As economy grows, North Korea’s grip on society is tested
Despite decades of sanctions and international isolation, the economy in North Korea is showing surprising signs of life.
Scores of marketplaces have opened in cities across the country since the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, took power five years ago. A growing class of merchants and entrepreneurs is thriving under the protection of ruling party officials. Pyongyang, the capital, has seen a construction boom, and there are now enough cars on its once-empty streets for some residents to make a living washing them.
Reliable economic data is scarce. But recent defectors, regular visitors and economists who study the country say nascent market forces are beginning to reshape North Korea — a development that complicates efforts to curb Kim’s nuclear ambitions.
Even as President Trump bets on tougher sanctions, especially by China, to stop the North from developing nuclear-tipped missiles capable of striking the United States, the country’s improving economic health has made it easier for it to withstand such pressure and to acquire funds for its nuclear program.
While North Korea remains deeply impoverished, estimates of annual growth under Kim’s rule range from one per cent to five per cent, comparable to some fast-growing economies unencumbered by sanctions.
But a limited embrace of market forces in what is supposed to be a classless society also is a gamble for Kim, who in 2013 made economic growth a top policy goal on par with the development of a nuclear arsenal.
Kim, 33, has promised his longsuffering people that they will never have to “tighten their belts” again. But as he allows private enterprise to expand, he undermines the government’s central argument of socialist superiority over South Korea’s capitalist system.
There are already signs that market forces are weakening the government’s grip on society. Information is seeping in along with foreign goods, eroding the cult of personality surrounding Kim and his family. And as people support themselves and get what they need outside the state economy, they are less beholden to the authorities.
“Our attitude toward the government was this: If you can’t feed us, leave us alone so we can make a living through the market,” said Kim Jin-hee, who fled North Korea in 2014 and, like others interviewed for this article, uses a new name in the South to protect relatives she left behind.
After the government tried to clamp down on markets in 2009, she recalled, “I lost what little loyalty I had for the regime.”
Kim Jin-hee’s loyalty was first tested in the 1990s, when a famine caused by floods, drought and the loss of Soviet aid gripped North Korea. The government stopped providing food rations, and as many as two million people died.
Ms. Kim did what many others did to survive. She stopped showing up for her state job, at a machine-tool factory in the mining town of Musan, and spent her days at a makeshift market selling anything she could get her hands on. Similar markets appeared across the country.
After the food shortage eased, the market in Musan continued to grow. By the time she left the country, Ms. Kim said, more than 1,000 stalls were squeezed into it alongside her own.