Rason City, North Hamgyong Province, North Korea, which was opened to the outside world under the name of the "Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic Trade Zone" in late December 1991, has emerged as one of the cities North Koreans most aspire to live in, according to North Korea watchers in the South. An integration of Rajin City and Sonbong County, Rason City was re-christened in August last year. Among the children of the North Korean leadership, Rason is among the places in which they want to be deployed upon graduation from college. Due to sluggish foreign investment in the zone since 1999 when Pyongyang eliminated "free" from "Rajin-Sonmbong Free Economic Trade Zone," the city has been being gradually forgotten overseas. Internally, however, it is moving into the limelight as the "Shenzhen of North Korea."

Rason City has become the object of public envy because of its reputation of being the only region in the country that, despite the nationwide food shortages, is free from worries about food. Since late 1996 North Korean authorities have dispensed with rations in the region, and instead raised employee wages 30-40 times. Rason City residents, who used to barely receive around NKW100 in monthly wages, are now able to easily buy rice and other daily necessities imported from China with their monthly wages ranging from NKW3,000 to NKW4,000. Cooperative farm members in Rason City get both wages and food rations, the former standing at between NKW500 and NKW1,000, according to the South Korean specialists on the North.

Foreign firms operating in the trade zone don't pay wages to their employees directly, but pay them to the party, which pays to the employees about half the sum it gets. Chinese businesses, the entry into the trade zone of which is increasing in number of late, are said to pay the maximum possible wages to their local employees in an attempt to have their buildings well constructed.

Some of the approximately 140,000 population of Rason City have launched commercial activities with Chinese traders and tourists based on funds accumulated from their wages, the practice of which the authorities legalized as self-employed businesses in June 1997. At stalls in Rajin Market, a 100-meter square, they've rented from the authorities, merchants sell North Korea-produced fishery and farm products as well as clothing and industrial products imported from China. After paying stall rents and taxes to the Rason City People's Committee, that administers the market, they keep all their revenue as profits. Rason City can thus be described as the only market-oriented economy in the North, where people purchase foods with their wages and make profits from legal commerce.

Spurred by the rumors that one does not starve to death in Rason City, a "North Korean version of exodus" never ceases in which residents from elsewhere in the country sneak into the city, crossing electrified wire fences. To enter the city, one has to go through either of two checkpoints at Huchang in the Rajin region and Chonghak in Sonbong County and to do so, one must have official approval. Rason City people can freely travel to and from other regions. People smuggling themselves into the zone from outside are easily detected by the Ministry of People's Security agents (policemen), because they differ from the local residents in clothing, and are then expelled. To prevent outsiders from illegally entering the zone by sneaking beneath wire fences, the authorities reportedly erected concrete barriers beneath the wire fences in or around 1997.

As their living standards have improved thanks to the zone opening that began in earnest late in 1996, so the sense of values on the part of Rason people is said to have substantially changed. They often talk about improved living standards in South Korea and other East Asian countries. Conversations like "They live well in the South" are tolerated, but those who make comparisons such as "They live better in the South than in the North," are taken to judicial authorities for interrogation as suspected political offenders.

Since the opening of the Rajin-Sonbong region, Pyongyang has intensified ideological controls of its residents so that they won't be contaminated with the ideals of capitalism. "Total solidarity in life" sessions, made lax following the food shortages, have resumed at the weekends, and quite a few lectures, aimed at keeping the population from getting contaminated by capitalist culture, have been given by party secretaries and guidance officers from the Kimilsung Socialist Youth League.

As a means of rejecting bourgeois ideologies, schools have conducted campaigns urging the students "not to grow long hair" or "wear bell-bottomed trousers." A film named "Rotten Capitalism," featuring the evils of capitalism like drug abuse, is often screened at cinemas. More State Security Agency and People's Security Ministry personnel have been assigned to the zone, and so have people who command one or more foreign languages. The size of security personnel in the trade zone has spiraled upward by about 20% from the pre-opening era.

(Lee Kyo-kwan, haedang@chosun.com )