North Korea’s Cabinet issued an emergency order on May 12, 2026, capping rice prices in the country’s markets, but the move has driven traders underground and made rice harder to find than before.
A source in North Pyongan province said the Cabinet directed provincial people’s committees — the local administrative bodies responsible for overseeing regional governance — nationwide to prevent market vendors from charging above a government-set price ceiling for food. The directive came as rice prices surged well past 30,000 North Korean won per kilogram in markets across the country.
According to Daily NK’s regular market price monitoring, rice had already crossed the 30,000-won threshold last month. As of May 10, one kilogram of rice was selling for 32,600 won in Sinuiju markets. That figure represents a roughly 3.5-fold increase from the same period last year, when prices stood around 9,000 won, and a more than 1.5-fold rise from mid-February of this year.
Price controls deepen the crisis
In response to the Cabinet order, the North Pyongan provincial people’s committee’s commercial bureau has been coordinating with the provincial security bureau to suppress food price increases. Commercial officials visit markets daily to monitor prices, while security agents patrol vendor stalls and inspect the account books of rice sellers.
When traders are found to have charged above the government’s designated price, security agents confiscate their goods on the spot without compensation, the source said.
The crackdown has produced open confrontations between agents and traders. Vendors who have had their rice seized are pushing back aggressively, the source said, with shouting matches and physical altercations breaking out across markets.
Despite the show of force, the price controls are not working as intended. Traders, seeking to avoid seizures, have pulled their rice off open market stalls and are conducting sales secretly from homes or other private locations. The result is a paradox: on the surface, market prices appear controlled, but actual transaction prices are rising further.
“People are desperate to buy rice at any price, but now they cannot even find it at the market,” the source said. “Wholesalers cannot secure supply either, so prices going up is only natural.”
The harm falls hardest on low-income North Koreans who buy rice in small quantities. Among this group, the source said, criticism is growing that the government’s intervention has disrupted food distribution rather than easing it, deepening hunger rather than alleviating it.
“No trader is going to sell at the government’s price,” one local person was quoted as saying. “If they stop rice from being sold, the only result is that people with nothing will starve.”
Among older North Koreans, the controls have stirred memories of the Arduous March, the period of mass famine in the 1990s during which an estimated hundreds of thousands to over a million people died of starvation. “Elders recall that during the Arduous March, price controls were imposed then too, and the result was mass starvation,” the source said. “They are weeping at the memory.”
Reporting from inside North Korea
Daily NK operates networks of sources inside North Korea who document events in real-time and transmit information through secure channels. Unlike reporting based on state media, satellite imagery, or defector accounts from years past, our journalism comes directly from people currently living under the regime. We verify reports through multiple independent sources and cross-reference details before publication.
Our sources remain anonymous because contact with foreign media is treated as a capital offense in North Korea — discovery means imprisonment or execution. This network-based approach allows Daily NK to report on developments other outlets cannot access: market trends, policy implementation, public sentiment, and daily realities that never appear in official narratives.
Maintaining these secure communication channels and protecting source identities requires specialized protocols and constant vigilance. Daily NK serves as a bridge between North Koreans and the outside world, documenting what’s happening inside one of the world’s most closed societies.
May 19, 2026 at 07:29PM
by DailyNK(North Korean Media)