세계 유수의 언론사들이 북한 평성시장 폐쇄를 전한 북한민주화네트워크 소식지 NK In&Out을 인용 보도했다.

뉴욕타임스는 19일자 신문에서 “평양 외곽에 있는 평성 시장이 지난 6월 폐쇄돼 주변의 두세개 작은 시장으로 나뉘었다”고 네트워크를 인용해 보도했다. 신문은 “네트워크는 평성 시장의 상인들이 도시 미화 사업에 기부를 하지 않았다는 이유로 시장을 폐쇄했다고 전했다”고 보도했다.

AP통신은 19일자 보도를 통해 “북한 당국이 평성 시장을 폐쇄하고 2개의 작은 시장으로 대체했다”는 내용을 북한민주화 네트워크 소식지를 인용해 전했다. 이외에도 AP통신 보도를 인용해 워싱턴 포스트, 캐나다 CBC 방송 등이 평성시장 폐쇄 소식을 보도했다.

[아래 주소를 복사하여 링크하시면 사이트로 이동하여 보실 수 있습니다.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/asia/20korea.html

[원문]
North Korea Said to Shut Market in Bid for Control

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has shut down its largest unofficial market in a sign that the Communist government was intent on quashing, or at least better controlling, market activities that it had tolerated for years, Seoul-based organizations monitoring the country said last week.
The market, on the outskirts of Pyongyang, was closed sometime in June and vendors were dispersed to two or three smaller nearby markets, according to the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, or NKNet, which says it monitors the North using informants from inside the country.

Such markets began opening in the 1990s when a multiyear famine loosened the government’s control on the food supply. The closed market, called Pyongsong, had included an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 stalls where people sold everything from home-grown foods — cultivated outside collective farms — to goods smuggled from China.

Some analysts say the North is cracking down on the markets because it fears the spread of capitalist ideas. But others say its move, against Pyongsong at least, might not be ideological.
“Many members of the elite are making money off these markets, so I don’t think the government will try to completely shut down the markets,” said Kay Seok, a Seoul-based researcher for Human Rights Watch who has studied the North’s market activities. “Instead, they will try and figure out a way to control the markets as much as possible while making as much profit out of them as possible.”

NKNet reported that the authorities had shut Pyongsong because vendors in the prosperous market did not donate to “urban beautification.” North Korea watchers have said the government is making a push to beautify cities before 2012, when the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il, is expected to say which of his three sons will succeed him.

After years of allowing unofficial markets to operate, North Korea began placing restrictions on them in 2005, a campaign that defectors say has had limited success as people find ways around the rules.

In January, for example, North Korea announced that informal markets should open only once every 10 days, and should sell only clothes and privately produced farm produce, according to the mass-circulation daily Chosun Ilbo of South Korea. Manufactured and imported goods should be sold only in state-run stores, the new directive said.