The black markets have since flourished beyond North Korea's capital Pyongyang and dot the country. It's in this environment of marketization that North Korea's younger generation is taking shape. Adults ages 18 to 35—roughly 25 percent of the population of nearly 25 million—were born in the '80s and '90s. Most never received food rations and have no warm memories of a stable regime. They're more individualistic than their parents. And like American millennials, more young North Koreans aren't waiting for the government or institutions to bail them out. They're engineering their own survival. They're tagging along with adults and learning how to peddle goods in the black markets, a kind of North Korean hustle.

As more young North Koreans are shaped by how to make money, they're also coming of age amid unprecedented access to technology and foreign media. Tech hardware and information are making their way through the porous, 880-mile border between North Korea and China. This wasn't happening a decade ago. Foreign DVDs and data-filled USB thumb drives can be found discreetly through the black markets. Such activities are prohibited by the regime and much more dangerous than accessing clothes and food. But as in any closed society, sheer will finds a way. Family and friends huddle to watch foreign media. North Korean fishermen listen to South Korean weather reports on shortwave radios. And while adults may listen to outside information yet still feel reverence for the Kim dynasty, more millennials don't necessarily share their parents' attitude, at least not with the same zeal. Raised in a stumbling economy that propelled them into market activities, more young adults are growing savvy about both making money and the outside world.

It's a big leap to imagine young adults using new-found knowledge and market savvy to construct a revolution. North Koreans in droves aren't plotting to overthrow the regime or flee the country. Escapees entering South Korea—after a roundabout journey through China and Southeast Asia—have actually declined more than 40 percent in recent years, suggesting Kim is cracking down on border security.

But younger North Koreans are helping to make grassroots market changes a permanent part of the economy. The black markets are too big and entrenched for the government to shut down. And as ordinary citizens scrape together a living, outside information is stirring intoxicating feelings about what's possible. "The leadership in North Korea knows what's going on among its domestic citizens, especially the younger generation," said Jieun Baek, who traveled to North Korea in 2013. As part of a closely watched tour group, curious North Koreans asked her about America and the outside world. She offered her makeup and bottle of Motrin as gifts. "You can't unlearn citizens' knowledge of the outside world," said Baek, a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.