North Korean currency crackdown fuels food shortages; government’s aim is to decrease reliance on markets, which now provide about half of North Korea’s food, but which also represent an alternative source of economic, and thus political, power

by Blaine Hardin

TOKYO — Strong-armed currency reform in North Korea, which has confiscated the savings of small businesses and forbidden the use of foreign money, is now causing runaway inflation and contributing to food shortages, according to several reports from inside the closed state

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