No, really:
This atmosphere is vividly reflected on the January 3rd report by Joseon Shinbo, the official newsletter for North Korean-Japanese Association [TK: 조총련], which described the throng of people at Pyongyang Department Store No. 1. According to the report, the department store spent a week from December 22, 2009 to procure 440 types of items, four million items total, in preparation for the New Year's Day. It must have been a significant strain on the regime to procure this much. But because of the size of the crowd on the morning of the New Year's Day, the department store opened at 7:30 a.m. instead of its normal time, 10 a.m.
What’s happening is this. A lot of people in North Korea are paid yearly, apparently according to something called “effort count”, and this year their payment coincided with the revaluation and the collapse in prices in goods denominated in the new currency. What these people are doing now is hoarding against the day when prices will increase. So in the short term it looks as though the predictions of collapse that accompanied the revaluation were overdrawn because the move created a roughly even spread between beneficiaries and victims. However:
There are many who support the currency reform among those who are able to stockpile. But they do not necessarily expect things to continue to be better simply because their life right now has improved a little. Stockpiling is a reflection of that mindset; they believe that actual goods are much safer than the untrustworthy North Korean money. Because the wholesalers are keeping their goods in warehouses, and regular people are stockpiling what little goods that the regime procures or the grain that come out into the marketplace, the shortage in North Korea is increasingly getting worse. This feeds into the vicious cycle that leads into the rise in price.
Elsewhere, obligatory Korean leadership trivia. Kim Il-sung’s favourite things included schnitzel with noodles.
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