This paper tries to understand how ‘marketization’ since 1990s has transformed urban planning practices and what it implies for future urban development in North Korea. Today, North Korea experiences an enormous socio-economic change triggered by marketization, the shift from socialist planned economy to market based economy, and this change is significantly altering urban planning and development practices. Based on in-depth interviews on North Korean defectors, this paper takes a look at changes in central-local government relationship and public-private relationship in planning. First, it is found that the centralized planning system has been eroded, and local actors have gained initiative in planning. Second, the ‘informal public-private partnership’ has emerged as a new way of planning practice where bureaucrats and private actors collaborate in a formal and informal way and share profit from urban development. Last but not least, the pro-market planning practices consequently has propelled ‘post-socialist’ urban transformation causing an expansion of commercial land use and residential segregation. However, albeit all this changes, it is too early to say that this means fundamental transition toward market economy, due to the unstable character of marketization in North Korea.
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