By: Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein
South Korea’s Bank of Korea (BOK) recently published its GDP estimates for North Korea in 2021. Overall, their estimates (the faults and flaws of which are many) are consistent with the general impression that last year wasn’t great for North Korea, but also relatively stabile. An estimated GDP decrease of 0.1 percent in 2021, after all, is a whole lot less than the contraction estimated by BOK for 2020, minus 4.5 percent.
Agriculture (including forestry and fisheries) is, interestingly, estimated to have grown by 6.2 percent. Such precise numbers are rather pointless in estimates like this. Nonetheless, the direction seems to confirm assessments by the World Food Program and others that agricultural production last year performed somewhat better than the years before.