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Andrei Lankov

North Korea's foreign trade

Recent economic sanctions created serious problems with exports of minerals from North Korea. Technically UN member countries are banned from importing North Korea minerals even though in practice it remains to be seen to what extent this ban will be observed by China. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the share of minerals of North Korea exports currently close to 60% will drop soon. The North Korean foreign trade managers will have no choice but to look for different ways to earn foreign currency.

2016-07-24 17:06

Recent UN sanctions that have put so much emphasis on mineral exports from North Korea have unavoidably attracted much attention to exports of North Korean coal to China. Indeed, coal shipments to China which were almost unnoticeable as late as 2000, currently constitute roughly 40% of all North Korean exports as reconstructed through the statistics of North Korea’s trade partners (actual share is liable to be somewhat lower, since not all North Korean trade deals are counted). Because prices have been falling on international markets, the share of exports also began to slide in recent years...

2016-07-10 17:12

Communist countries loved their railways. Compared with market economies of roughly similar size, the communist bloc countries paid much more attention to their railway networks, often at the expense of motorways and other means of transportation.

2016-06-26 17:18

China and NK: back to square one

For a brief while, South Korean diplomats were in a rather celebratory mood: it looked like China, for a change, had joined the ROK and the U.S. in their efforts to subject North Korea to the toughest sanctions ever. Indeed, in early March the Chinese representative in the U.N. Security Council voted for Resolution 2270 which introduced such measures, and for a while the united front looked like a reality.

2016-06-12 17:02

Sanctions working? Not yet...

On the March 5, the U.N. Security Council introduced new sanctions targeting North Korea. Although they have some loopholes, they are much tougher than any previous sanctions. They might be the first sanctions to create real economic trouble in North Korea. The question is, will they?

2016-05-29 17:25

Workers' Party Congress: much ado about (almost) nothing?

For a few months, North Korea watchers and media have been actively discussing the then-coming Seventh Congress of the Korean Workers' Party. It was not uncommon to hear that this Congress would become a major turning point, where Kim Jong-un would declare dramatic policy changes and perhaps embark on a wave of radical social and economic reforms. However, nothing like that happened. The Seventh Congress turned out to be what such pompous events have usually been - a boring exercise in self-congratulation, full of eulogies to the Kim Family, but little of any lasting substance.

2016-05-15 17:23

The Parks, a Pyongyang success story

Ms. Park (not her real name) was born in the late 1960s and by birthright she belongs to the North Korean aristocracy. All her grandparents were, to some degree, involved in the anti-Japanese guerilla resistance, and one of them even had close personal connections to Kim Il-sung in his early days fighting the Japanese in the wilderness of Manchuria. Ms. Park's father was a high-level official, for security reasons we cannot go into much detail, but suffice it to say, he was in the top 1,000 (probably top 500) bureaucrats in the country.

2016-05-01 17:10

NK's founding father, Kim Il-sung

On the 15th of April, North Korea had lavish celebrations for Kim Il Sung’s birthday, officially known as “Day of the Sun”. These celebrations can be seen as an embodiment of the personality cult going mad, but one should not think that all this official pomp is completely fake. For many North Koreans the founding father of their state is, indeed, a person worthy of respect. It is not incidental that polls confirm that the late Generalissimo and Sun of the Nation still enjoys much support among his former subjects and even among defectors.

2016-04-17 17:08

North Korea's lords of coal

Resolution 2270, which the U.N. Security Council adopted on March 2, introduced many restrictions on the export of North Korean coal. Admittedly, the resolution is also equipped with several remarkably large loopholes that mean that exports can continue come what may. It is nonetheless interesting that this news produced much in the way of noise about the threat it poses to top policy makers in Pyongyang and the tonju (literally “lords of money”).

2016-04-03 17:06

China holds keys to N. Korea's future

On March 2, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that introduces new sanctions against North Korea. Resolution 2270 is by no means the first document of this kind: every new nuclear test resulted in yet another U.N. resolution and set of sanctions.

2016-03-20 17:31

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