Markets Emerge In North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — Despite decades of sanctions and 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.

Recent defectors, regular visitors and economists say nascent market forces are beginning to reshape North Korea — a development that complicates efforts to curb Mr. Kim’s nuclear ambitions.

The country’s improving economic health has made it easier for it to withstand pressure from the United States and to acquire funds for its nuclear program.

While North Korea remains deeply impoverished, estimates of annual growth under Mr. Kim’s rule range from 1 percent to 5 percent, 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 Mr. Kim, 33, who in 2013 made economic growth a top policy goal on par with the development of a nuclear arsenal.

As he allows private enterprise to expand, he undermines the government’s central argument of socialist superiority over South Korea’s capitalist system.

Information is seeping in, eroding the cult of personality surrounding Mr. Kim and his family. And as people get what they need outside the state economy, they are less beholden to the authorities.

In the 1990s, 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.

Kim Jin-hee, who fled North Korea