Kang began trading goods like rice, metals and petroleum to generate an income well beyond what she could have expected from state-sanctioned employment.
She wanted to join the women who had taken up illicit market activities, first to survive the “ Arduous March” (as the famine years of the mid-1990s were known), then to build better lives for themselves and their families outside the tight controls of the government. Kang* was 20 years old when she left her official job as a potato researcher in North Korea.