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Category: NK Economics

December 18, 2009

Kim Jong Il’s Trickle-Up Economics Starve North Korea’s Poor

After the Great Confiscation was announced, the Daily NK had supposed that the poorest or North Korea’s poor wouldn’t be hurt as badly as those with more savings to lose. To its credit, the paper is now correcting that supposition, having grasped a concept that probably isn’t taught in North Korean schools — supply-side economics: The source said, “Due to the bill exchange, business went bad and the authorities are cracking down on private trade in food, so problems for...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
December 16, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates: North Korea Bans All Foreigners

[Update: The Daily NK thinks the ban is “not news.”] So how worried is North Korea about the potential for more unrest and rioting? As of yesterday, it will ban all foreigners from entering the country until at least February to make sure there won’t be any foreign witnesses to any demonstrations or massacres. North Korea reportedly plans to ban foreigners from the country from Sunday until early February, apparently to allow unrest caused by this month’s shock currency reform...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
December 15, 2009

Chosun Ilbo: North Korea Executes 12 After Currency Riot in Hamhung

Now that many North Koreans have burned the savings that the regime suddenly declared worthless this month, the Chosun Ilbo reports that public outrage has forced Kim Jong Il to raise the exchange limit to 500,000 won. The decision coincides with the first report of a significant outbreak of anti-regime violence, followed by a brutal reaction: The announcements came after rioting by market traders in the Hamhung region was reported on Dec. 5-6 amid sympathy from ordinary people, sources said....

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Human Rights/NK Economics/Resistance
December 11, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

A DAY AFTER I excoriated the New York Times for its awful North Korea coverage (well, it is …) their Ideas blog links and recommends my New Ledger post about the Ajumma Rebellion. I prefer to think they’re trying to appease me. =================== NORTH KOREA SANCTIONS ITSELF: So, exactly how much of a North Korean economy is still left if you suddenly and arbitrarily confiscate private savings and eradicate private markets? South Korea’s Hankyoreh newspaper quoted sources in China’s border...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
December 7, 2009

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...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
December 6, 2009

North Korea Completes Great Confiscation (Upated)

[Updated below.] By now, it is December 7th in Pyongyang, and the period for exchanging old currency for new has passed. By filling the streets with troops and police, the regime has, for the moment, managed to contain the “fury and frustration” of people who, robbed of their savings and deprived of food rations, no longer know how they’re going to make it through the winter. For now, only isolated outbreaks of dissent are reported. The people know that this...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
December 4, 2009

Great Confiscation Updates

Via the Daily NK and the North Korean-affiliated Chosun Sinbo, we can now see the new North Korean currency that will replace the hard-earned savings of millions of desperate people. Guess whose face is on the bill. You’ll be amazed. More here. Personally, I think the coins look like Japanese Yen. The Daily NK reports that the situation in North Korea continues to be chaotic and relays fragmentary reports of murders, suicides, and isolated outbreaks of dissent. The circulation of...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
December 3, 2009

3 December 2009 (Updated)

THE GREAT CONFISCATION CONTINUES. The Wall Street Journal reports that in Pyongyang, the exchange has been “calm and orderly,” at least to the extent foreign observers have been able to tell. Meanwhile, the Daily NK explains who will be hurt most badly by this. If markets are damaged as badly as I suspect they might be, there could be a new flood of food refugees into China this winter. Another effect will be the final collapse of confidence by the...

Categories Anju Links/NK Economics/NK Military/North-South
December 2, 2009

More on North Korea’s Great Confiscation

Rather than updating yesterday’s post again, I’ll just do a roundup of the reports and reactions today. So far, the reports point to widespread tension, disbelief, and shock, but little violence or unrest. It is as if the entire country has been paused, or as though a crowd that has just witnessed something horrifying is standing there, watching, too dumbstruck to take it in. For many, the means to live through this winter has been swept away in one casual,...

