North Korea, which is embroiled in a diplomatic standoff over its nuclear arms program, recently devalued its currency as part of a fresh push for economic reforms, a Japanese newspaper said yesterday.
The report follows this week's comments by a senior South Korean official, who said that North Korea seems committed to economic reforms.
The famine-stricken communist dictatorship had launched some reforms in July last year in what appeared to be the first major changes to the centralized, closed system in half a century.
North Korea this summer began exchanging the won using an official rate of about 900 won to the US dollar, down sharply from a rate of 150 won fixed after a devaluation last year, and also switched to floating exchange rates, the Asahi Shimbun said.
New currency exchange offices have been set up in various areas of the capital Pyongyang and are manned by central bank personnel, the Asahi said in a story from Beijing quoting a source knowledgeable about North Korea.
Diplomats in Pyongyang had said in August last year that North Korea had devalued the won to 150 per dollar from around 2.15 per dollar as part of a series of reforms designed to introduce more market driven prices.
North Korea decided on the latest steps due to a widening disparity between official and black market rates, Asahi said.
South Korea's Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said on Tuesday that after sending hundreds of North Koreans to China and Europe in recent years to learn about free markets, Pyongyang is now dispatching delegations to Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam.
"This is clear evidence that North Korea is really interested in economic reform and that they have decided to pursue economic reform," he told the Korea Society in New York.
Despite such signs of change, however, international concerns over North Korea have been growing due to its nuclear ambitions.
North Korea said on Friday it had successfully finished reprocessing some 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods in June and had switched technology to enhance its use of plutonium extracted from the rods for possible atomic weapons.
The United States, China, Russia, South Korea and Japan are seeking to draw North Korea back to the negotiating table for more talks on ending its nuclear program.
There was an inconclusive first round of talks in Beijing in August.
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