Under present circumstances, there is an increasingly high probability of the North Korean people’s resistance to or resentment at their system and leader being more and more directly expressed, according to Cho Han Beum, a senior researcher with the Center for South-North Korean Cooperation Studies at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
In an article released on the institute’s website, “Causes and Effects of the Failure of the North Korean Redenomination,” Cho asserted, “The North Korean authorities’ lightning and forced intervention into the market, a market which was spontaneously created by the people in order to get past the limits of the official planned economy, has probably caused massive frustration for the people.”
Cho went on, “The currency redenomination had a great ripple effect across politics and society which the authorities had not expected.” In his analysis, “The authorities’ intervention in the people’s market activities was dangerous, since it brought out their fundamental pessimism against the system and the authorities, as well as their frustration.”
“Due the redenomination and its follow-up measures, the North Korean people’s latent metaphorical resistance to their system is being gradually exposed,” he added.
“The North Korean authorities tried look for a resolution to their economic problems in the area of monetary circulation, although the fundamental causes of the crisis lie in production and supply-side limitations,” he explained, “Any resolution would have had to cover adequate measures to improve production and expand supply, and actions based on liberalization and privatization of the means of production.
Without such root and branch reform of the supply-side of the economy, he concludes, food crises will keep happening time and time again. It was the same thing which caused the 2002 July 1st Economic Management Reform Measure to fail.