Categories NK Economics
December 1, 2009

North Korea Revalues Currency, Wipes Away Savings of Millions (Updated)

North Korea has shocked its entire population with a sudden announcement that it will replace its currency with new notes that drop two zeroes from the denominations. The new North Korean currency’s official exchange rates will increase by a hundredfold. The move is causing widespread outrage, panic, and a run on U.S. and Chinese currency. North Koreans throughout the country and at every socioeconomic level are reacting with shock, tears, and anger. According to some reports, people are literally weeping...

Categories NK Economics/Resistance
November 25, 2009

Feed Me, Seymour

It’s a fine line between extortion and aggressive panhandling. Inexplicably, extortion and outright terrorism have failed to produce a financial harvest (until now, a perennial success) to make up for the agricultural kind (since 1993, a perennial failure). Suddenly, a slightly more obsequious North Korea is … begging for South Korea to resume those Kumgang Tours and for the U.N. to keep its commitments on the delivery of food aid. If there’s one word in the North Korean vocabulary more...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
November 12, 2009

Sanctions Update

The Chosun Ilbo reports that Ambassador Phillip Goldberg has kept himself busy crossing the globe, meeting with government officials and bankers in Russia and China, and shutting down North Korean accounts, even as Stephen Bosworth and others met with the North Koreans to talk nuclear diplomacy. North Korea invited U.S. North Korea envoy Stephen Bosworth on Aug. 4, when former U.S. president Bill Clinton was in Pyongyang to win the release of two American journalists. The same day, Goldberg was...

Categories Counterfeiting/Money Laundering/NK Economics/Sanctions
November 11, 2009

Latest Prediction of North Korean Perestroika Ends Badly

Ah, North Korea’s perestroika movement. I remember it like it was three months ago: Other symbols of Western capitalism are sprouting up — including a beer commercial on state TV and a convenience store that reportedly was visited in April by leader Kim Jong Il. [MSNBC, July 20, 2009] Predictions of North Korea’s imminent reform are as frequent and as unrealized as predictions of North Korea’s imminent collapse. I’m still betting that the latter will precede the former. I’m also...

Categories NK Economics
October 27, 2009

Mixed Reviews for North Korea’s “150-Day Battle”

The word from inside North Korea is that it fell far short of its stated goals, and that the people are still starving in the dark. The sum total appears to be that people did a lot of work that ultimately accomplished only short-term gains in “core” areas of the country: At the end of this September, a high level source stated that according to North Korea it hit a new record of agricultural production from the 150-day battle, which...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/NK Economics
September 22, 2009

North Korea’s Foreclosure Crisis (No, Really.)

I have to say, this came as a surprise to me: He noted, “Since 2000, new kotjebi have been people who have gone to ruin and lost their homes to loan sharks. These days their numbers are drastically increasing, so the authorities cannot stand by indifferently. According to one source, a Korean-Chinese loan shark called Cho Jung Cheol was recently caught by the PSA on suspicion of taking a total of seven houses from defaulters. North Korean people usually offer...

Categories Inside NK/NK Economics
September 20, 2009

North Korea Closes Largest Unofficial Market

But it can’t be! Victor Cha, Selig Harrison, Keith Luse, Frank Januzzi, and every Peace Studies professor in South Korea can’t all be wrong! North Korea has shut down its largest unofficial market in a sign that the Communist government was intent on quashing, or at least better controlling, market activities that it had tolerated for years, Seoul-based organizations monitoring the country said last week. The market, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, was closed sometime in June and vendors were...

Categories An Alliance?/NK Economics
July 31, 2009

Marcus Noland on Sanctioning North Korea

First, a note of congratulations to Mr. Noland on being named Deputy Director of the Peterson Institute.  Noland also has a paper out on the prospects for disarming North Korea though sanctions.  Here’s a teaser, and I’ll let you read the rest on your own: Given the extremely high priority the North Korean regime places on its military capacity, it is unlikely that the pressure the world can bring to bear on North Korea will be sufficient to induce the...

Categories China & Korea/NK Economics/Sanctions