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rfmcdonaldI visited Steven DenBeste's blog. There, I noted the below passage:
Meanwhile, another group at the UN declared that North Korea's experiments with capitalism were a failure, implying that they should be stopped so that NK can go back to the much-more-successful central planning that made them the richest and most prosperous nation on Earth.
Naturally, I went to the story (at ABCNews.com) to see what it actually said.
U.N. Official: North Korea's Experiment in Capitalism Compounds Hunger, Poverty
The Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea Dec. 3--By dabbling with capitalism, North Korea is creating a new class of urban poor that is worsening its hunger problem, a top U.N. official said Wednesday.
About 1 million urban workers have fallen victim as once centrally controlled industries have to cut costs and jobs amid free-market pressures, said Masood Hyder, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in North Korea.
Hunger and health woes, traditionally a rural plight in North Korea, are an increasingly urban phenomenon that is likely to worsen, Hyder said.
A key cause of the new problem is corporate-belt tightening, common in industrialized countries, but largely unknown until now in the communist North, he said.
"We have just started to discover and realize the magnitude of the problem," Hyder told reporters in Seoul. "It's more than a momentary blip."
The reforms were launched July 1, 2002, when Pyongyang boosted pay and loosened price controls seen as significant moves because they included elements of a market-based economy in one of the world's most tightly controlled countries.
But the reforms have a darker side, said Hyder, who arrived in the isolated country a month after they began.
"Those industries, those factories that are no longer capable of standing on their own feet have had to cut back, have had to redeploy staff," he said, with managers under increased pressure to match supply with demand and trim expenses.
As a result, more workers are having their pay cut or hours slashed, making it harder to buy food as overall prices see a general increase, Hyder said.
"A million people fall into this new category of underemployed beneficiaries, underemployed urban workers who need assistance," he said citing World Food Program estimates.
As evidence of the reforms he has witnessed, Hyder cited a blossoming of small enterprises, new stores, mobile phone usage, consumers' markets and price increases.
The advent of marketplaces where people are allowed to haggle and sell what they want has helped boost prices that were once held down by dictate. At a Pyongyang market Hyder visited, rice cost the equivalent of 44 cents a pound, compared with the official rationing price of 17 cents a pound.
While government officials are aware of the strains, there are few resources to provide a social safety net for affected workers. Outside aid would not only help avoid a humanitarian crisis, it would encourage the government to push ahead with its painful reforms, Hyder said.
One way to help would be for international donors to answer a $221 million humanitarian aid appeal from the United Nations and several aid groups, Hyder said. Of that amount, the WFP is seeking $191 million, in part to help offset the effects on restructured workers.
But only 57 percent of the $225 million aid agencies asked for in 2003 has been pledged, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. That shortfall came amid an international standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and other disputes that have yet to be resolved.
It's a fact that the transition from a Communist economy dominated by central planning to a broadly capitalist economy lacking central planning produces sharp declines in living standards for those people who aren't plugged into new capitalist economic structures. Even countries which have emerged from Communism in relatively good shape have gone through this--even East Germany did, and it had West Germany to bail it out. As the shift to capitalist (or, at least, non-Communist) economies continued, it turned out to be much easier to be East German than Polish, much easier Polish than Ukrainian, much easier still Ukrainian than Azerbaijani or Tajik.
North Korea probably ranks among the poorest countries in the former Communist bloc--the Central Asian and Caucasian states likely come closest. Unlike many of these countries, however, North Korea no longer has a large rural economy to fall back on; North Korea, almost despite itself, is a highly industrialized and urbanized society. North Korea is also a very tightly controlled society, easily ranking alongside the Stalinist Soviet Union in its ability to accept mass death of civilians while maintaining a knuckle-whitening grip over its population.
In East Germany, or Poland, or even perhaps Ukraine, the transition to non-Communist economies at least allowed greater freedom to try to scavenge a life for oneself. In Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, and in Ukraine to a considerable degree, there was at least a rural society to which displaced urbanites could retreat; it would be a hard life, but it would still at least provide food. In North Korea, where there isn't any freedom to speak or, or any rural society capable of absorbing displaced urbanites, a half-hearted transition to capitalist economics (like what we see now) really will prove monstrously destabilizing for the vast majority of people, providing benefit only for the minority of people who are connected to international capitalist economies.
