North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

The authors did a spectacular job describing down to great detail, the everyday mercantile world that is North Korea today. Having read plenty on the subject and even having been there myself, this book brought plenty of new facts and prospectives. Well written, especially if you are a fan of the economist style of journalism.

I found the writing accessible and clear. It is a very up to date source of information on North Korea, a compilation of all the recent source material from scholars and defectors. It's not necessarily a weighty scholarly source, instead the flow and content is breezy and casual. If you want to be well read on North Korea, definitely consider this book.

Very interesting insight into North Korea. Gives me a better understanding of the current situation between China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and the US. We get such little credible information on North Korea and what life is like. Fascinating.

The outside world doesn't know much about life inside North Korea. Except for defectors' accounts, authoritative stories are hard to come by as high-ranking officials won't talk for fear of retaliation by the Government. In "North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors," authors Daniel Tudo and James Pearson give a rare glimpse of life inside the closed nation. They have unique vantage points and perspectives. Tudor lives in South Korea and is a noted authority on life behind the border. Pearson is a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Seoul.

The book confirms some of the things that we have known. North Korea is a poor nation and tightly ruled by the government. But despite what we may have heard, the North Korean people are not all happy with the leadership of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Un. They have found ways of getting around the government's rules, including the establishment of an underground economy. One of my biggest takeaways was learning about the spirit and resilience of its citizens.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone interested in North Korea’s future relationship with the United States and other countries..

Other highlights of the book:

The main cause of North Korea's recent social change is actually a tragic one: the famine of the mid 1990s, in which at least several hundred thousand people perished. The famine greatly weakened the bond between the state and the people, forcing the average North Korean to fend for him or herself. As a result, the government is now just one part of a quasi-capitalist market economy, rather than the sole coordinator of economic activity that it once was
Private trade has become so prevalent in recent years that it permeates all levels of society, from the poorest through to the Party and military elites.

The horrific famine of the mid-1990s was the turning point. Regular, government-supplied food rations all but disappeared during this period, and never fully returned. The lesson that survivors took from this experience was one of self-reliance—not the self-reliance of Juche ideology, but rather self-reliance through by-hook-or-by-crook capitalism. Private property and private trade remain illegal, but for post-famine North Korea, there is but one real economic rule: don't follow the rules. Sixty-two percent of defectors surveyed in 2010 stated that they had engaged in work other than their official jobs before leaving North Korea, and a thriving gray market that uses unofficial currency exchange rates is now the de facto way of setting prices, even for the elite.

The North Korean economy, in fact, performed quite well throughout the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. The North's command economy was stronger than the South's state-capitalist model on a GDP per capita basis until around 1973.

There was one other crucial factor in that initial success: Soviet and Chinese aid. Throughout the Cold War era, North Korea was able to exploit the rift between China and the Soviet Union by cleverly playing the two against each other. In this "love triangle" relationship, North Korea would carefully seek benefits from both Beijing and Moscow, turning its weakness as a "shrimp between whales" into an asset

However, the decline and then total cessation of Soviet help—plus growing economic mismanagement under Kim Jong Il—began to put the PDS in jeopardy.

The result was a serious famine between 1994 and 1998 that claimed the lives of between 200,000 and three million North Koreans.

Crucially, the famine also empowered North Korean women to aspire to be more than just homemakers, many becoming the real breadwinners of the North Korean family unit. It is mostly women who run market stalls, sell food, engage in small-scale import–export, or rent out the family home by the hour to courting couples. All this, in turn, is having a dramatic impact on the role of women in society, and even on the rate of divorce.

There are occasional crackdowns on marketplaces, for instance. And in 2009 came the bluntest move of all. That November, it was announced that the national currency, the North Korean won, would be redenominated via the cancellation of the last two zeroes on every banknote. A 1,000 won note needed to be exchanged for a new 10 won note, and so on. Citizens were given one week to trade in their old zero-heavy notes for new ones. Similarly, a bank deposit of 100,000 won became 1,000 won at a stroke.

All workers, officially at least, are employed by the state—and they are paid in accordance with the official value of the won. Civil servants, for instance, usually earn in the range of 1,000–6,000 won per month. At an official rate of 96 won per US dollar, that would already be bad enough—but when one considers the "real" gray market exchange rate, even a highly-ranked official is being paid less than US$1 per month.

Just as North Korea has two exchange rates, it effectively has two economies: the "official" economy (where people work in state jobs and are paid a state salary) and a "gray market" economy, where people earn money in ways that are not strictly legal, but widely tolerated. The latter is the one that really counts in today's North Korea. The term used for the illegal, yet tolerated, markets in North Korea is jangmadang, an old-fashioned Korean word that literally translates as "marketplace"

It is no surprise, then, that jangmadang traders in North Korea are usually female. There is an additional reason that the ajumma dominates the jangmadang. In North Korea, adults are assigned to work units, to serve the state in return for pitiful salaries. Married women, however, are exempted from this. This means they are free to work as market traders.

