What Life Is Like In North Korea

The Tumen River serves as part of the border between China and North Korea, with the Chinese city of Tumen on the left and the North Korean town of Namyang on the right. The railway bridge in the foreground is a major route for transporting Chinese aid and goods to North Korea. Du Bin for The New York Times

Views Of North Korea Show How A Policy Spread Misery -- New York Times

YANJI, China — Like many North Koreans, the construction worker lived in penury. His state employer had not paid him for so long that he had forgotten his salary. Indeed, he paid his boss to be listed as a dummy worker so that he could leave his work site. Then he and his wife could scrape out a living selling small bags of detergent on the black market.

It hardly seemed that life could get worse. And then, one Saturday afternoon last November, his sister burst into his apartment in Chongjin with shocking news: the North Korean government had decided to drastically devalue the nation’s currency. The family’s life savings, about $1,560, had been reduced to about $30.

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My Comment: This description of what life is like in North Korea reminds me of the stories from my father told me on what life was like under Stalin in the 1930s during the Ukraine famine and the misery that followed. It seems that the more the world changes .... some places just remain the same.