April 19, 2024
Evergreen

How North Korean laborers rediscovered capitalism in the 1990s

Following the collapse of the public distribution system, North Koreans began to sell their labor in order to survive

It doesn't take a genius to realize that North Korea has undergone rapid marketization. And the market for goods isn't the only change: as labor is increasingly bought and sold, its price is determined by the supply and demand equilibrium.

The North Korea of 1958-1961 liked to describe itself as the ‘country of exemplary socialism.' They were of course referring to the Leninist-Stalinist model of state socialism, which in North Korea was taken to its logical extreme.

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