Meanwhile, another group at the UN declared that North Korea's experiments with capitalism were a failure, implying that they should be stopped so that NK can go back to the much-more-successful central planning that made them the richest and most prosperous nation on Earth.
Naturally, I went to the story (at ABCNews.com) to see what it actually said.
U.N. Official: North Korea's Experiment in Capitalism Compounds Hunger, Poverty
The Associated Press
SEOUL, South Korea Dec. 3--By dabbling with capitalism, North Korea is creating a new class of urban poor that is worsening its hunger problem, a top U.N. official said Wednesday.
About 1 million urban workers have fallen victim as once centrally controlled industries have to cut costs and jobs amid free-market pressures, said Masood Hyder, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in North Korea.
Hunger and health woes, traditionally a rural plight in North Korea, are an increasingly urban phenomenon that is likely to worsen, Hyder said.
A key cause of the new problem is corporate-belt tightening, common in industrialized countries, but largely unknown until now in the communist North, he said.
"We have just started to discover and realize the magnitude of the problem," Hyder told reporters in Seoul. "It's more than a momentary blip."
The reforms were launched July 1, 2002, when Pyongyang boosted pay and loosened price controls seen as significant moves because they included elements of a market-based economy in one of the world's most tightly controlled countries.
But the reforms have a darker side, said Hyder, who arrived in the isolated country a month after they began.
"Those industries, those factories that are no longer capable of standing on their own feet have had to cut back, have had to redeploy staff," he said, with managers under increased pressure to match supply with demand and trim expenses.
As a result, more workers are having their pay cut or hours slashed, making it harder to buy food as overall prices see a general increase, Hyder said.
"A million people fall into this new category of underemployed beneficiaries, underemployed urban workers who need assistance," he said citing World Food Program estimates.
As evidence of the reforms he has witnessed, Hyder cited a blossoming of small enterprises, new stores, mobile phone usage, consumers' markets and price increases.
The advent of marketplaces where people are allowed to haggle and sell what they want has helped boost prices that were once held down by dictate. At a Pyongyang market Hyder visited, rice cost the equivalent of 44 cents a pound, compared with the official rationing price of 17 cents a pound.
While government officials are aware of the strains, there are few resources to provide a social safety net for affected workers. Outside aid would not only help avoid a humanitarian crisis, it would encourage the government to push ahead with its painful reforms, Hyder said.
One way to help would be for international donors to answer a $221 million humanitarian aid appeal from the United Nations and several aid groups, Hyder said. Of that amount, the WFP is seeking $191 million, in part to help offset the effects on restructured workers.
But only 57 percent of the $225 million aid agencies asked for in 2003 has been pledged, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. That shortfall came amid an international standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and other disputes that have yet to be resolved.
It's a fact that the transition from a Communist economy dominated by central planning to a broadly capitalist economy lacking central planning produces sharp declines in living standards for those people who aren't plugged into new capitalist economic structures. Even countries which have emerged from Communism in relatively good shape have gone through this--even East Germany did, and it had West Germany to bail it out. As the shift to capitalist (or, at least, non-Communist) economies continued, it turned out to be much easier to be East German than Polish, much easier Polish than Ukrainian, much easier still Ukrainian than Azerbaijani or Tajik.
North Korea probably ranks among the poorest countries in the former Communist bloc--the Central Asian and Caucasian states likely come closest. Unlike many of these countries, however, North Korea no longer has a large rural economy to fall back on; North Korea, almost despite itself, is a highly industrialized and urbanized society. North Korea is also a very tightly controlled society, easily ranking alongside the Stalinist Soviet Union in its ability to accept mass death of civilians while maintaining a knuckle-whitening grip over its population.
In East Germany, or Poland, or even perhaps Ukraine, the transition to non-Communist economies at least allowed greater freedom to try to scavenge a life for oneself. In Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, and in Ukraine to a considerable degree, there was at least a rural society to which displaced urbanites could retreat; it would be a hard life, but it would still at least provide food. In North Korea, where there isn't any freedom to speak or, or any rural society capable of absorbing displaced urbanites, a half-hearted transition to capitalist economics (like what we see now) really will prove monstrously destabilizing for the vast majority of people, providing benefit only for the minority of people who are connected to international capitalist economies.
