Professor Andrei Lankov, perhaps the English-speaking world’s foremost commentator on modern North Korea, has described the country as “for all intents and purposes, a market economy.”  It was not always like this of course, but changing conditions over the last twenty years have encouraged grassroots development of a grey market economy, as well as top-down legislative changes which permit and encourage the development of what now appears to be an internal market within the official economy as well.

Perhaps the biggest enabler of this the official measures introduced in July 2002; measures which, according to the ROK