| Relatively speaking. We'll know it's really booming when we start seeing obese North Koreans out in the countryside... |
| Goodness. Even the most Stalinist of old-fashioned Communists turn out to secretly be rampant capitalists. |
Individuals are in principle banned from owning cars, despite the regime's habit of buying the loyalty of party officials with gifts of luxury cars. But many people now import vehicles from China or other countries and register them in the borrowed names of agencies or enterprises to which they pay kickbacks of 10 to 15 percent of their profits.
Other entrepreneurs buy small 3 to 5-ton wooden boats equipped with Chinese-made motors and GPS navigation and then hire villagers to catch fish or dig for clams. Some entrepreneurs have whole flotillas of fishing boats.
| Maybe they use them for smuggling, both goods into the country and people out. That's much more lucrative than fish... |
Money lenders do not merely practice usury but act as informal banks by paying trade bills as middlemen for both North Korean and Chinese traders.
The rationing system, the backbone of the socialist planned economy, has nearly collapsed. Some 4 million people still live on rations -- 2.6 million in Pyongyang and 1.2 million soldiers.
But a senior South Korean government official said 20 million North Koreans rely absolutely on the underground economy. "A North Korean family needs 90,000-100,000 North Korean won for living costs per month, but workers at state-run factories or enterprises earn a mere 2,000-8,000 won," the source said. "So North Koreans have no choice but to become market traders, cottage industrialists or transport entrepreneurs to make up for shortages."
Many stores, restaurants, and beauty parlors are privately owned. Private tutors teach music or foreign languages. Carpenters have evolved as quasi-manufacturers who receive orders and make furniture on a massive scale. They earn 80,000-90,000 won per month on average.
| In other words, barely enough to live on. They're running furiously just to stand in one place. |
In the countryside, people earn money by selling corn or beans grown in their own vegetable gardens in the back yard or in the hills. They can harvest 700 kg of corn a year from a 1,600 sq.m. lot. And by selling 50 kg of corn a month they make 30,000-40,000 won on top of their daily living costs.
"Ordinary North Koreans have become so dependent on the private economy that they get 80-90 percent of daily necessities and 60-70 percent of food from the markets," the security official said.
The growing private economy has led to a redistribution of resources from the planned economy to the market. This has weakened the regime's financial capacity while boosting the economic power of individuals.
"Massive aid of food or daily necessities from outside would only revive the dying planned economy and rationing system, while increasing the regime's ability to control the market," another senior South Korean government official said. "We need to be prudent in giving lavish aid, which could just be used by the regime to oppress people."
| Yup, just takes another good push for people to ask the question that proves fatal to despots around the world: "Say, you guys are kinda stupid. Who put you in charge?" |