But what do jangmadang traders sell? As may be expected, there is a focus on the basics. North Korean cigarettes go fairly cheaply, but more sought-after Chinese and Russian cigarettes can cost anything from 2,000 (US$0.25) to 20,000 (US$2.50) depending on the brand. A bar of chocolate costs around 3,000 (US$0.38), and a kilogram of rice costs around 5,000 (US$0.63) Imperialist American Coca-Cola is very much available, and goes for 6,000 per can—about US$0.75, not far from what it would cost in a supermarket anywhere else.

t can even be dangerous to not be a trader. Middle- and high-income families that are not known to be actively engaged in business are at risk of being investigated by the authorities. Such a family would be assumed to have a less "tolerable" source of income, such as cash transfers from defector relatives living in South Korea. There have actually been many instances of people informing the authorities about neighbors who have money but no obvious business interests. This has led to the ironic situation of some North Koreans being observed pretending to be engaged in capitalism in order to avoid suspicion.

The consumption of foreign media is punishable by law in the DPRK. But that does not mean that nobody consumes it. According to a 2010 survey,2 around half of 250 North Korean defectors questioned said they had seen foreign television or movies, and many officials in Pyongyang will privately admit the same.

Television and radio sets sold in North Korea come with presets tuned to state-owned broadcasters like Korean Central Television (KCTV), the Korean Educational and Cultural Network, or the Pyongyang-only Mansudae TV. A TV set legally sold in North Korea cannot access anything else—unless one is prepared to break the law and tamper with it.

Direct reception of Chinese or South Korean television is dwarfed by the importation of movies and TV series via China, on both DVD and USB memory sticks. The DVD became commonplace in North Korea in the mid-2000s, and since roughly 2010, the USB stick has taken off

The USB stick has certain major advantages over a DVD. First of all, the contents of a USB stick can be endlessly copied and distributed. They are also safer. One old method the authorities used to crack down on viewers of foreign TV and movies was to cut the electricity to a building, and then sweep through it, prizing open DVD players to see what people were watching. Of course, one cannot easily remove a disc if the player is not switched on. But tiny USB sticks can simply be removed in a second, and easily hidden.

Through surveillance and the re-routing of information and reporting structures, the OGD (Organization and Guidance Department) has come to be the only part of the state that sees and knows everything. The OGD has existed since 1946, but its role was reinvented following Kim Jong Il's accession to its directorship in 1973, when he began to use it as the main means by which to take control of the state.10 The OGD since then has risen to become the central hub of power in North Korea. It possesses a file on "anyone who is anyone"; it is the conduit via which the various branches of government communicate with the Supreme Leader, passing instructions down and information up; it is responsible for implementing and enforcing policy; it runs a network of spies that reach from the highest army general to the lowest provincial factory manager; it "signs off" on any government or military appointment; and it is essentially in charge of the personal security and well-being of the ruling family.

It is well-known that the DPRK operates prison camps that can rival in cruelty anything the twentieth century could offer. Prisoners spend "half the day doing forced labor, and the other half receiving propaganda education," according to a source. The state's intention here is to re-indoctrinate the prisoner before returning them to society. Discipline at a rodong danryondae is strict, and violence is common. Security, however, is relatively light, and escapes do occur.

Consequently, an old Korean method of dealing with one's enemies is making a comeback. Though the DPRK has long exile d political "criminals" to the remote countryside, such a punishment is growing in frequency today. The system is a very simple one. Enemies of the state are taken up to the mountains and left there with nothing. It is expected that they will die there. Though the authors know of no evidence relating to this, it is presumably the case that those who make their way down into a town or village can be punished severely if caught, since they do not possess the permit to be there. North Korea also has a number of uninhabited islands, and it is said that one can be punished by being exiled to one.

Despite the common perception that "crazy" Pyongyang could stage a nuclear attack on South Korea or even the United States, the leadership has absolutely no incentive to consider such a suicidal action. The DPRK leadership may be many things, but irrational is not one of them. Furthermore, the US and South Korea also have obvious disincentives against ever attacking North Korea—the most important being the DPRK's nuclear program and Chinese support for the status quo.

The authors therefore believe that the most likely scenario for North Korea in the short and medium term is the gradual opening of the country under the rule of the current regime. But North Korea, this profit-driven, feudalistic, traditional Korean "socialist paradise," has long had the power to surprise. No-one really knows what the North Korea of 10 or 20 years hence will look like. In the meantime, we continue to watch with a mixture of frustration and hope

This book gives an updated in-depth look at North Korea's underground markets and "economy." It answers questions of some of the more modern goods such as cell phones, fashion, plastic surgery, and other modern goods. The authors weave just enough history and politics into the descriptions of the people's underground trade network. I'd recommend this book as a follow-up read to a book describing North Korea's history and political landscape.

This book shows holistic views on North Korea. I was shocked how famine has changed North Korea system. The burgeoning capitalism with feudalism and elitism led where North Korea is today. I was little worried that this book is not the most up to date book about NK, but I can fix my perception and prejudice about North Korea through this book. This book is must read for those who would like to understand NK, which hot potato nowadays,

Good book to know something about north korea. Many information there are unknown to public.

I had no idea that there was a class system there. The writer really showed a different view of what what described in other books.
Worth reading.

very interesting

I enjoyed reading about the Kim family and the OGD organization and how those two groups sometimes align together and sometimes are opponents. Interesting book !