Power and Market Commerce in the DPRK: From Prohibition to Recognition

The article examines changes in the DPRK’s market policy in 1958-2020. North Korea’s leadership long held an extremely negative view of private commercial activity. However, in the early 1990s, when markets and private entrepreneurship played a decisive role in people’s survival amid a severe economic crisis, the authorities had to revise their stance. Nevertheless, a major part of North Korea’s leadership still perceives markets and private trade as ideologically alien and potentially destabilizing, and tolerates them only due to economic pressure. While the central government remains wary of markets and private initiative, local authorities are more willing to put up with it.