North Korea Shuts Market in a Reach for Control

Source: New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea — 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.

Such markets began opening in the 1990s when a multiyear famine loosened the government’s control on the food supply. The closed market, called Pyongsong, had included an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 stalls where people sold everything from home-grown foods — cultivated outside collective farms — to goods smuggled from China.

Some analysts say the North is cracking down on the markets because it fears the spread of capitalist ideas. But others say its move, against Pyongsong at least, might not be ideological.

“Many members of the elite are making money off these markets, so I don’t think the government will try to completely shut down the markets,” said Kay Seok, a Seoul-based researcher for Human Rights Watch who has studied the North’s market activities. “Instead, they will try and figure out a way to control the markets as much as possible while making as much profit out of them as possible.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/asia/20korea.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

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Didn't know North Korea had such a large market (30,000 to 40,000 stalls).

"...they will try and figure out a way to control the markets as much as possible while making as much profit out of them as possible." That sounds like something you would hear in New York. :)

“Instead, they will try and figure out a way to control the markets as much as possible while making as much profit out of them as possible.”

Only the "they" changes from place to place.

....what does Wall Street and North Korea have in common? Market Control.

...the economic policies result in mass starvation and concentration camps. In the West, obesity and heart disease become leading killers.

I'll take the latter to the former.

going to see a lot more starvation and death because of this. What will happen to the food that is grown outside of the collective farms? Or to the farmers themselves? Penalties for bypassing government control, and letting people know that Kim doesn't have the power to provide everything they need? Is there going to be some way to close the gap between the food they have and the food they need? Seeing what those people go through because of that jerkwad makes me sad and angry.

...to have been born in North Korea.

Those poor people have my sympathy, but unfortunately not much else. From what I read it is likely that there will be another mass famine in North Korea killing a million or more this year.