Kim inspects shampoo as he encourages a booming beauty industry in North Korea. KCNA
Business Insider: Experts say North Korea is incorporating free markets into its economy — and undergoing a 'social revolution' as a result
* North Korea's economy has advanced since the famine of the 1990s, and has begun encouraging entrepreneurship.
* Unlike earlier times, many citizens now earn wages instead of having the state provide everything for them, and shopping opportunities have arisen for a growing middle class.
* But North Korea's political isolation as a result of its nuclear program has hampered further progress.
For most Americans, North Korea is synonymous with nuclear aggression, totalitarianism, and dystopian social realities — but experts on the country say this isn't the whole picture and note that the county is going through a 'social revolution' driven by free markets.
“The images you see in western media about North Korea are very dated," said Jenny Town, the assistant director of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the managing editor of the North Korea-focused journal 38 North.
Town says that like in many developing countries, the reality of life in North Korea is multifaceted, and claims that the state's grip over its society is less pronounced today than it was during the worst years of the Kim dictatorship.
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WNU Editor: These are the reforms that many in Asia were hoping that Kim Jong-un would enact when he took control of the country after his father died. The fact that this is happening now tells me that sanctions are hurting .... and they are hurting .... North Korea Hit Hard As Coal Exports To China Fall 71% (OilPrice.com), and that this new focus on promoting entrepreneurship is one way to minimize the loss of these export markets. How extensive these reforms are is still unknown. But it was the rise of entrepreneurs in the former Soviet Union (coupled with labor strikes) that helped dissolved the former Soviet Union, and it was the entrepreneurs in China who helped reform that country away from Mao's rigid doctrines. Will the same happen in North Korea .... I can only hope so.
