[topspin]

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.