From the Associated Press and Yonhap:
North Korea’s trade volume with foreign countries, excluding South Korea, rose marginally last year to reach its highest figure since 1991. Trade is up 5% to $3 billion. The figure doesn’t include inter-Korean trade, which is considered “exchanges between the same ethnic group,” KOTRA said.
The [southern] Bank of Korea claims the DPRK’s economy has grown for six straight years. Modest economic reforms since 2002 have encouraged some private enterprise, allowing the limited emergence of an entrepreneurial class with money to spend on imported goods.
North Korea recorded a trade deficit of $1 billion last year, up 23%. Imports increased 9.1 percent to $2 billion, but exports fell 2.1 percent to $998 million, the agency said.
The trade agency attributed the drop in exports to plummeting overseas shipments of fisheries goods, one of the North’s key exports, and a 20% annual decrease in shipments to Japan.
The North’s imports grew on rising inbound shipments of energy-related natural resources as well as food from China. The neighboring nation’s increasing investments in the North also triggered a rise in machinery imports into the country, the agency said.
The rankings of the DPRKs trading partners remains unchanged: 1. China, 2. Thailand, 3. Japan and 4. Russia
CHINA: Trade with China is up 14% from 2004 at $1.58 billion, 52.6% of North Korea’s total exports and imports last year. Two-thirds of that trade was made up of North Korean imports, which grew 35.2% to $1.08 billion, much of it food and energy.
“North Korea has to depend on China for most of its food and energy resources,” KOTRA said. “China has also been rapidly increasing its investment in North Korea in recent years, which leads to an additional boost to the amount of trade between the two countries.”
JAPAN: Imports and exports between North Korea and Japan fell 23% to $194 million in 2005–the fourth straight year of decline since Pyongyang acknowledged abducting Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s.
South Korea: Trade between the two Koreas reached an all-time high of $1.05 billion in 2005, boosted by commercial activity at a joint industrial complex in North Korea, KOTRA said. Including trade with South Korea, the North’s trade volume stood at $4.06 billion last year, with trade between the two Koreas accounting for 26% of the total, it said.
