While we are moving into spring, North Korean leaders have decided to stay out in the cold of economic isolationism. In a move sure to solidify its position in the Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom, North Korea signaled April 1 that it would gradually terminate its experiment with free market system. Its no joke!
As reported in The New York Times, North Korea will phase out private markets and restore its state-controlled system, a North Korean government economist said in an interview broadcast late Thursday amid signs that the North was retreating from years of free market experiments.
According to the 2010 Index, North Koreas economic freedom score is mere 1.0 out of the 0-100 scale, which not surprisingly marks its economy as the least free in the world. Since the early 1990s, North Korea has replaced the doctrine of MarxismLeninism with the late Kim Il-Sungs juche (self-reliance) as the official state ideology. The countrys impoverished population is heavily dependent on government subsidies in housing and food rations, though even the state-run rationing system has deteriorated significantly in recent years.