in north korea, private agriculture quietly flourishes

SEOUL —
According to a North Korean housewife, a DVD player costs 15 rabbits.
DVD players are worth it, she reasoned, because they allow people from closed authoritarian countries to watch contraband movies, music videos and soap operas from South Korea, India and China. Mrs Choi, a 43-year-
The old man who fled to the South in 2009 recalled that her machine cost 150,000 won, which was about $45.
She said she was not concerned that the cost was 75 times her official salary.
She is optimistic because the real North Korean economy described by the recent North Koreans is now market-centric.
Called jangmadang-
More and more people from the hillsides allocated money and kitchen gardens such as Mrs. Cui\'s income.
\"What you fear most is the midnight thief,\" Ms. Cui said, describing the kind thief.
There\'s a fenced enclosure around her tile.
A rooftop house in the northern province of hamgong.
\"You have to build pens to protect your rabbits and chickens.
Many people on the street built tunnels and cellars under the kitchen to raise pigs.
\"Testimony from defectors from China\'s border areas shows that private agriculture is playing an increasingly important role in the North Korean real economy.
The emerging private sector could face the test this winter, with the United Nations warning that the country faces a severe grain shortage.
The World Food Program has released videos of malnourished children in hospitals, but South Korea says Pyongyang has exaggerated the shortfall to win aid.
Ms. Cui believes that the scale of personal cultivation makes people less worried that the country will once again fall into a famine of 1990 people, which has killed as many as 1 million people.
\"People feel more witty and less vulnerable now,\" she said, wiping tables at the Seoul restaurant where she is now working.
Although 2,000 to 3,000 North Koreans come to South Korea every year, it is difficult to get the latest description of the situation in North Korea from them, because the Seoul intelligence department monitors the latest arrivals in a few months, to screen enemy agents.
But Andrei Lankov, a professor at Seoul\'s Kookmin University, said the North Korean authorities had softened their stance on private land cultivation, which was once an-
Evil view of socialism
He said officials at the Forestry and Land Registry are now accepting bribes rather than cracking down on small farms that many defectors insist are more productive than state farms.
\"They will never go hungry again,\" Lankov said of the 1990 famine era . \".
\"If there is really a bad harvest, then China will send enough troops to keep North Korea on the hunger line.
More broadly, the scale of private farming over the past decade has not only helped poor families to get more food, but it is also part of the \"grass\", Lankov believes.
The revival of capitalist market economy.
\"The cost of Jangmadang is consistent with the US dollar and the supply of China, which has nothing to do with the price planning of authoritarian countries.
Another defector was also there.
2009 agreed that security guards patrolling the northern market paid little attention to families --grown produce.
\"The only thing they really look for at the booth is Korean electronics or clothing,\" said the defector . \".
\"It\'s sensitive.
\"Shortly after Ms. Cui fled, Kim Jong Il, the authoritarian leader of North Korea, tried to control the free market but failed.
When he tried to make bold currency reforms in December 2009, jangmadang suddenly stopped for a few weeks and cut two zeros off each banknote.
The defector said a rare public protest broke out.
Defectors believe Kim Jong Il is trying to block a class of traders who threaten the political situation.
\"The authorities are trying to tame wealthy businessmen who do not obey them,\" Li said . \"
Ran, a former North Korean factory inspector.
Pyongyang can monitor licensed business elites engaged in arms exports and quasi-arms trade.
Military trading companies transporting ginseng and mushrooms, but smaller free-market participants are more difficult to control.
Officials at the South Korean central bank, which monitors North Korea\'s currency, said Kim did not kill new capitalists through his currency reforms.
On December 2009, the price of a kilo of rice was theoretically lowered from $2. 40 to 2 cents.
Rice prices are close to $2 this month.
70, suggesting that the market has stabilized in the early stagereform levels.
\"It went round.
\"The market determines the price,\" said an official at a South Korean bank . \"
In fact, Pyongyang
Since currency reform, market activity and private agriculture seem to have picked up nationwide, the diplomat said.
\"People are more interested in making cash, which is an amazing change,\" he said . \".
Food \"completely lost confidence in the government and the public distribution system \".
Pyongyang for the second time
Washington-based diplomats say he even saw evidence in the capital last year of why authorities avoided a crackdown on families --
Food supplies critical to the poor.
In scenes rarely witnessed, the diplomat said, angry tenants reprimanded state officials who wanted to dismantle the dilapidated balcony of the apartment building to beautify the community.
\"The balcony is like a greenhouse where people grow vegetables and raise rabbits,\" he said . \"
\"Officials were shocked by their efforts to keep them. ” —
Seoul\'s Financial Times kombuzon contributed to the report.