this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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That's great to hear! 18 years ago would be in 2006, which I recall as during the recovery period for the Arduous March and a time when marketization was widespread. During your time there, were you able to visit any of the markets or understand how markets were affecting people's lives? As a foreign student I'm guessing you mostly worked with hard currency, but did you get an understanding of peoples' wages and relative costs of living?
Sorry comrade for the slow reply, I try not to look at my PC too much on weekends. Those are the "spend time with partner and/or community organising" days.
A large part of my daily living arrangements were provided for, including the dorm I stayed in, but I did have some time to head out a bit on my own. Mostly was dealt with DPRK won when I did have expenses to pay. I didn't try to pry into anyone's personal situation in great detail, my research was on security policy more than economics, but at the same time nobody seemed unduly burdened by their costs of living. I won't try to say that everything was utopian, they are a country suffering under western sanctions after all and some things that were harder to manufacture locally were harder to get, but people seemed to have enough. My understanding is that a lot of people were participating in informal markets as a matter of course, especially in the countryside areas. Whether that was something they did out of necessity or not, I am not entirely sure on.