Stephan Haggard on N. Korea's Market Economy
Kim Jong Eun, capitalism, and the future of North Korea
01/23/2012
Noteh Kraus,
McGill Daily
After the death of Kim Jong Il, pundits debated the role that Kim Jong Eun would play in the future of North Korea. This discussion made little mention of the role that the North Korean people would play in determining the future of their country. Pundit's underlying assumption is that the people are merely robots or puppets of the regime, and are passive players in the direction their country takes. This is untrue.
Kim Jong Eun does not matter as much to North Korean citizens as most seem to assume. This is because, although the North Korean people may not be politically free, they are, to a surprising degree, economically free.
For the past 15 years, the North Korean people have been part of one of the fundamental institutions of capitalism: the market. Yes, marketplaces do exist within North Korea. And even more surprisingly, they are plentiful and often huge.
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Stephan Haggard is the director of the Korea-Pacific Program at IR/PS, where he specializes in the Korean economy. In 2011 Haggard published Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea with co-author Marcus Noland, and writes the "North Korea: Witness to Transformation" blog at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
