An American expert on North Korea says a growing number of people in the impoverished state are depending on informal markets to make up for shortages of food and other necessities.

Stephen Linton, chairman of the Eugene Bell Foundation, told an audience in Washington Tuesday that the communist government turns a blind eye to many practices that are inconsistent with Pyongyang's state-controlled economy.

He said people from various socioeconomic groups, including farmers, factory workers and government officials, increasingly benefit from these unauthorized markets. These markets, he said, thrive especially along the border with China, North Korea's closest ally.

Abraham Kim, vice president of the Washington-based Korea Economic Institute, told VOA he had seen the same thing on a visit to North Korea last month.

Kim said the government appears to be a contradiction between the markets and the government's strict state control of the economy. But he said officials tolerate the situation because the markets are making needed food and consumer goods available to the public.

Linton said that by filling gaps in the supply system that the government cannot, the informal markets are helping the repressive regime to remain in power. But he said he had not seen any evidence in his many humanitarian visits to North Korea that the chronic shortages of food and other goods are leading to unrest.

Kim said some of the markets are as simple as a farmer sitting by a roadside selling cooked potatoes from his nearby field. Others are hidden away on side streets in the capital and have a range of consumer goods brought in by Chinese merchants.

He said the markets even handle perishable goods such as bananas, indicating the supply system is able to function fairly quickly and efficiently.