Reporting from Yanji, China — In the markets of Kilju, a city of 100,000 near North Korea’s eastern seacoast, the ruling Korean Workers’ Party has ordered the removal of Chinese-made cookies, candies and pharmaceuticals.

Even soybeans, many articles of clothing and shoes are now forbidden.

“They’re telling us that we don’t need markets and that socialism provides everything we need,” said an unemployed factory worker in her 50s, who gave her name as Lee Myong Hee. (North Koreans outside their country often give fake names because speaking to foreigners can be considered treason under North Korean law.)

Lee sneaked across the border last month into China, hoping she could make some money for her family. Thin and nervous, her body sculpted by a diet of two bowls of porridge each day, she said the party’s unbending ideology has squeezed the life out of the city’s economy.

“If they don’t give us food and clothing and we’re not allowed to buy things, how can we survive?” Lee said, tears rolling down hollowed cheeks.

The Korean Workers’ Party has banned the sale and swapping of apartments, practices that were widespread for more than a decade. The open-air markets where people do most of their buying and selling are now open only from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. The only people permitted to sell at the markets are women older than 50; everybody else is required to spend their days at their official jobs at government-run businesses.

So many Chinese goods are now taboo that markets stock only about 35% of the merchandise previously available, some say. Continued