A communist utopia, the professed goal of all Leninist regimes, is incompatible with a monetary economy or commercial activities of any kind. Hence, the gradual displacement of commerce is seen as an important part of the transition to full-fl edged communism. However, no communist state has ever been able to eradicate private economic activities completely and despite their persistent efforts, all Leninist regimes have had to tolerate the existence of a “second economy.” In North Korea this “second economy” was originally treated with unusual harshness. The economic collapse of the 1990s, however, was marked by a powerful revival of the “second economy” and a boom in private commercial activities, known to the North Koreans as changsa (the literal translation is “dealings in the marketplace”). While comprehensive statistics on market activities in North Korea are not available (and perhaps do not exist at all), one is now able to obtain a wealth of information about this sector from North Korean defectors in South Korea. This article traces the changes as experienced by a group who were directly involved in market activity in the late 1990s. The authors have conducted in-depth interviews with North Korean defectors who now reside in Seoul. All interviewees can be described as fullor part-time market vendors whilst in North Korea. The unstructured interviews have allowed us to concentrate on issues with which a particular interviewee may be most familiar. However, refugee interviews can be biased, as Jung and Dalton have recently noted.1 Hence, this paper uses other material to corroborate the interviewees’ data—largely publications in the South Korean press. To protect the refugees’ identities, we refer to them using only their numbers. Some relevant information in regard to our interviewees is summarized in the following table.