◆Cooking Oil, Soy Sauce, Soybean Paste… Seven Items Surveyed
Next, let's look at foodstuff prices. We surveyed the sale prices at state-run stores for seven items, including cooking oil, soy sauce, and soybean paste. There was no price difference between Ryanggang and North Hamgyong Provinces.
According to the reporting partner, Russian foodstuffs, soybeans, and pork have been imported in large quantities and circulated domestically since around February of this year. "Russian products are cheap and also good in quality and taste, so they're popular," the reporting partner said. There were also reports of Russian dairy products, such as butter and cheese, being sold.
Soybeans are one of North Korea's staple side-dish ingredients. Yet even soybeans now cost 35,000 won per kilogram — equivalent to a month's wages. Amid this extraordinary hyperinflation, how much purchasing power do North Korean residents actually have, and how are they managing to get by? We will address this later in the series using one family's household budget as an example.
※ASIAPRESS communicates with its reporting partners through Chinese cell phones smuggled into North Korea.
