N. Korea lifts ban on private markets to prevent famine

[GreenStormCloud]

Source: Washington Post Foreign Service

SEOUL -- Bowing to reality, the North Korean government has lifted all restrictions on private markets -- a last-resort option for a leadership desperate to prevent its people from starving.

In recent weeks, according to North Korea observers and defector groups with sources in the country, Kim Jong Il's government admitted its inability to solve the current food shortage and encouraged its people to rely on private markets for the purchase of goods. Though the policy reversal will not alter daily patterns -- North Koreans have depended on such markets for more than 15 years -- the latest order from Pyongyang abandons a key pillar of a central, planned economy.

With November's currency revaluation, Kim wiped out his citizens' personal savings and struck a blow against the private food distribution system sustaining his country. The latest policy switch, though, stands as an acknowledgment that the currency move was a failure and that only capitalist-style trading can prevent widespread famine.

SNIP

The Good Friends newsletter quoted the official as saying: "There are increasing deaths from starvation so opening market is a reasonable resolution. Death due to starvation has gone out of control."

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061802837.html

[Chulanowa]

1. Maybe building a gigantic dam that flooded the country's rice fields was a dumb move?

Remarkable feat of engineering, remarkable lack of foresight. Dumbasses.

[LARED]

3. Which dam was that? nt

[Chulanowa]

4. Nampho Dam, also known as the West Sea Barrage

It closed the Taephong River. This allowed for more irrigation... but the rising river wiped out the country's best rice fields. So the irrigation ended up being kind of pointless.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

2. Gun-point socialism, like gun-point peacemaking

is a contradiction in terms.

Failure was inevitable.

[Scuba]

10. North Korea isn't socialist...

...it's sociopathic. What is going on there is equivalent to the genocides of Pol Pot and Hitler.

[maxsolomon]

5. the Transition at Kim's death is the opportunity

will his inner circle throw in the towel or hand the machine to the youngest Kim?

here's hoping they acknowledge reality.

[GreenStormCloud]

6. Will the new Kim be realistic? N/T

[Posteritatis]

8. He's been described as just like his father, so no. (nt)

[FLPanhandle]

7. Basically admitting that private farms and markets outperform communist managed ones.

Hell, the old USSR figured that out 30 years ago.

[Turbineguy]

9. "Death due to starvation has gone out of control."

"In control" was the way Stalin did it.

[GreenStormCloud]

11. His loosening of the markets won't work in time.

A. He had an economic "reform" about a year ago that basically confiscated what meager savings that people did have. Nobody has any money.

B. Food takes time to grow.