Surviving the Hard Times: Adjustment Strategies of Industrial Workers in a Post-Crisis North Korean City

The article deals with the everyday survival strategies employed by the workers of (largely non-functioning) state enterprises in post-socialist North Korea, and with the social changes this group has dealt with in the last two decades. It also compares these trends with the experiences of post-socialist Eastern Europe. In the 1990s the economic role of the North Korean state decreased dramatically. Official wages could no longer guarantee the physical survival of the populace, so workers from state industries engaged in a multitude of economic activities which were (and still are) largely related to the booming “second economy.” These activities include private farming, employment in semi-legal and illegal private workshops, trade and smuggling, as well as small-scale business activities. The choice of a particular activity depends on a number of factors, of which network capital is especially significant. Income is also augmented by the illegal use of state resources and widespread theft of material and spare parts from state-owned factories. As a result of these changes, the industrial working class of North Korea, once a remarkably homogenous group, has fragmented, and its members have embarked on vastly different social trajectories.

度過艱難時光：北韓危機後城市工人的調整策略

本文探討北韓後社會主義國營企業（大部分不再運作）工人採納的日常生存策略以及 這一社會群體在近二十年裏所經歷的社會變化，並將這些趨勢與東歐大後社會主義經歷相比較。在1990年代北韓政府在其經濟中的作用急劇下降。官方工資不再能維持其人口的基本生存。國營企業的工人們於是參與到與急速發展的“第二經濟”有關的多種經濟活動中。這些活動包括私人農場、在私有車間裏半合法或非法就職、貿易及走私、以及小型商業活動。他們對所從事的活動的選擇取決於一系列的因素，但其中關係資本尤其重要。有些工人則通過非法使用國家資源或普遍存在的偷竊國營工廠物資及配件等方法增加收入。這些變化所帶來的後果是北韓的工人階級作為一個曾經最同質的群體開始分裂，其成員則踏上了迥異的社會旅程。

Translated from English by Xin Huang