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As our friends know all too well, we are pretty obsessed with the North Korean food economy; it’s a revealing window into the entire system. Marc Noland commented recently on a DailyNK story that suggests the sale of party membership for food. But one other tidbit in the story pointed to the size of the underground food economy. In response to the rice procurement drive, two people are reported to have offered ten tons of rice and ten tons of corn, 50 people have given two tons of rice, and a further 200 people have offered one ton of rice.
“Offered?” We doubt it. But ten tons of rice? Private inventories of this size are staggering. We’d love to be a fly on the wall at the negotiations between these larger traders and the security forces. But given the trends in prices and supplies, the government may not hold all the cards.
