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Every smartphone is a loyalty reward
The case for loosening
There is an argument that the boom loosens the system. Residents ordering meal deliveries through an app is only possible with a baseline of consumer technology, private transport, and small-scale commerce that the state tolerates. A person with a car and a smartphone is more independent than one without them. They can move further, communicate faster, and take part in the semi-formal market economy that has been growing out of the ruins of the old rationing system since the famine years.
The case for control
The other side of it is control. The imports are handed out by the regime, not by a market. The smart TVs come with built-in state advertising, and the smartphones run on a network the government watches. The same technology that makes people more independent also gives the state better tools to monitor and manage them.
Who gets the lights
The rewards land in a narrow set of places. A study of nighttime brightness across 178 North Korean districts found that illumination rose by an average of about 26% between early 2022 and late 2025, with the gains overwhelmingly concentrated in the capital and a handful of favored cities like Sinuiju, Nampo, and Wonsan.
Does prosperity tend to loosen authoritarian rule?
Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset argued that wealthier societies are more likely to sustain democracy, an idea that became known as modernization theory. China has been cited as a counterexample, since its income per person rose enormously while the Communist Party kept its monopoly on power. Researchers have debated both readings for decades. Lipset's paper, Some Social Requisites of Democracy, appeared in the American Political Science Review in 1959.
What were the markets that grew from famine?
In the mid-1990s, North Korea's public distribution system, which rationed food through the state, largely broke down during a famine known in the country as the Arduous March. People began trading food and goods in informal markets called jangmadang. The state eventually stopped fighting them and formally allowed general markets in 2003.
Why does North Korea look dark from space?
A photograph taken from the International Space Station in January 2014 and released by NASA shows the Korean peninsula at night, with South Korea glittering and North Korea almost black. Chronic electricity shortages mean most of the country has little outdoor lighting after dark. Researchers use light data like this to track change where official statistics don't exist. Pyongyang appears in the picture as a small island of light.
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