Private trade is on a spectacular upswing in Pyongyang, especially in the city's biggest market, Thonil Street in the Nannan neighbourhood. Everything is on sale here-from food to staple goods. Chinese items dominate the offer, though many commodities come from Japan and even South Korea, however hateful to North Korean authorities it might be.
Traders willingly reduce prices with good bargaining, but prices remain unaffordable to a majority, all the same. Li Ki Song, 61, is expert sociologist and department head at the Academy of Social Sciences. He earns 4,500 won a month, and cannot afford even a pair of North Korean-made boots at 7,000 won a pair, he complained to the Asahi. 2,000 won equals a US dollar on current rates.
Taedongan beer goes at 400 won a bottle, Chinese track shoes 10,000 a pair, a school notebook 150, apples 50 a kilo, and bananas or pork a thousand won a kilo.
Notes at the market entrance enlist in large lettering goods banned from sale and twenty commodities on which ceiling prices are established. Taboo items include army equipment, printed matter, orders and medals, and electronic appliances. The top price for, let say, rice is 420 won a kilogram.
Ryu Kwon Silh, 70, retired doctor, peddles soy sauce in Thonil Street. He says his daily average profit is a thousand won, though he does not make a won on certain bad days. Some bigger traders are making as much as 10,000 won a day, unlike him.
Opened September last, the Thonil Street market has a floor space of 6,700 square metres to house about 1,400 traders. A trading accommodation costs 40 to 60 won a day, say market managers. The place has a daily 70 to 100 thousand customers.
Corporate trade by industrial companies has certain restrictions in Thonil Street.
Juice and icecream stalls are a constant presence everywhere in the North Korean capital. The Asahi tracks their thriving down to radical economic reforms launched in July 2002. With their emphasis on cost accounting, the reforms allowed many restaurants to start kiosk chains.
The change is indicative in Kaesong, 12 kilometres off the ceasefire line that divides the two Koreas. South Korea's Hendae-Asan Co. is active there to set up an exclusive industrial area, where several hundred capitalist enterprises will base, with South Korean proprietors. North Koreans attach radiant hopes to the budding arrangement-suffice it to mention three hundred applications for thirty driver vacancies.
Monthly wages in the area will make $57.5, an exorbitant sum, to the North Korean mind. That is why so many people are after jobs there, Chong Yon Chol, 43, municipal chief of external relations, said to the Asahi.
The reforms aim to cut economic losses and boost labour efficiency. That is why the people-in-the-street have been feeling the difference in their pocket for these two years. Last year sent industrial output 10 per cent up, Li Ki Song, the Academy boss of slender means, said to the Japanese newspaper.
The Chinese pattern of market-oriented socialist economy won't work in North Korea. It may favour reforms and open-door policies but is dead set against the free-market economy, which the West-the USA, above all-is out to impose on it, the expert said with a great deal of emphasis.
