SEOUL: - Public discontent is simmering in North Korea after the hardline communist regime imposed tighter restrictions on market trading in an attempt to reassert its control over the state, observers say.

Free markets sprang up after the famine years of the mid- to late 1990s, when the centralised command economy could not do its job and the state food distribution system broke down.

Their role was recognised under limited economic reforms introduced in 2002, and they became a lifeline for small traders trying to survive in the impoverished country of 23 million people.

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