In North Korea, educational institutions long ago stopped cultivating people of talent, but remain extremely important for the circulation of market information.
This is because school is a place where many people regularly gather and share information freely, almost regardless of the closed society around them.
Therefore, students are the ones who most rapidly receive information on where and when a crime has occurred, or in which villages Chinese traders are to be found, with what kinds of goods, how much the goods are selling for, and all kinds of other local rumors and hearsay.
Parents can get information on trades, haggle over prices and quantities, and even deliver orders to buyers through their children. The number of household livelihoods sustained in this manner is growing, not least because the “150-Day Battle” has caused significant upheaval for the workings of the jangmadang.
During the Battle, the authorities have been permitting the people to do business in the jangmadang from 4 P.M. to 9 P.M. only. It is not easy for adult workers to go to the jangmadang after their regular working day, and frequently a further evaluation meeting at around 7 P.M., so teenagers must substitute.
Regarding this, one source reported, “Children here do business very well; they bring account books, haggle professionally over goods their parents need and even handle credit transactions, too.
After school, children do business in alley markets, illegal offshoots of the jangmadang itself. People’s Safety Agency officers do not tend to discard their goods or treat them as harshly as they do to adult traders; they just drive the students out of the markets.
The source explained their methods, “What the kids deal in is usually food, clothes and sometimes electrical products. Kids who want to sell electrical products generally bring a small banner outlining what they are offering, and advertize on foot near stations or in the jangmadang.”
He added, “In the past, kids just watched the goods while their parents were away from the jangmadang stall for a while, but now there is nothing which they cannot sell. Sometimes, they even sell goods to their schoolmates!”
