I don't know about the economy at large, but this will certainly be more than an inconvenience to many of the Kim family's wealthy and influential friends.
This is borderline off-topic, maybe a bit naive even, but I can't help but ask as I'm genuinely curious and don't know.
What do the 'wealthy' look like in NK? Is there an upper class of non-relatives and, if so, via what means -- government ties (business or personal)? What do they do on a daily basis, for work, fun, etc? It just seems to isolated, and perhaps that's my internet adoration speaking -- but is there a class of wealth in NK, what does it look like, how does it come to be?
And I'm honestly curious: if there is a wealthy class, what do they do for fun/enjoyment/entertainment purposes -- and how will this impact that?
I was watching a portion of Michael Malice with Joe Rogan[0]. Michael wrote "Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il". He actually mentions the upper class in NK.
It's over 2 and a half hours long, but I like Rogan's interviews they go by pretty fast.
In East Bloc under Russian occupation the privileged class (party officials, high ranking bureaucrats, top of military command, security service/interior ministry, government run company directors etc) had access to special chain of shops full of western goods with special prices, additionally they were rewarded with cars/flats/homes/summer cabins at substantial discounts, automatically skipped all queues/lists/quotas, used special government owned hospitals/hotels/resorts for free, not to mention had get out of jail unless you murder someone important card, the list goes on and on.
I think it will. The regime gets much of the hard currency it needs to run the 'gift economy' from foreign operations.
These companies also form an excellent mechanism to maintain control. Many of them are labor providers; young NK men are conscripted to do logging in Siberia, gold mining in China and other such work. Their wages are sent back to Room 39 and any accumulation of despondent young men is eliminated.