North Korea’s rich chase the good life
Nail salons, massage parlours, cafes and other signs of consumerism were unheard of in rigidly controlled North Korea just a few years ago, but they are slowly emerging in one of the world’s last bastions of Cold War socialism.
North Korea operates a centrally planned economy modelled on the former Soviet Union where Western-style conspicuous consumption is anathema.
But as a growing middle class of North Koreans earns more money in the unofficial economy, the demand for products such as cosmetics, smartphones, imported fruit juices and foreign clothes is on the rise, according to residents and visitors.
‘‘Nobody needs to drink coffee, and nobody needs to spend money on it, but people do. This is what’s happening in Pyongyang, and it’s a change,’’ said Nils Weisensee from Germany, who trains North Koreans in business skills.
While the repressive and impoverished country is still years away from becoming a consumer paradise, it is now home to a rising class of rich North Koreans known as ‘‘Donju’’, meaning ‘‘masters of money’’, thanks to the growing unofficial economy.
Many of the Donju have made money trading in informal markets, or by setting up small businesses. About 70 per cent of that profit goes to the state, with the rest going to individuals, according to defectors from the country including Choi Song-min, who fled to the South in 2011.
‘‘For example, at a Chongjin city branch of the transport ministry, they might say to their bosses ‘how about we sell coffee to the people waiting for our buses’,’’ said Choi.
At the food section of the Kwangbok Department Store in central Pyongyang, moneyed shoppers can choose between a wide variety of consumer foods like fruit juices, chocolates and soda, according to Troy Collings of Young Pioneer Tours.
Even leader Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying North Koreanmade cosmetics should compete in quality with foreign luxury brands like Chanel and Christian Dior, according to the Choson Sinbo, a pro-North Korean newspaper in Japan.But North Korean consumer capitalism is very much in its early days, residents of Pyongyang said. A chronic energy shortage, brutally repressive government and deeply ingrained corruption ensure that the pace of change is sluggish, and limited.
‘‘What use are these new, kitschily-decorated places that mostly imitate Chinese nouveauriche life if there is no electricity to cook the food?’’ a diplomatic source in Pyongyang asked. ‘‘Oftentimes you will be turned away, not because you are a foreigner, but because there is just no energy to operate the kitchen. Good luck trying to get a proper meal in Pyongyang after 10pm.’’
Choi said the coffee drinking trend for moneyed North Koreans began to appear last year.
‘‘To look cool, the Donju, party officials and young people like college students go to coffee shops to meet people.’’