PANMUNJOM, SOUTH KOREA - DECEMBER 02: North Korean soldiers walk to participate in the repatriation ceremony for a North Korean army sergeant at the Panmunjom on December 2, 2009 in South Korea. South Korean Navy vessels rescued a North Korean army sergeant from a small boat in the Korean west sea. The United Nations Command Military Armistice Commission and members of the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission interviewed the soldier. During these interview the North Korean soldier answered questions about this rescue and subsequent care by United Nation Command, and he also expressed his desire to be repatriated to the North Korea.
The revaluation implemented Monday has sparked fury and frustration as some citizens saw much of their savings wiped out, according to reports and observers.
They said the North had tightened security against possible agitation, with a curfew reportedly imposed in a border region and shops closed across the country during the changeover period to a new currency, which ends Sunday.
Military authorities have strengthened vigilance and are monitoring people's movements to forestall unrest, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, citing North Korean merchants in China.
Media reports and embassies in Pyongyang said people had been given a week to exchange money at the rate of 100 old won for one new won -- but the total they can change is heavily restricted.
Reports said authorities initially limited the total sum that an individual can exchange for new currency to 100,000 won. The limit was later raised to 150,000 won in cash and 300,000 won in bank savings.
DailyNK, an online newspaper with informants in the North, said the rule has now been changed a second time.
It said the exchange rate is still 100:1 for the first 100,000 old won. But people can now change the rest of their money at a rate of 1,000:1.
The official exchange rate for the old currency was 135 to the dollar but the black market rate was between 2,000 and 3,000.
Analysts said the move, still not announced by official media, appears aimed at clamping down on burgeoning free markets in an attempt to reassert the regime's control.
"This move is part of Pyongyang's broader effort to curtail the rise of market activities and the development of pathways to wealth -- and potentially power -- beyond state control," Marcus Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics wrote in the Asian Wall Street Journal.
South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said North Koreans are publicly voicing their anger despite the increased presence of security agents on the streets.
"There are accounts of people loudly cursing the government in the markets in major cities," it said.
Prices of goods have soared but it is still unclear whether authorities will cut prices to match the new currency, the daily said.
The regime has already taken steps to curb free street markets. These sprang up after the national food distribution system collapsed during famines in the 1990s, but are now seen as threatening the state's grip.
"Residents are lamenting bitterly that this was the disaster they were talking about when people mentioned that this is the year of disaster," Kim Keun-Soo, a fruit trader in the northern border city of Sinuiju, told Good Friends.
The Seoul welfare group has extensive contacts in the North.
"I would not complain about it if they provided food rations. Nothing can stop people after starving for three days. I get depressed when I think of the bleak future."
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