I am not smart enough to judge the economic arguments the author makes, but I do now that when a country loses control of its currency control of the country can be threatened. I would think that the "Yuan-ization" of north Korea could hasten regime collapse. But I doubt the regime will allow any more use of the foreign currency than it already does and certainly would not officially adopt a foreign currency. I would think that would unacceptably undercut the legitimacy of the the Juche ideology and the regime. We should recall what Juche means to the regime and to north Korea:
Juche's basic concept is this: “Man rules all things; man decides all things.” “The Kim Il Song Juche ideology is based on these precepts: In ideology Juche (autonomy); in politics, self-reliance; in economics, independence; and in National Security: self-defense.”
V/R
Dave
Why The World Should Be Rallying For The 'Yuan-ization' Of North Korea
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Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institue in Washington, D.C.
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For years, North Korea has been crushed by a communist command economy producing little besides mass starvation. More recently, the plight of North Korea’s economy has been exacerbated by harsh, foreign economic sanctions – which only seem to have driven the regime to double down on its nuclear ambitions.
Following North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011, many around the world had high hopes that his successor (and son), Kim Jong-un, would launch economic and political reforms. Unfortunately, in the year and a half since he assumed power, the new supreme leader has not delivered on his advertised economic reforms, and misery continues to grip all but those in North Korea’s communist upper class.
During the past few months, North Korea has been the subject of outsized news coverage. The recent peacocking by the Supreme Leader – from domestic martial law policies to tests of the country’s nuclear weapons capabilities – has successfully distracted the media from North Korea’s economic woes.
Indeed, behind the saber-rattling, the missile tests, and the basketball games with Dennis Rodman, is an economic story – one with important geopolitical implications, not only for North Korea, but also for China.
North Korea’s Hyperinflation
For years, North Korea’s currency, the won, has been officially pegged to the U.S. dollar. That said, exchange controls and a plethora of associated regulations and harsh penalties have rendered the won inconvertible. This, of course, has given rise to a healthy black market for foreign currency. North Korea’s monetary dysfunction has been accompanied by severe inflation problems.
In 2009, the North Korean government attempted to address these problems by implementing a phony currency “reform” program, which it promptly bungled. The so-called reform was actually just a currency redenomination program, which arbitrarily lopped two zeros off every won note. North Koreans were given less than two weeks to exchange all of their won for new notes. And, the government set limits on the quantity of old won a family could exchange for new won. For those North Koreans who had saved a few too many won, the redenomination program was effectively a wealth tax program, too.
It should come as little surprise that Pyongyang’s bungled currency reform sparked a panic in North Korea’s primitive, underground markets for goods and services. These markets, which developed out of necessity during the famine of the 1990s, primarily exist to counteract shortages that result from state control of agriculture. Indeed, the United Nations has estimated that 50% of the calories consumed by North Koreans come from food purchased in these underground markets. The price of rice, for example, promptly skyrocketed during this period (see the accompanying chart).
(Continued at the link below)
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