Hablando de cambio de moneda

El régimen de Corea del Norte lo hace cada tantos años con el objetivo de confiscar los ahorros de la gente de a pie, que por lo general se originan en el mercado negro:

Until recently, people were managing to outwit the police, keeping whatever was banned under the table, or moving their wares before an inspection. But that changed in late 2009, when the Workers’ Party pulled out its heavy artillery. On November 30, the party announced that it would invalidate all of the currency in circulation and issue new bills. The ostensible reason was to prevent inflation by knocking off two zeroes from the won, which was trading at the time at 3,500 to the U.S. dollar, in order to “strengthen the national currency and stabilize the circulation of money,” an official of the Workers’ Party explained. In fact it was a trick. The North Korean regime wanted to confiscate the cash that had been accumulated by people working in the market. The rules limited people to trading no more than 100,000 won for the new currency, which meant that nobody would have more than about $30 to their name.

The North Korean regime had pulled this same currency stunt five times before, most recently in 1992, but this time people who’d been working at the markets had accumulated some savings, so what existed of a nascent middle class was wiped out overnight.

(Viene de acá)