AFP, Pyongyang :
On the side streets of Pyongyang, small traders sell vegetables from impromptu stalls. At markets, dealers offer imported household goods-even Coca-Cola-and in state-owned department stores hard currency is openly exchanged at black-market rates.
Officially, North Korea denies it is reforming and declares it remains guided by the Juche, or self-reliance, philosophy of founder Kim Il-Sung whose 105th birth anniversary is being marked this weekend.
But under his grandson Kim Jong-Un-the third generation of the dynasty- economic change is quietly happening in the impoverished, nuclear-armed country, analysts say.
The North was once better off than the South, but decades of mismanagement saw it descend into stagnation and food shortages, while its neighbour propelled itself into the OECD group of leading economies.
Pyongyang remains almost entirely devoid of commercial advertising, its wide avenues instead lined with propaganda posters of heroic soldiers and striving workers, or slogans such as “Let us follow the decisions of the 7th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea”.
“We are a socialist country so we stick to our socialist principle economically,” said Ri Sun-Chol, chief of the economic research institute of the North’s Academy of Social Sciences. “We do not push for national reforms adopting a market economy.”
On the side streets of Pyongyang, small traders sell vegetables from impromptu stalls. At markets, dealers offer imported household goods-even Coca-Cola-and in state-owned department stores hard currency is openly exchanged at black-market rates.
Officially, North Korea denies it is reforming and declares it remains guided by the Juche, or self-reliance, philosophy of founder Kim Il-Sung whose 105th birth anniversary is being marked this weekend.
But under his grandson Kim Jong-Un-the third generation of the dynasty- economic change is quietly happening in the impoverished, nuclear-armed country, analysts say.
The North was once better off than the South, but decades of mismanagement saw it descend into stagnation and food shortages, while its neighbour propelled itself into the OECD group of leading economies.
Pyongyang remains almost entirely devoid of commercial advertising, its wide avenues instead lined with propaganda posters of heroic soldiers and striving workers, or slogans such as “Let us follow the decisions of the 7th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea”.
“We are a socialist country so we stick to our socialist principle economically,” said Ri Sun-Chol, chief of the economic research institute of the North’s Academy of Social Sciences. “We do not push for national reforms adopting a market economy.”
