Why is it…

… that it takes a leftist web site, Alternet, to notice the rise of commerce and trade inside of North Korea?

Private markets — once outlawed — are now encouraged. The Tongil Market in the middle of Pyongyang is a large space where vendors sell everything from Chinese electronics to hothouse tomatoes. Until recently off-limits to foreigners, Tongil now attracts non-Korean visitors such as Marcela Sandoval. … Private enterprise is taking place outside these markets as well, often involving middlemen known as “doekori.” These middlemen are now selling bicycles, cars, and any number of goods from the back of trucks. It’s not just profit-making at the street level. Outside firms have taken advantage of the skilled workforce of the North, even to the point of outsourcing computer graphics: parts of the animated movie The Lion King were made in Pyongyang. According to the Korea Herald, 150 international companies now operate in North Korea. To handle all the business going back and forth, the DHL office in Pyongyang has grown to 21 staff.

Is it because conservatives these days are so pessimistic, so attached to war, and so convinced they will, through their actions, eradicate evil, that they refuse to acknowlkedge just how natural human liberty really is?

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12:06 pm on June 10, 2005