North Korea is one of the world's most isolated
states... but even the most reclusive of the
states has something in common with the rest
of the world - an obvious generation gap.
North Korea's millennials are known as the
market generation... and they are bringing
about significant changes to the oppressive
state.
I had the chance to meet with one myself...
part one of my two part series on waves of
change shaping and shaking North Korea...
this is the story of Joo Yang. 
Wearing a ponytail high... in a pair of fashionable
skinny jeans… this 25-year-old blends right
into the heart of Seoul's most hip neighborhood.
With a saucy smile and perky personality,
Joo Yang enjoys hanging out in the South Korean
capital city's hottest shopping spot.
Her interests?
Accessories, chocolate, celebrities and cosmetics.
These look like Kim Jong-il's glasses, don't
they?
But... Kim Jong-il?
You mean... the late leader of North Korea,
Kim Jong-il, whom the rest of the world refer
to as "dictator"?
"When I was 13 years old, I started a private
business selling goods like socks, candies,
biscuits, and rice cakes on traditional holidays.
I sold work socks and gloves. I bought them
wholesale from a friend who had relatives
in China and resold for profit in the black
market at home."
Joo Yang is from Chongjin, North Korea - an
industrial province near the North Korean
border with China. She escaped from the rogue
state four and a half years ago.
The 25 year-old is nothing like the older
generation North Korean defectors.
She is part of North Korea's millennials,
those born in the 1980s and 90s... and make
up about a quarter of the regime's population
of 25 million people.
Unlike their parents, this generation of North
Koreans learned the illegal language of black
market business from an early age.
"Black market not only exists in North Korea,
it's prevalent across the state. People gather
in open fields in the village; some bring
out a bucket of rice cakes, some meat, some
seafood and people just squat there and sell
things. Sometimes state security officials
would crack down. Someone would yell, 'Security
guards ' and everyone would run with buckets
in their arms."
Never having seen a functioning ration system,
North Korea's millennials live through the
growing and proliferating illicit market inside
the self-proclaimed totalitarian state.
They call themselves the Jangmadang, or 'Black
Market' generation.
"South Korean and American goods are smuggled
in from China. Vendors have South Korean products
like rice cookers, washing machines, and cosmetics
hidden underneath North Korean and Chinese
goods. Whenever they see customers who appear
interested in South Korean products, they
whisper and cautiously pull out South Korean
goods from below. Those products are very
popular."
It's not just manufactured goods that these
young North Koreans are exposed to.
North Korean millennials are coming of age
at a time of secretive, but unprecedented
access to technology and foreign media.
"When 'Gangnam Style' became a hit in the
South... within a few days, young North Koreans
were dancing to the music behind closed curtains.
'Frozen' became available on CDs in the Black
Market just days after it opened in Seoul.
They make their way into the black market
in CDs, USBs, and those tiny SD cards. People
up there know South Korean celebrities, actors,
singers... probably even better than you "
The popularity of foreign media is rapidly
growing in a state where watching or listening
to foreign, especially South Korean, media
is defined as a crime against the state punished
with time in labor camps and even public execution.
But, the Black Market continues to flourish
because corruption and bribery are so entrenched
in modern North Korea.
If someone gets caught with illegal DVDs or
selling South Korean goods, the security police
can easily be bought off. Why?
"To survive. The military, too, realize that
allegiance to the state doesn't feed your
empty stomach. You starve to death staying
loyal to the regime. With a collapsed ration
system, they have no other means to keep their
mouths fed."
To Andrei Lankov, a Russian historian of North
Korea who lived and studied in Pyongyang in
the 1980s, this is the largest social change
in North Korea in his lifetime.
"These people are, compared to their parents,
much more pragmatic; they are cynical, individualistic,
they do not believe in the official ideology.
They mistrust the government. They are less
fearful of the government compared to their
parents. First is corruption. Under Kim Il-sung,
North Korea was an ideal Stalinist state.
In a Stalinist state, it doesn't make sense
to take bribes. You can't buy anything with
money. It became very corrupt in the 1990s.
These young people understand that they can
pay bribes and second, that the government
is less inclined to punish them for minor
kind of political crimes."
You can't unlearn knowledge; once you are
exposed to the outside world, to capitalism,
realize what money can buy, there is no going
back.
And the younger generation in North Korea,
like Joo Yang, is only getting older and wiser
to the ways of the outside world.
"People think North Korea is a socialist,
a communist state. I disagree. North Korea
is in the initial stage of capitalism."
