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Yellow plates in Pyongyang are sign of North's future

Published: 28 Nov. 2025, 00:03

John Everad

The author is former British Ambassador to North Korea.

There has been a big change on the streets of Pyongyang. Numerous private cars, with their distinctive yellow number plates, have started to appear. Not long ago it was possible to stand in the middle of Pyongyang streets with no danger of being run over. No longer. Now, for the first time, Pyongyang has even experienced traffic congestion.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun reported on May 3 that Pyongyang’s Hwasong District was bustling with celebrations as residents moved into new homes. The paper said an elderly couple wept, saying that “there is no country in the world but ours that would place people like us, in the final years of life, in such a wonderful new home.” [RODONG SINMUN/NEWS1]

What has happened? In October 2024 the regime changed the law on private car ownership so that as of February this year, private individuals have been able to buy and run their own cars. There are still restrictions – cars can only be bought through state dealerships, only one car per household is permitted and these cars can only be sold on to family members. Nevertheless the new freedoms have been embraced with enthusiasm. There are already several thousand private cars on Pyongyang’s streets and many more are for sale, mostly low- to mid-range Chinese brands. Some though are listed for around US $13,000, a huge amount of money in North Korea.

A taxi car passes a traffic guard in downtown Pyongyang, North Korea, on June 30. [TASS/YONHAP]

Over the last fifteen years mobile telephones have become widespread, the availability of consumer goods – including of upmarket domestic white goods – has improved dramatically, services such as domestic maids, dog walkers, private tutors and coffee shops have spread and, in a grey area of DPRK law, something like a free market in apartments has sprung up. The arrival of private cars is therefore significant both in its own right and as a further and very visible step in this process of improving access to consumer goods and services.

These changes will have scarcely affected the great majority of North Koreans, who live at just above subsistence level and cannot afford such luxuries. But they will have improved the standard of living of two small groups of people. The first are the senior elite who have been able to acquire wealth through extorting bribes. However, the second is a class who have made money outside state structures, some through illicit cross border trade (until the borders closed during the pandemic), some through buying and selling foreign currency, some through running lucrative stalls in jangmadang (North Korea’s semi-legal private markets) and some in other ways. These activities seem to have generated a great deal of money for a limited number of people. That expensive cars are selling so fast suggests that numbers of people have come forward quickly with enough money to buy them, probably from concealed private hoards of foreign currency in cash accumulated over years.

This growth of consumerism, most recently manifested in private car ownership, is a further sign of the fragmentation of DPRK society. The central elite always have lived in a wealthy and privileged world of their own, but outside that charmed circle, until quite recently, the material aspirations even of quite senior cadres rarely ran beyond a pleasant state apartment and the relatively good food at official banquets. Their standard of living, although better than that of the great majority of North Koreans, was materially simple. But that has changed with the emergence of a moneyed class who enjoy previously unimaginable luxuries and who now flaunt their wealth in expensive restaurants and by driving their own cars. The DPRK has cast off the last shreds of any claim to equality or social solidarity. We can only guess what ordinary North Koreans, brought up from childhood in the spartan ideology of the revolution, think as they watch these cars drive by.

And the arrival of private cars is also an indicator of how far the DPRK regime has retreated politically. Exactly sixteen years ago in November 2009, the regime tried to close the markets and to destroy private savings by issuing new banknotes and declaring the old banknotes worthless. This failed when widespread protests forced the regime into an embarrassing climb-down. Now the regime has in effect recognized that it is not strong enough to suppress this class so instead of trying to confiscate their savings, it is step-by-step retreating from its ideology of total state control and giving them what they want – more consumer goods, more services. Moreover, in allowing private car ownership, it has destroyed an important symbol of rank within its own system. Until this year the only way to have access to a car was to achieve a certain rank within the DPRK hierarchy. But now senior officials who have struggled for years to climb the ranks to the level at which they can enjoy an official car have to watch as others who have never worked for the state enjoy what was once a coveted privilege. This changes things in several ways.

Firstly, until about 20 years ago, the only credible road to advancement was the government bureaucracy. But now the surest way to a better life is outside the state structures in the DPRK’s nascent and often illicit private sector. Who in such a country is going to want to work for the state? Additionally, why should those who do work for the state strive to serve the revolution rather than use their positions to enrich themselves or to ensure the political cover necessary for other members of their families to enrich themselves? The DPRK bureaucracy has long been very corrupt, but consumerism is likely to destroy what integrity it might once have held.

Secondly, consumerism, once unleashed, becomes uncontrollable. People who enjoy some luxuries quickly start to demand more. These rising demands will not stop with private cars. Before long the moneyed class is likely to start to demand to be allowed to holiday abroad. This would be a real headache for the regime. Even if it succeeds at first in limiting tourism to destinations in Russia and China, it would still have to deal with citizens who had seen things the regime would rather they had not seen.

North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported on July 2 that the Wonsan-Kalma Coastal Tourist Area, the country’s version of a resort complex, opened on July 1. [KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY/YONHAP]

Thirdly, consumerism is a ratchet. Once the regime allows its richer citizens to enjoy some luxuries it cannot take them away without risking fierce internal protest. Even if it now discovers that private car ownership causes problems – for example, citizens driving their cars to parts of the country that the regime would rather they did not visit – it would be politically dangerous to withdraw the right to buy them.

Fourthly, consumerism undermines the regime’s narrative. For as long as it can convince its citizens that their lives should be devoted to serving the revolution and protecting the dynasty, the regime can present itself as a success. But if citizens’ objectives in life change to the accumulation of wealth and the acquisition of consumer goods then the DPRK risks becoming a much poorer version of the ROK. Moreover, it is much more difficult to explain to a consumerist society why it is necessary to divert to weapons development so much wealth that could otherwise raise domestic living standards.

These are significant dangers. But now that the regime has allowed consumerism to grow there is no turning back. And it cannot know where this road might lead.