A U.S. expert on North Korean affairs says that North Korea’s recent currency revaluation aims to curb the expansion of the entrepreneurial class.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Marcus Noland, deputy director and senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that North Korean authorities placed a cap on the amount of their old banknotes North Korean people can exchange into the new currency.

According to Noland, the restriction makes the remaining unexchanged money useless.

He said that the North Korean government has regularly seized the capital of the private sector every ten years through a currency reform, as the government makes extensive efforts to prevent those involved in market-oriented activities from accumulating wealth beyond the control of the state.

He predicted that the North Korean government’s efforts will fail to root out market forces.