North Koreans starving after currency move

The currency revaluation was aimed at wiping out the cash holdings of a burgeoning merchant class, who risked exposure for illegal activities outside the centrally planned economy if they exchanged their old cash or deposited their wealth in banks.

Ahhh Communism !
This is what it ultimately leads to .
So we should expect a Missile launch and or Nuclear test any day now !


SEOUL (Reuters) - North Koreans are starving to death and unrest is growing due to a currency revaluation last year that crippled markets and led to the sacking of a senior cadre, reports said on Wednesday.

The news comes as the destitute North is under growing pressure to end its boycott of international nuclear disarmament talks, where it can win aid for reducing the security threat it poses in economically vital North Asia.

Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said after meeting officials in Seoul that North Korea must return to the six-country talks and live up to pledges it made to take apart its nuclear weapons programme.

"Sanctions will not come off before that," he told reporters.

North Korea last year announced a revaluation of its currency where old notes of its won currency would be changed for new ones at a rate of 100 to one.

The move was a further blow to the North's wobbly economy, already hit by U.N. sanctions imposed after its nuclear test last year to halt its lucrative arms sales.

North Korean Workers' Party finance director Pak Nam-gi, who led the currency revaluation aimed at breaking up markets in the socialist state, has been removed from his post, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper said quoting diplomatic sources in Beijing.

"Markets have come to a grinding halt following the currency revaluation and prices have soared," the source said.

After the currency moves, fewer goods were available for an already impoverished public and prices rose sharply.