In desperation, North Korea resorts to private markets

SEOUL — 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 a key pillar of a central, planned economy.

With November’s currency revaluation, Kim wiped out his citizens’ personal savings and struck a blow against the private food distribution system sustaining his country. The latest policy switch, though, stands as an acknowledgment that the currency move was a failure and that only capitalist-style trading can prevent widespread famine.

“The North Korean government has tried all possible ways [for a planned economy] and failed, and it now has to resort to the last option,” said Koh Yu-hwan, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “There’s been lots of back and forth in what the government has been willing to tolerate, and I cannot rule out the possibility of them trying to bring back restrictions on the markets. But it is hard for the government to reverse it now.”

Ironically, though, it may well be the private markets that came into being in the wake of the mid-90s famine that end up saving the North Korean people from another disaster:

If North Korea can abandon state control of markets to ward off starvation, why can't Washington abandon its grasp for power

SEOUL -- 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 a key pillar of a central, planned economy.

With November's currency revaluation, Kim wiped out his citizens' personal savings and struck a blow against the private food distribution system sustaining his country. The latest policy switch, though, stands as an acknowledgment that the currency move was a failure and that only capitalist-style trading can prevent widespread famine.

"The North Korean government has tried all possible ways [for a planned economy] and failed, and it now has to resort to the last option," said Koh Yu-hwan, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. "There's been lots of back and forth in what the government has been willing to tolerate, and I cannot rule out the possibility of them trying to bring back restrictions on the markets. But it is hard for the government to reverse it now."

Because North Korea operates in secrecy and isolation, outside observers rely on informants and accounts from defectors. In this case, experts agree that the food shortage is dire. Several analysts who monitor and travel to North Korea said that in recent weeks, Pyongyang has abandoned almost all its rules about who can spend money and when. That would seem to indicate that Kim -- who once equated free-market trading with "egotism" and a collapse of social order -- now wants to rehabilitate the markets damaged in November

Whether by incompetence or design, the post-American president is enabling a post-American world

Iran is on the march, and we have Barack Obama to thank.

In Tehran, Iran, Brazil and Turkey signed a deal on Monday to swap nuclear fuel. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Brazil’s President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu raised their hands in triumph after signing the deal.

Ambassador John Bolton spells out the implications of the deal: “If this continues, it cuts the kneecaps off the administration’s sanctions effort. I think it’s a jujitsu move by the Iranians that undercuts the Obama policy.”

An unsigned editorial in the Wall Street Journal characterized the deal as “a political coup for Tehran and possibly delivers the coup de grace to the West’s half-hearted efforts to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.” The editorial adds: “Full credit for this debacle goes to the Obama Administration and its hapless diplomatic strategy.”

And that’s not all. A new Israeli report shows that Iran has formed an alliance with China and North Korea, focusing on the development of missiles and nuclear capabilities.

Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said last week that North Korea is sending WMD’s to Iran’s reliable Middle Eastern client state, Syria. And few weeks ago it was revealed that Iran is sending paramilitary troops to Venezuela. What for?

A nuclear-ready Iran is preparing for world war. Here, there, everywhere. And we have … impotent Obama.

As Sudan prepares for nukes, Mark Steyn comments on "the self-indulgent irrelevance of Mr. Obama"

Iran already has offered to share its nuclear technology with Sudan. Sudan? Ring a vague bell? Remember that "Save Darfur" interpretative-dance fundraiser you went to where someone read out a press release from George Clooney and you all had a simply marvelous time? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed - with machetes. That's pretty labor-intensive. In the Congo, 5 1/2 million have been slaughtered - and again in impressively primitive ways.

But a nuclear Sudan would be a model of self-restraint?

By the way, that's another example of the self-indulgent irrelevance of Mr. Obama. The mound of corpses being piled up around the world today is not from high-tech nuclear states but from low-tech psycho states. It's not that Britain has nukes and poor old Sudan has to make do with machetes. It's that the machete crowd is willing to kill on an industrial scale and the high-tech guys can't figure out a way to stop them. Perhaps for his next pointless yakfest the president might consider a machete nonproliferation initiative.

Nuclear technology cannot be uninvented. All you can do, as President Reagan understood when few others did, is invent something that will render it, if not yet obsolete, at least less lethal. Until that moment, what makes the difference is not the technology but the regime. The Obama Happy Fairyland Security Summit was posited on the principle that there's no difference between a Swiss nuke and a Syrian nuke. If you believe that, you'll be thrilled by the big breakthrough agreement of the summit: Canada, Chile, Mexico and Ukraine have agreed to reduce their stocks of enriched uranium. Peace in our time! I have here a piece of paper from the prime minister of Canada!

Bill Clinton's North Korea adventure: the movie

Hollywood wrote script for Bill Clinton's NK drama

"Bill Clinton's triumphant return from North Korea with two rescued US journalists had Hollywood written all over it -- from the Burbank airport to the big-time producer who bankrolled the expedition to the celebrity public-relations firm that orchestrated the homecoming.

A key player in Clinton's high-flying diplomatic mission to rescue Laura Ling and Euna Lee was entertainment mogul Steve Bing, a longtime "Friend of Bill" who lent the ex-president his private Boeing 737.

The multimillionaire mogul paid about $200,000 in fuel and other costs that came with the trans-Pacific flight.

Bing's Shangri-La entertainment firm also funded a major logistical effort to carefully showcase Clinton's arrival in Tinseltown -- which featured Ling lauding the former president while almost in tears."

Bill takes to sky with two women; no one asks

The mainstream media is setting a new standard for fecklessness.

Imagine, Bill (Stud) Clinton obtained the release of two attractive young women in North Korea and the trio flew back on the same plane from the other side of the world. As far as I can tell, not one reporter has inquired about what happened on that airplane.

Was Clinton smiling when he debarked? Did he look tired? Did Hillary glance at Bill accusingly?

I tell you, it's like a news blackout.