This is Bill Tsutsui with another Postcard from Asia from the Center for East Asian Studies.

Ask your average North Korean-on-the-street what they need and we’d wager that few – if any – would say “Gee, I could sure use a new dictionary of capitalist economic terminology.” Still the government has published just such a thing. The 200-page volume was distributed mostly to elite members of the regime and was conceived to rectify an embarrassing ignorance on the part of the North Koreans about such things as “interest” and “principal” and “black money” which, by the way, it denounces as the product of corrupt, imperialistic, materialistic societies. Not corrupt, imperialistic or materialistic enough, however, to shun altogether: one of the aims of the dictionary is to prepare the North for increased overseas trade. Black money accepted here.

With thanks to Randi Hacker for this text, from the Center for East Asian Studies, I’m Bill Tsutsui. Wish you were here.