There is just so much going on in terms of public anger and unrest in North Korea over the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009 that it is simply too hard for me to keep up on this site. All I can do is recommend that people read One Free Korea, the Daily NK, and the links on their sites for the latest stories.

But when something particularly important catches my eye, I do try to highlight it. This story, for example, from The Daily NK is talking about ongoing "fighting in the streets," highlighting reports of citizens ambushing security forces tasked with cracking down on the markets that the average Cho, who has now lost his/her savings, needs in order to survive.

In particular, this paragraph caught my attention:

The source concluded, “Traders and residents have lost their property due to the redenomination and are pretty much being treated as criminals as a result of the NSA and PSA’s ‘50-Day Battle.’ Therefore, people are taking revenge on agents, since they feel so desperate that, regardless of their actions, they will die. As a result, social unrest is becoming more serious.” [emphasis mine]

That sounds eerily like I predicted in the Obliteration post linked in the first paragraph. It sounds an awful lot like the tipping point I described:

To me, the tipping point for revolution in North Korea is when a critical mass of people in the DPRK realize that they are more likely to die if they do nothing than if they try to do something. That critical mass is hard to reach, though, because the fear of the authorities imprisoning or wiping out your entire family based on your actions as an individual complicates the calculus of that tipping point of death: You have to figure out at what point your entire set of loved ones are more likely to die if you do nothing than if you do something, and that gets into far murkier math. ...

But the currency revaluation may have revalued the death tipping point calculus as well, and I wonder if this one event may be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back, a catalyst that changes the game for so many people in such detrimental ways — and at the beginning of winter to boot — that the tipping point of death becomes more clearly in sight. [emphasis in original]

I've said it so many times since the end of last year that I'm starting to sound like a broken record: I think we're witnessing the beginning of the end. Things have happened in North Korea that even an oppressive state apparatus cannot quash or suppress. In fact, the more they try, the likelier it would be that they fail, for in the current situation it brings them closer to the tipping point.

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