Not since a deadly famine was ravaging North Korea in 1997 has the country seen its economy contract at such a large rate as it…
Not since a deadly famine was ravaging North Korea in 1997 has the country seen its economy contract at such a large rate as it did last year. After a couple of years of growth, the country’s estimated gross domestic product went reeling in the other direction in 2017, shrinking 3.5 percent, according to South Korea’s central bank.
The Bank of Korea detailed the stark figures in a report released Friday. In the absence of reliable public information from Pyongyang, the Seoul-based bank is widely considered the region’s most knowledgeable source on the economic status of its northern neighbor — and bank leaders say the North’s nuclear ambitions and the international penalties that have resulted have done a number on that economic well-being.
«The negative growth is attributable to a drop in its mining output and a retreat in its heavy and chemical industries, as the United Nations imposed tougher sanctions over its nuclear and missile activities,» one official told South Korea’s Yonhap news agency .
Those declines appear steep in Friday’s report.
Mining production in North Korea, which relies on coal as its No. 1 export, dropped 11 percent in 2017 — a breakneck reversal from the 8.4 percent growth it had seen the year before. Production in heavy and chemical industry also dropped more than 10 percent.
The sectors of the North Korean economy have been targets of U. N. sanctions in recent years. Penalties assessed in November 2016, aimed at punishing Pyongyang for a nuclear test two months earlier, sought specifically to block its coal exports beginning in 2017. Months later, China, the North’s most important trading partner, announced it would suspend imports of North Korean coal.
