Daily NK
Kim Min Se
1/10/2007
An increasing number of North Koreans now depend on markets as international aid to North Korea sharply plummeted after nuclear test, evidence shows.
Particularly, a popular “market-friendly” mind is growing as the authorities’ control over the populace is weakening.
J, resident of Hamheung, North Korea, told the Daily NK on Monday via telephone “Though TV and newspapers boast ‘military first policy’ and ‘strong nation’ after the nuke test, people are only interested in money.”
The Daily NK was able to have a telephone interview with J, who was visiting Sinuiju, a Sino-Korean border city in which electromagnetic waves of Chinese cell phones could reach. NK businesspeople often use them for communication.
J said “Hamheung citizens are well aware of the cutoff of international aid. When they were forced into serving in the public industrial labor force, they could not go to work in markets and must then starve. Therefore, they are now asking for some money instead of compensation for the loss in work when they are serving for the public work.
Originally, such work in state-run factory used to be compulsory under the industrial mobilization of workforce policy. This is the first known case of being paid in mobilized labor and evidence of spread in popular market-economy-oriented mind.
“The vulnerable died well before and those who can run are already in China or South Korea. The leftovers are hard ones; they can even plow rock mountains,” J said sarcastically.
“People don’t trust the state anymore. They live on their own.”
J, a middleman, buys TVs, radios or bicycles and sells them back in market. On lucky days, he earns up to fifty thousands NK won (equivalent to 20 US dollars). According to J, as of January 2007, rice price is ranging from 1000 won to 1100 won (less than .5 US dollar) per kilogram.
