THE whiff of agrarian reform has hung over North Korea since early summer when DailyNK, a Seoul-based defectors’ website, reported a plan to allow farmers to sell more of their harvest at market prices rather than lower, state-set ones. This week it grew stronger after two Western news agencies reported that farmers would be free to decide what to do with a larger share of their grain surplus, after handing over a quota to the state. Reuters quoted a trusted source saying North Korea was trying to follow China, where an economic transformation started with such liberalisation in the late 1970s, under the slogan “reform and opening up”. That phrase would never be used in North Korea, the source added, because in Korean it sounds like the words “dog fart”.

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