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Economic miracle
At one time, North Korea's centrally planned economy seemed to work well - indeed, in the initial years after the creation of North Korea following World War II, with spectacular results.
The mass mobilisation of the population, along with Soviet and Chinese technical assistance and financial aid, resulted in annual economic growth rates estimated to have reached 20%, even 30%, in the years following the devastating 1950-53 Korean war.
In the West, governments fretted that Communist-backed North Korea was putting the Western-backed, capitalist South to shame.
Basket case
In the 1990s, floods and economic crisis brought a famine feared to have claimed at least one million lives.
North Korea's economy, once hailed as a miracle, was written off as a basket case.
With economic collapse, the power of the North Korean state to dominate every aspect of its citizens' lives was diluted.
Meanwhile, hunger drove industrial workers out of the disciplined confines of factory life into the hills and fields, in search for food and fuel.
North Koreans who once relied on the state for basic necessities were now forced to make do on their own.
Change
In 1999, even in Pyongyang, people were exhausted, malnourished, feeble... In 2004, the situation was very different - the whole city looked like one big market. There was activity everywhere, on streets, under the bridges, from the windows of apartments.
Meanwhile, at the northern frontier with China, trade is thriving, and bribes can often buy passage across the border for North Koreans wishing to buy goods, visit family or flee the country.
Chinese and Russian traders now move more or less freely around the country, though North Koreans remain subject to stringent travel restrictions.
漫步 平壤 街头 欣赏 优美 歌曲 |
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