Hacker News Reader

Comment by blhack | Hacker News Reader

Whoa. At 2:59 on [2] (https://youtu.be/FtDWYzwwuUs?t=179), it looks like that camera is 100,000 won? Thats $111 according to google.

Any idea what's up with that? Am I interpreting the price wrong?

View on HN

This video also caught my attention. The camera looks like a Canon EOS 600D and its priced at about 100,000 Korean Won. According to the XE Currency Converter, that is about USD765 [1] compared to USD400 at Amazon [2]. Looks like capitalism is alive and well in the heartland of Juche-ism.

[1]- http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=100000&F...

[2]- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-18-55mm-3-5-5-6-discontinued-...

Actually, Google is quoting the official rate.. but the official rate is basically impossible to convert at. You'd need to convert at the black market rate, which is supposedly about 8,000 north korean Won to $1. If it's actually priced in North Korean Won, that would make it $12? I think we're missing something.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/05/north-korean-e...

https://www.nknews.org/2015/04/north-korea-the-most-expensiv...

In the USSR there was a chain of stores ("Березка" - "Birch tree") where imported goods were sold for restricted currency. The currency was denominated in "rubles" but could only be obtained in exchange for a hard currency. The rate of the exchange has been arbitrary and the prices were too. The whole system had been set up to incentivize citizens who earned foreign currency (sailors, touring artists, diplomatic corps etc) to give it to the government. Giving it to the government had been mandatory, of course, but if they got nothing in return (or something as useless as regular rubles) they would be trying harder to hide their earnings. I'd imagine something like that could be going on here. It's hard to imagine an imported camera being offered for sale to regular citizens.

More on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryozka

We had something similar here (former Czechoslovakia, Tuzex shops) and probably in most of the other socialist countries (eg. Poland, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex).

The only way to pay in these stores was to use special cheques. These were obtainable only in exchange for "western money", typically US Dollars, British Pounds, or German Marks.

And of course, there was a black market for them, with prices going as much as five times their nominal value (80s in Czechoslovakia, don't know about Poland and others, but I imagine it was quite similar).

It might be for the elite, or it might be literal window dressing; they did build an amusement park that appears to be largely for show after all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com