North Korea Confidential: Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors

The sub-title tells it all, "Private Markets, Fashion Trends, Prison Camps, Dissenters and Defectors." North Korea Confidential is a rare book about North Korea that is far closer to describing reality than the endlessly recycled narratives of a North Korea seemingly frozen by mindset in the late Kim Il Sung era. Not that Tudor and Pearson pull their punches. They describe the rapid transformation over the last decade and more from a Stalinist command economy to a non-capitalist market economy. In Pyongyang the majority of the population is now dependent on the market and the markets. If you have the money – and of course many don't – everything is possible and everything is available.