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SEOUL — Shops selling human excrement began operating in North Korea this year, as acute shortages of fertilizer in the sanctions-wracked country put a price on feces, an analyst said Tuesday.

Aid groups have said human waste has long been used on domestic crops in the impoverished communist state, but there is now a trade in the readily available commodity, a North Korea analyst told a seminar at a South Korean university.

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“Each household used to use human excrement as fertilizer. But because it’s hard to keep up with the amount, ‘human manure’ shops showed up at markets,” Kim Young-Soo, a professor at Seoul’s Sogang University, told the seminar.The lack of fertilizer has become acute since South Korea stopped annual shipments of rice and fertilizer to North Korea in 2008, amid worsening relations.

Kim also said other Products making their way on to a limited must-have list for North Koreans this year included skinny jeans, after a ban on fashionable trousers was lifted.