North Korea has increasingly moved away from Kim Jong Un’s early reformism in recent years, reigning in steps toward marketization as it has sought to reassert state control over the economy.

But even as this has taken place, so-called order contracts that give state-owned enterprises (SOEs) greater autonomy to set prices and trade with other SOEs have remained in place, a reality that has raised questions about the current state of reforms.

An article about order contracts recently published on the website of Kim Il Sung University’s Journal of Law has helped answer