In recent years, North Korea's main partners have been SINO, Vietnam, Argentina, Nigeria and the Netherlands. Excluding the proportion is as high as 967% of the largest ** partner SINO, accounting for 1% of the second largest partner Vietnam, the rest of the countries with the DPRK combined for only 23%。Last year, North Korea's foreign quota was 15856.1 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 1223%。And this is closely related to the long-term sanctions imposed by the United Nations, and more than two decades ago, Japan's position in North Korea's foreign trade should not be underestimated. Thailand, India, Germany, and even Singapore, Russia, and Bangladesh are all on the list. Now because of all kinds of sanctions, they are afraid of it, and basically all of them have disappeared, but North Korea is also a window and a testing field, and you can see that the will of the United States can determine how many people who look kind and kind suddenly turn their faces and deny people. Thailand, Germany, India, and even Russia, which did not turn its other face with the West, are all like this, and of course, at this time and then, the relationship between Russia and North Korea has warmed up again, which is a later story.
This year's data has not yet been counted, but it is an obvious fact that Russia's leading position will be re-elevated, because North Korea's light and heavy industries began to transport 155 artillery shells and military caps and military quilts of poor quality but in large quantities through the railway bridge at the mouth of the Tumen River to Rostov and the Ukrainian front along the Trans-Siberian Railway. According to some Western sources, Pyongyang has also helped some SINO companies re-export drones and navigation equipment to Moscow. North Koreans actually have a very realistic demand for Russia, that is, oil, gas and food, of course, satellite launch and ballistic missile technology, a large part of which North Korea now has, is also the technology after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In terms of product types, North Korea's main export of minerals, especially anthracite, soared several times in 2010, but later with the implementation of measures such as the United Nations imposing an export ceiling on North Korea, banning the export of textiles and importing condensate and natural gas, North Korea's mineral exports took the lead again. But in 2002, North Korea mainly exports animal products, but this is not mainly livestock, but seafood, the reason is very simple, the things in the sea do not need to be raised, and the pigs, cattle and sheep on the land, have to be fed with grain, at least red lettuce, North Korea itself is not enough to eat, how can it be fed to pigs and cattle?Although you don't need any fish feed to go to sea, there are not many steam fishing boats that burn coal, and of course there are still many steam trucks on land. To put it bluntly, these fishing boats need to compete with the army's tanks, armored vehicles, and missile launch sites for oil and gas, so they can't do it, don't want it.
This has also been proven in recent years. Last year, North Korea's mineral exports were $44.58 million, a surge of 7,281 percent. Iron and steel, mineral fuels and mineral oils, which were the most exported in 2021, continued to rank in the upper reaches of the export category list last year. Refined feathers or feather products, glass and glass products soared year-on-year respectively. The largest import categories are still mineral fuels and mineral oils such as **, refined oil, etc., with an import value of 5200 million US dollars, accounting for 36% of total importsThat's as much as 4%. Following last year, plastic products, rubber products, and cigarettes continue to rank among the top imports.
Japan and South Korea also opened some textile factories in Kaesong and other places in a restricted manner, but a large part of the labor income from part-time jobs was deducted, which is not to say that Japan and South Korea have any good intentions, but DPRK is really not flattering for sparing no effort to obtain foreign exchange. Later, textiles were sanctioned, including several bans on the Kaesong Industrial Complex, and they were basically paralyzed, after all, in South Korea, Kim Dae-jung has few such **, and Lee Myung-bak, Park Geun-hye and Yoon Suk-yeol have the most.
As for imports, you can imagine them without looking at them: mechanical and electrical products, energy (natural gas and petrochemicals), and rice, corn and wheat in the famine years.
North Korea's foreign trade is different in nature from other economies, and its role and status are also different, because under the planned economy model, there can be no internal systemic investment without an external capital import process, after all, in the planned economy, there will be no automatic investment in society, but must rely entirely on top-down blood transfusion. So once this income is lost, or even reduced, it will lead to an internal recession. In the past, "Cuban sugar" and other things had the same meaning, and sino used to be like this, exporting canned pork and vegetables to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, such as the Hefei Meat Factory, and establishing factories for the export of fishery products along the coast, such as the Shell Craft Products Factory in Beihai, Guangzhou. For a market economy, a recession is certainly not good for the economy, but it does not necessarily lead to a collapse, but for an economy like the DPRK, it is simply a sure thing. If there's no one on the outside to hold them up, then they're all completely doomed.