Jangmadang
Some of them, such as regulating the age of traders, has resulted in societal changes such as making women more responsible for earning money for their families.
North Korean citizens farmed land deemed "unusable for agricultural purposes" by the government or even small kitchen gardens to provide for their families.
[6] These illegal private farms were able to produce crop yields larger than the public agriculture programs.
[8] Private markets evolved from local communities involving various organizations, workplaces, relatives and neighbors, that helped people to survive during the famine.
Without a working food distribution system, people need local markets to earn money and survive.
A significant growth of number of the people engaged in private business activities and related bribing was also noted.
[13] These markets generate an estimated number of $56.8 million annually in taxes and rent, and have become a larger part of the nation's economy than even the government would like to admit.
[6] Kookmin University professor Andrei Lankov reports that some Jangmadang merchants, in addition to the elite and foreign currency earners, have paid for private education of their children.
[14] In 2017, the Korea Institute for National Unification estimated there were 440 government-approved markets employing about 1.1 million people.
[8] In 2008, among the most popular or wanted goods sold at markets were street food, car batteries, rice cookers, electric shavers, dress shoes, cosmetics, DVD-players, motorcycles and vinyl floor coverings.
DVDs and memory sticks containing South Korean films and television shows have become relatively commonplace, as have radios capable of receiving transmissions from Chinese stations.
These goods have provided new avenues for outside information to reach North Koreans, and former North Korean government official Jang Jin-sung believes the continued availability of such information in jangmadang could play a critical role in the reform or outright dissolution of the Kim regime.
[1] Some people sell their wares in alleyways near the actual marketplace to avoid harassment and extortion by officials of the Ministry of Social Security.
[25] Around 2007, the officials tried to take control of sales of the Chinese-made plastic floor coverings, which had become popular and profitable with increasing living standards, by decreeing that they may be sold only through state-owned stores.
[27] These grey markets have seen an influx of foreign currencies, mainly the Chinese Yuan and the United States dollar.
[28] One theory of North Korean government's goals in the 2009 revaluation of the Won, is that it targeted those traders who had developed large surpluses of capital.
The currency reform also caused an initial flurry of buying in jangmadangs by worried people to make sure their savings did not lose all of their value.
Ultimately, the currency reform failed as official and black-market exchange rates for the North Korean Won continued to depreciate.
[7] For some time, only the Chinese Yuan, in addition to other foreign currencies, was practically accepted in trade, with the exception of food merchants selling rice.
[30][2] During the North Korean famine, people received and shared help first in their local community through organizations, workplaces, relatives and neighbors.
North Korea human rights reporter Barbara Demick called these women "mothers of invention".
These women were the ones to take risk of traveling great distances, and going to find food from countryside, or even from other provinces despite regulations against human mobility.
These women also defied regulations against unauthorized goods transactions, and some crossed the dangerous border to China as temporary migrants, to take the role of family's breadwinner.
The women engage not only in trade, but on small scale household production making shoes, sewing garments and preparing food for sale.
