[Update:   Blaine Harden has a must-read story in the Washington Post:  “[T]he government’s action appears to have backfired, with potentially disastrous consequences in a country that is chronically short of food.  The black-market value of “new” won has reportedly plummeted against Chinese currency, spooking private traders who have pulled their goods out of markets. Outside economists say suspicion about the value of the won has made residents wary, increasing economic stagnation and worsening food shortages.”] In my in-box today...

Reading of North Korea’s new plans for yet another trade zone, just as the Kaesong experiment collapses, must make some observers wonder what Kim Jong Il could be thinking: who could possibly expect to attract significant foreign investment with such uneven policies toward investment? My response: they don’t want to attract significant foreign investment. That would require some significant opening of their economy and the lowering of the state’s vigilance against the subversive power of ChocoPies. North Korea’s foreign investment...

The Seoul-based Open Radio for North Korea (ORNK), citing unidentified sources along the Sino-North Korean border, said that merchants were exchanging one yuan for 1,000 new North Korean won as of late last month, plummeting from the 50 won traded for every yuan on Dec. 3, right after Pyongyang introduced the new currency. [Yonhap] If my math is right, that’s 1,000 percent in less than a month. Under the move, the communist country knocked two zeros off its currency without...