The Communist State of North Korea: A Capitalist Society
Masters thesis — Naval Postgraduate School, 2020. Full text: https://archive.org/details/thecommuniststat1094566742
Arguments
The Communist State of North Korea: A Capitalist Society
Sanctions and negotiations target the official economy, but daily life runs on markets the state doesn't control — pressure aimed at the command economy keeps missing where the real economy lives.
North Korea runs three economies, not one — the official command economy plus two parallel capitalist economies, the jangmadang (market ground) economy and an elite economy, that emerged when the 1990s famine broke the state's distribution system.
Why it matters
Sanctions and negotiations target the official economy, but daily life runs on markets the state doesn't control — pressure aimed at the command economy keeps missing where the real economy lives.
Use when: When the official system fails, people build a parallel one — and the parallel economy, not the official one, is where the leverage sits.