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SEOUL: North Korean Premier Kim Yong-Il has apologised for a bungled currency revaluation that sent food prices soaring and sparked public unrest, a South Korean welfare group said in a newsletter.
Good Friends said the premier expressed regret for "confusion and instability" caused by wrongly fixed prices at state-run shops, during a recent meeting of senior members of the Pyongyang municipal people's committee.
The group, which has extensive contacts in the communist North, cited sources there for its report. Premier Kim is in charge of the economy under supreme leader Kim Jong-Il.
The revaluation announced November 30 involved a 100-for-one swap of old won banknotes for new currency. But restrictions on the total amount which could be changed wiped out savings in many cases.
Uncertainty and confusion sent prices soaring and worsened food shortages.
A top communist party finance official, Pak Nam-Ki, has been sacked to take the blame for the chaos, according to South Korean media reports.
The currency change was widely seen as the regime's attempt to crack down on a burgeoning free-market economy. It had also imposed progressively tougher restrictions on private street markets in recent years.
The North is now relaxing some curbs on the markets because of mounting public anger, South Korea's spy agency said last week.
Good Friends said the North's Ministry of Foreign Trade has ordered trading companies to "import food unconditionally" and illegal moneychangers arrested in mid-January have been freed.
The North had banned the use of foreign currency inside the country from New Year's Day. But Good Friends said forex transactions have resumed in some parts.
- AFP/sc
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