The following excerpt is taken from Hazel Smith, North Korea: Markets and Military Rule (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 228-231

THE MARKETIZATION OF THE FAMILY

Daily social and economic practices (in the era of marketization) reinforced the vitality and agency of the family compared to the moribund nature of state institutions as marketization generated pressures on the family to compensate for the lack of state resources for the most vulnerable (including the elderly and young children). The Kim Il Sungist (pre-marketization era) state had never been entirely successful in constituting the family unit as a means of ideological education