In the 1980s, North Korea briefly experimented with Chinese-style reforms. The project led to great controversy and a round of purges inside the lower echelons of the top leadership.

For a brief time, however, to those who knew what was going on, it appeared as if North Korea might be about to follow China and, tentatively, open up its economy.

The details are sketchy, but it appears that the joint venture law passed in 1984 was consciously modeled on the Chinese prototype, though there was no effort to immediately create Special Economic Zones (SEZs).

What’s more interesting however is the