Friday 7 October 2011

Inside North Korea’s Secret Economy




The Defector's Tale: Inside North Korea's Secret Economy -- Kim Kwang Jin, World Affairs Journal

Following the collapse of the global socialist market in the early 1990s, an unexpected thing happened on North Korea's road to financial oblivion: The same economy that cannot produce a usable toothbrush is now armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. I say this as someone who knows, having been involved, however obliquely, in providing the funds that made the atom splitting possible. There is much I still don't know about my native land, but this much is clear to me: This central riddle of North Korea—advanced technology within abysmal backwardness—is wrapped in the mystery of its economic structure, and compounded by the enigma of Kim Jong-il's opaque motives. My own involvement in the North Korean economy leads me to believe that an economic corpse has been able to produce such nuclear achievements by creating what is essentially a secret, invisible, firewalled financial system scavenging off the West, which Kim created to compensate for the collapse of the normal or "People's Economy" of North Korea.

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