Until the mid-1980s, North Korea’s economy represented perhaps the most extreme attempt to implement a system of bureaucratic allocation. Bureaucratic allocation involves the use of so-called “administered prices” (in official North Korean parlance “state-set prices”), i.e. prices set by administrators on behalf of central, regional and local state entities.

However, as NK Pro analysis below demonstrates, since the mid-1980s, market pricing, prices set by individuals and autonomous entities, has moved gradually to the center of the North Korean system.

NK Pro analysis suggests the following: