I want to introduce you, readers, to Ms. Pak (not her real name, of course), a North Korean small trader. She left her country about a decade ago, but back in the early 2000s, she was one of the first foot soldiers of the emerging market economy. Back then this economy was not exactly in its infancy, but the level of sophistication was well below what we can see now: at the end of the day, it was the efforts of millions of people like Ms. Pak which helped to pull the North Korean economy from the abyss of the 1990s.