Kim Jong-Il's currency reform causes currency outrage

Still, China's New China News Agency describes North Korean citizens now are in a "collective panic" and North Korean troops are ordered to be "ready to shoot." South Korea sources report that police in Pyongyang shot and killed market traders, and piles of old bills, with images of Kim Il-Sung, were set on fire and dumped in streams. Pyongyang authorities have threatened "merciless punishment" for anyone who violates the rules of the currency change.

http://www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/article/20091216/OPINION02/912160318

Pyongyang's currency reform is part of a campaign to return to the North Korean version of orthodox socialism. "North Korea introduced limited market reforms in 2002 that allowed people to buy and sell goods at free markets," reports BBC's Michael Bristow, "as state-run shops sell fewer and fewer items, free markets have become increasingly important to ordinary North Koreans. " The Kim regime's "money move could be more significant than the country's headline-grabbing nuclear-weapons program," says Shaun Cochran, head of Korea research at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, "since the regime's power ultimately rests on its ability to make North Koreans believe that it controls their economic well-being."

Kim's "fake" currency reform signals a country that now is caught in the grip of an extremely severe economic crisis. It is the byproduct of a failed system, not its solution. The only way out for the Pyongyang regime is to reform its totally dysfunctional central planning system and open up to the outside world. Otherwise, no matter how ruthless is the Kim regime, it will not be able to keep its people down forever.