경제관리개선조치 이후 북한의 경제관리운용실태에 관한 연구

Abstract

North Korea has been carrying out conservative economic policies in pursuit of normalization of the conventional planned economy system of the past since October 2005. And the country finally made currency reform, which is a crystal of conservative economic policies, on November 30, 2009. Then, is it possible to say that Economic Management Improvement Measures introduced on July 1, 2002 were all abolished and the macro economic operation system of North Korea returned to the conventional centralized planned economy system? It was concluded that economic sections of North Korea was not operated in the same hierarchical management system as the past any more. With the breakdown in supply system of productive materials, state-owend enterprises in other economic sections than main strategic ones were mostly concentrating on achievement of planned monetary index according to a company’s own plan in doing production activities. That is, they were significantly doing market-oriented economic activities to achieve planned monetary index. The dual price structure of goods with statutory and market prices became more reinforced; consequently, distribution markets outside the permitted ‘complex market’ were being expanded all over the country and even developed into a specialized form, contrary to national intent. The distribution system was also being operated in practice according to market principles because of crises of national finance. More than 90% of people’s household economy were filled with non-wage income, or income acquired by personal economic activities, and social demand was satisfied according to market principles. Although the North Korean government aimed at two-track economic operation for planning and market to overcome inefficiency of planned economic functions and improve productivity at the time of Economic Management Improvement Measures on July 1. 2002, lack of supply made the economic reality structured into the dual eonomic system. This state of macro economic management took a sense of crisis to the North Korean government. It realized that the situation was an obstacle to constantly pursuing development policies giving priority to the national defense industry and to becoming a ‘socialist economic strong country’ in 2012. In particular, it believed that economic management order developed with planned functions subordinated into market functions, which might become a threat to the regime through disorder. For this reason, it seems that North Korean government recently implemented 100:1 compulsory money change measures, which were extreme measures to decrease or abolish market artificially beyond the simple market control policies. However, it seems to be impossible for North Korean government to restore the same centralized planned economic system as the past even by such an anti-market economic policy. This is because it is impossible to restore system of productive materials and distribution and economic subjects in the country already experienced possibility of resolving economy of shortage through market-oriented economic actions. Therefore, it seems that while planning and market actually function in a dual form, the attempt to restore the planned economy system by the North Korean government will accumulate more inconsistencies of its economy and arouse great confusions.