North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

Life is getting merrier, too (see Appendix C). Restaurants, eateries, beer bars, and small
cafes work day and night and are filled with the increasingly well-to-do customers. 2 Bowling
centers, public saunas, billiard parlors, and a handful of newly opened Internet cafes are crowded
with enthusiastic patrons from all walks of life – from relaxing soldiers and workers, to
respectable functionaries, to cigar-smoking new entrepreneurs. Amusement parks, mountain ski
resorts, cinemas, and theatres are again open for general public use and normal business.
Shopping and gawking at glitzy store windows has become a favorite pastime for many
urbanites, 3 and it is quite rewarding for those folks who actually have money to spend. Gambling,
prostitution, and drug dealing are facts of new life, too.
Finally, life is getting more hopeful in the North. Transition towards a market economy
creates new income opportunities, opens new career possibilities, allows for changes in lifestyle
previously unthinkable but now quite within the reach of many entrepreneurial people, and
begins to raise expectations about a better life in the future. There are plenty of losers, to be sure,
but there are a few winners, too. Everyone has to adjust to new market realities, for better or
worse. New life conditions may cause despair and frustration among some, but they also can
restore faith, form new desires, and generate optimism among others. Despite the widely spread
political apathy and lack of general public interest in politics and ideological campaigns, hope of
a better individual future is back in North Korea. The country is finally awakening from a
decade-long coma and the pain inflicted by a dramatic cutoff of the umbilical cord connecting it
with the communist womb of its procreators in the early 1990s.
Why is there progress, seeming or real, in North Korea today? The cynics assert that it is
just a Potyemkin village set up for the outsiders to marvel at, where the real situation in the
country is as bad as it has ever been. The economic determinists say that it is a recurrent
phenomenon. Following a decade of steep macro-economic decline, it is almost inevitable that
there would be a cyclical up-tick in the economy after it hit a transient bottom; that the trend of
protracted steep declines followed by short-lived upswings is likely to continue until the long
wave of economic collapse is reversed by fundamental changes in the DPRK’s economic system.
They argue that more time is needed to ascertain whether an even harder landing in the future
will not follow the current crawling take-off after the past hard landing.
2 In 2003, several new modern food-processing companies with private local and foreign stakes were established in
the vicinity of Pyongyang, including the Kangseo Mineral Water Processing Factory opened on October 21, 2003,
the Cheongdan Basic Food Factory producing soy sauce and soybean paste, opened on May 31, 2003, the
Taedonggang Beer Brewery opened on November 29, 2002, in the Sadong district of Pyongyang, and others.
3 Among the new semi-private businesses opened in 2003, one should note the Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory, the
Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory, and the Seongyo Knitting Factory: all three are joint ventures with Chinese and
Korean-Japanese stakes, selling to the local market.
IV-2