Slop.

The gist of the article is, the boom in vehicle ownership in North Korea is outpacing the infrastructure and systems to management it, e.g. traffic jams and parking spot scarcity.

There are some choice pure ideology moments in the article:

The boom follows changes to North Korean law that formalized private car ownership over the past two years, allowing licensed drivers to buy one vehicle per household through state-certified dealers. Owning a car is still mostly the preserve of the elite and the entrepreneurial class known as donju, analysts say.

Car ownership is simultaneously getting so pervasive that it’s causing backups and overflowing parking lots, but also it’s only the elite that can afford them (much like we were told it’s only the “elite” Chinese on Xiaohongshu).

Peter Ward, a research fellow at the Sejong Institute, a non-partisan think tank in Seoul, said North Korea’s automotive policy is part of a broader push to bring private economic activity under state control.

I’m sure the think tank in South Korea with a white dude on staff is very unbiased and neutral when it comes to North Korea.