Saturday, June 19, 2010

N. Korea lifts restrictions on private markets as last resort in food crisis

So isn't it funny that North Korea has decided that free markets work, and our dear reader is deciding to shut down our free market system, and move to the communist model.
Bowing to reality, the North Korean government has lifted all restrictions on private markets — a last-resort option for a regime desperate to prevent its people from starving.

In recent weeks, according to North Korea observers and defector groups with sources in the country, Kim Jong Il’s government admitted its inability to solve the current food shortage and encouraged its people to rely on private markets for the purchase of goods. Though the policy reversal will not alter daily patterns — North Koreans have depended on such markets for more than 15 years — the latest order from Pyongyang abandons all pretense of a central, planned economy…

As of May 26, the government no longer forces markets to close at 6 or 7 p.m., has dropped the rule restricting customers to women older than 40 and has lifted a ban on certain goods being sold. One city official in the city of Pyungsung informed the Good Friends humanitarian group that the living standard had “drastically decreased since the currency exchange, and the government cannot provide distribution so they have to bring the market back up.”…

Compared with the peak of the food crisis, in the mid and late ’90s, “the actual amount of food — less is available now,” said Kim Heung-gwang, a North Korean defector and president of a group called North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity. “But back then, the food circulation industry wasn’t as built up. Even though the absolute amount of food is less now than it was 15 years ago, I think the starvation problem will be less significant.”
Starvation is a huge motivating force. I wonder what it will take for our commie pres to figure that out? Because I doubt America is going with him on this quest. Liberty is too precious to Americans.

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