“I came to believe I could get away with anything in North Korea with bribes,” he said, “except the crime of criticizing the ruling Kim family.”
Eighty percent of consumer goods sold in North Korean markets originate in China, according to an estimate by
Kim Young-hee, director of the North Korean economy department at the Korea Development Bank in the South.
“Instead, they now flee to South Korea to have a better life they learned through the markets.”
Jung Gwang-il, who leads a defectors’ group in Seoul called No Chain, said
that with more North Koreans getting what they needed from markets rather than the state, their view of Mr. Kim was changing.
“Our attitude toward the government was this: If you can’t feed us, leave us alone so we can make a living through the market,” said Kim Jin-hee,
who fled North Korea in 2014 and, like others interviewed for this article, uses a new name in the South to protect relatives she left behind.
“Officials need the markets as much as the people need them,” said Kim Jeong-ae, a
journalist in Seoul who worked as a propagandist in North Korea before defecting.