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But what is often overlooked is the role of the North Koreans themselves, especially those who developed an entrepreneurial spirit after the dark days of the 1990s, when the Soviet Union and its socialist satellites crumbled and natural disasters and bureaucratic inefficiency meant that survival literally often meant learning how to fend for oneself.

Right now, though, it’s a road with a hodgepodge of opportunities to fend for oneself in all kinds of wilderness.

One has to fend for oneself, out there; earn one's dinner before one eats it, never quite sure of the week after next.