The latest news on this front comes from BBC:

The United Nations human rights report also accuses Kim Jong-un’s government of economic mismanagement, leaving its people fighting to get the basics. Everyday survival is further hampered by officials demanding bribes, it adds.

North Korea has rejected the report as being “politically motivated for sinister purposes”. The report, entitled The Price is Right, is based on interviews carried out with 214 defectors in 2017 and 2018.

It notes that the collapse of the state-run distribution system in the 1990s has forced an estimated three-quarters of the population to turn to informal markets as everyday rations are no longer enough to survive.

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