Is North Korea Reforming?

It seems like looking-glass logic: if people can't afford food, raise prices. But that's what North Korea has done recently, in what could be an epochal shift away from the impoverishment of the country's Stalinist economy. The government acknowledged that market forces are, to a degree, being allowed to function in place of a system based on rationing and subsidies. Farmers' markets, for example, have been allowed to raise rice prices more than 50-fold, equaling black-market prices. To cover the increased living costs, the government is lifting wages as much as 30-fold, but free food and housing are being eliminated, as...