According to Yonhap:
Cross-border trade between North Korea and Russia jumped 37 percent to US$104 million in 2013 from the $76 million recorded in the previous year, according to a report by Lee Yong-hwa, a researcher at the private think tank Hyundai Research Institute.
“The North is believed to have forged deeper relations with Russia in an effort to revitalize its economy and prevent it from becoming excessively dependent on China,” Lee said in the report.
The researcher said the two countries’ economic cooperation is forecast to grow further going forward as the North’s attempts to revitalize its moribund economy coincide with Russia’s bid to develop its Far Eastern regions.
According to the report, the portion of trade between North Korea and Far Eastern Russia out of the two nations’ total trade volume surged to 23.1 percent in 2013 from the 10 percent tallied in 2009, indicating that Russia’s Far East development policies have added to the overall bilateral trade expansion.
The socialist country has also tightened relations with Russia in other business areas including transportation and logistics as well as in the energy industry, the report added.
China was the biggest trading partner for North Korea last year with their bilateral trade volume reaching $6.54 billion, according to data from the Korea International Trade Association (KITA).
But trade between the two Koreas fell to its lowest level in eight years in 2013 due to their strained relations. Inter-Korean trade reached $1.15 billion last year, down a whopping 41.9 percent from the previous year’s $1.98 billion, the data showed.
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Russia-N. Korea economic ties expanding: report
Yonhap
2014-7-3
