Kim Cheol Bok, a munitions worker in North Hamgyung Province, finishes breakfast and gets up to go to work. Before he leaves, he turns to his wife and asks her to make something nice for Chuseok this year, Chuseok being one of Korea’s traditional ancestral holidays.
“Why don’t you try going to the market and seeing how much fish and fruit have gone up?” she snaps back.
Taken aback by his wife’s sudden outburst, she’s not known for getting angry, Kim becomes angry himself. He can’t stop seeing her face all the way to work.
Kim and his family have always eaten pretty well at Chuseok, excluding the March of Tribulation, although they weren’t alone there. It’s true that making ends meet throughout the year is sometimes hard, but they always go all out to pay their respects to their ancestors, knowing it only comes around once a year. However, although working for an ammunitions company means Kim is entitled to state rations, they aren’t enough for a family of four, so it has been ten years now since his wife started trading in the outdoor market to make ends meet.
Perhaps she has a flair for retail, or maybe it was something else; either way, they managed to save up some money. However, that money turned to worthless paper after the currency revaluation. It was probably from about that time that Kim’s wife became somewhat antagonistic.
“It was pretty bad last year, but surely not as bad as this,” Kim finds himself saying to himself quietly as he strolls along to work.
Kim‘s circumstances are typical. On top of chronic economic stagnation, a series of restrictive market policies have made this the worst period since the March of Tribulation. Market prices have long since caught up to and overtaken levels prior to the currency revaluation. The price per kilo of rice, often used as a yardstick of market prices in general, spiked in August at 2500-2700 won. Chuseok is only making that worse, too.
One source from North Hamgyung Province described the atmosphere to The Daily NK on Friday, saying “There are a lot of people this year who will be having a much simpler feast than they usually would at Chuseok. There are also probably many people who will have little more to offer their deceased ancestors than a bottle of spirits.”
Another source from Yanggang Province said, “The market is usually overflowing at about this time with people stocking up for their Chuseok feast, but his year it has been pretty quiet. The cost of living has gone up so much that you probably couldn’t even think about a nice dinner for the festival unless you are doing well in the jangmadang.”
According to these sources, the cost of living in North Korea has gone up dramatically in recent times.Inspections have been stepped up ahead of the traditional festival, shrinking market activity, and with rises in the exchange rate the cost of living has risen fast.
All this makes it difficult to imagine Chuseok being on a similar scale to an average year. The price fluctuations are clear to see in the average preparations for Chuseok of low income earners, who survive on one dish of boiled rice and two noodle dishes per day.
You would need to spend 35,000 won to buy all the necessary ingredients for what would have been a 25,000 won feast last year. It goes without saying that state wages, which most people do not even try to survive on, would not get people close.
Even without Kim Jong Il’s recent directive to ‘simplify’ Chuseok this year in the ‘socialist’ way, it is fair to say that many provincial North Koreans would have been making a lot less food anyway.
