The Soft Power of Soft Pastries
By Emily Canaday
Good news: the isolationist, ideologically-based regime of
North Korea is very slowly losing the fight against the soft-power mechanations
of the capitalist world. Workers at the Kaesong Special Economic Zone, one of
the few places where North and South Koreans are employed together, may have
actually tasted the sweetness of victory in between the two patties of a
Choco-Pie pastry- and then washed that small success down with a Coke.
The waning energy levels of the North Korean workers in this factory (possibly an exploitative one, says one commenter- we don’t know if NK workers receive the same wages as their SK brethren) prompted the bosses to begin offering pick-me-ups in the form of this popular snack cake and bottles of Coke. The looks on the faces of the workers tasting chocolate and sugar for possibly the first time was quite moving, according to this article. It’s also reported that rather than enjoying the treats themselves, workers have taken to smuggling the treats back home for their own children. On the black market that has become a staple of North Korean economics, these goodies can fetch an astounding ten dollars apiece, which bodes well for the well-being of not just workers completing a day's work, but also to their families if they are able to trade from within the regime.
While certainly a small invasion of North Korea’s Iron economic Curtain, the concept of sugary snacks coming from abroad is at odds with the propaganda which has been beefed up recently in the wake of bootleg music and video smugglings (most of which can get you executed on a charge of watching pornography, as Kim Jong Un’s supposed former-lover found out last week).
It may seem like a terribly minor development, but only when
leaks begin to appear in a dam can it be burst enough pressure.
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