"Aristocrats" in Pyongyang wear Western suits and Nike canvas shoes, smoke foreign cigarettes like Marlboro or Mild Seven, frequent bars and restaurants where only foreign currencies are accepted such as the Koryo Hotel Bar, and spend hundreds of American dollars on food and drinks. Such privileged people are concentrated in Pyongyang's Changgwang, Puksae (currently An Sang Taek) and Munsu Streets. Changgwang Street is home mainly to ranking officials of the Workers' Party headquarters, while Puksae and Munsu Streets accommodate officials involved in relations with South Korea and former Korean residents in Japan who have migrated to the North.

Since former Korean residents in Japan who have migrated to the North are permitted to own foreign cars, their children frequent foreign currency-only shops accompanied by their female friends. Upset by this, zealous children of leading party members boast their status by driving Mercedes sedans, belonging to their fathers. There are not a few North Korean Casanovas.

Money-earning opportunities are quite limited in the North. However ranking they may be, officials can hardly use foreign currency at their own will unless they are involved in foreign affairs or foreign-exchange earning activities. Only those who work at Offices No. 38 and No. 39 of the party headquarters, engaged in earning foreign change, and who travel abroad frequently, can afford to use foreign currency. Posts wielding power and dispensing foreign exchange at once are extremely small in number.

Once you are able to use foreign currencies and take meals at restaurants where only foreign exchange is accepted, you employ a way of thinking far removed from that prevailing among common North Koreans. The young in the North now have a strong desire to earn foreign exchange and live like the privileged, says a North Korean defector in the South, a son of a ranking official in Pyongyang. Those singing North Korean songs are regarded as being a little wanting in the head, and to mix oneself among the elite people should be able to habitually listen to classic music and sing South Korean songs. They circulate among themselves discs and videos smuggled into the North from the West, the act of which, if uncovered, could even lead to execution. Some who have made fortunes in provinces come to the capital city, but they are not easily accepted as peers by the Pyongyang set of playboys.

Those who can afford smoking foreign cigarettes in the North may be classified as being privileged. A pack of foreign cigarettes costs 2 won in foreign-exchange coupons, equivalent to NKW80-NKW100; North Korean workers' monthly wages average at NKW100.

Kim Jong Il instructs ranking party officials to discipline their children from time to time. Many senior officials ruin their careers on account of their misbehaving children. Quite a few kids of ranking officials, including Rhi Man Ho, son of deputy premier Rhi Jong Ok, have been incarcerated in detention facilities like Yodok Concentration Camp. Most children who have defied their parents reform themselves after undergoing hardships at detention camps, according to North Korea watchers here.

(Kang Chol Hwan, nkch@chosun.com )