KOREA FOCUS

 

North Korea`s “Economic Management Improvement Measures” of July 1, 2002, evaluated as a partial reform of the country`s socialist system, approved the introduction of corporate management based on market principles through autonomy in corporate finance, market order in prices and wages, realistic foreign exchange rates, a strengthened role for currency in national economy, relaxation of control over small-scale businesses and a partial overhaul of social security system. The “General Market System,” introduced in March 2003, further enlarged the role of the market in commerce and distribution, adding industrial goods to the scope of merchandise, which had been limited to agricultural and local products. The 2003 measure officially recognized the role of currency and market in North Korean society, and decisively affected its price and wage structures.

 

Since 2003, the widened market effect on prices and wages has dramatically changed the lives of North Korean workers, driving them into unofficial labor for survival. According to many accounts from North Korean defectors since 2006, new types of work and labor markets have developed and a sort of class division – into lower, middle and upper levels – has emerged. They also reported that only about 20 percent of North Korean workers were receiving salaries or food rations from their workplaces because only that percentage of North Korean industrial facilities were operating. Only the employees at military industrial facilities or other key industrial plants can maintain the pre-food crisis level of employment in the North. Other workers cannot engage in normal labor as long as shortages of power and raw materials disrupt production.  

 

How then can the large numbers of sidelined North Koreans survive without wages or rations? Starting with this question, the present study examines “marginal working,” which has drastically changed the North`s labor scene. The study uses Erving Goffman`s methodology of analyzing the situation and frame of interaction in daily life; looks into the expansion of “abnormal labor for survival-level compensation, which evades official labor statistics and disregards social rules” (Yu Hong-jun 2005, 189); and explores the labor market in the North on the basis of its changing circumstances and structure after the 2003 adoption of market system.

This study is based on information obtained in interviews with North Korean refugees who left the country in recent years. The study is concerned with the changing patterns of North Korean workers` labor routine, their individual consciousness about labor and their illegal work for survival. Forty-one defectors were interviewed while others were surveyed twice through questionnaires. Most of the respondents were from the Chinese border areas of North Hamgyong Province, where trespassing into China is relatively easier than other parts of North Korea. It is assumed that changes in labor patterns are less conspicuous in the Pyongyang-South Pyongan Province area which is one of the main farming zones in North Korea and is known to be enjoying relatively greater benefits from the North Korean regime. Although the interviewees did not evenly represent different North Korean regions, they had fairly extensive knowledge about labor routines in the country owing to their wide experience in travel and business activities.

 

The transcripts of their interviews illustrate personal experiences of individuals including both organized and unorganized facts, which differ from theoretical concepts and abstracts. Thus, this paper deals with detailed conditions surrounding the daily lives of North Korean workers since 2003.