The High Price of Hacking

There is little doubt that President Barack Obama meant business when he said the U.S. would respond to North Korea's hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment computers. It’s unclear whether or not Monday’s shutdown of the North Korean Internet was part of that response. Regardless, Kim Jong Un’s regime may soon have cause to regret its assault on Hollywood.

Little known to the outside world, Kim has, in the past year, quietly embarked on a path of Chinese-style liberalizing reforms, one that his father Kim Jong Il had been reluctant to tread. In agriculture, some partially private farming has begun. In industry, a spate of changes has given state-appointed factory managers the freedom to hire and fire, buy supplies and sell finished goods on the market. Unofficial but surprisingly powerful, the private economy in North Korea is no longer harassed by the authorities.