Category: Regime Change

Just minutes after reading of the sprawling Sunam Market in Chongjin, which she called North Korea’s largest market, my ADD got the best of me, I set aside the book, and clicked on Good Friends’s site, where I saw this: Soonam Market in Chungjin to be Closed in March North Korean authorities are to close down Soonam market in Chungjin, North Hamgyong Province in March following the shutdown of Pyongsung market in South Pyongan Province last June. The cabinet decided...

The Washington Post’s Blaine Harden writes today that popular discontent over the Great Confiscation isn’t going away: It was an unexplained decision — the kind of command that for more than six decades has been obeyed without question in North Korea. But this time, in a highly unusual challenge to Kim’s near-absolute authority, the markets and the people who depend on them pushed back.  Grass-roots anger and a reported riot in an eastern coastal city pressured the government to amend...

[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...

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...

[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...

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...