Korean people are no longer giving in to officials unconditionally, the source said.

A Chinese businessman, who frequents the North’s Rason Special Economic Zone, also said: “Traffic wardens usually blow whistles to stop motor bikers whenever they see them on the road in order to extort money from them. As of late, more than half of the motorbikers, however, do not follow the order and just drive away.

“It was rare to see people daring to neglect wardens’ crackdowns not too long ago,” he said.

People have even begun to challenge security agents, using the term “human rights violations,” if they act unfairly and high-handedly, another source in the North’s South Hamkyong Province was quoted as saying.

“North Korea used to be a society that did not even know about the very term ‘human rights,'” the source added. [Yonhap]

North Koreans may be learning some of this from South Korean dramas, which often feature politics and protests as subplots. But even without foreign inspiration, nothing in recent years has motivated North Koreans’ political consciousness quite like the interference of petty despots with their hardscrabble livelihoods. For other examples, see this documentary, this incident, this massive brawl, these spontaneous protests, or any number of other incidents.

Indeed, the tendency for the trading classes to eschew politics until some (probably corrupt) thug in a uniform touches their market wares is universal — remember how the Arab Spring began? Slowly, the officials in the markets are becoming prisoners of the people. Now, imagine if after each such incident, North Koreans across the country could read about it on their smart phones the very same day.