Nampo

That same satellite data tells the story.

One recent study of nighttime brightness across one hundred and seventy-eight North Korean districts found that illumination rose by an average of about twenty-six percent between early twenty twenty-two and late twenty twenty-five, but the gains were overwhelmingly concentrated in the capital and a handful of favored cities like Sinuiju, Nampo, and Wonsan.

For everybody outside those cities, very little of this resource inflow is arriving at all.

Even after two years of this supposed miracle, average income per person is still about one million, seven hundred thousand won a year, which is barely three percent of what the average South Korean earns.

I've been not just to Pyongyang, but I've been around into the countryside as well, and to, uh, the DMZ from the north that separates, uh, North and South Korea.

I've been to Kaesong, I've been to Nampo, different cities in the Pyongyang area.

I think the most striking thing when you go to visit North Korea is, at least I'll speak for myself, is that it's just incredible to realize that this is not a movie set that you're on.

This is a real country with twenty-five million people.

That same satellite data tells the story.

One recent study of nighttime brightness across 178 North Korean districts found that illumination rose by an average of about 26% between early 2022 and late 2025, but the gains were overwhelmingly concentrated in the capital and a handful of favored cities like Sinuiju, Nampo and Wonsan.

For everybody outside those cities, very little of this resource inflow is arriving at all.

Even after two years of this supposed miracle, average income per person is still about 1,700,000 won a year, which is barely 3% of what the average South Korean earns.

Now, even the pretense of secrecy is vanishing, especially after Russia and China dismantled in 2024, the UN panel monitoring sanctions enforcement.

A July report by the Citizens Alliance for North Korean Human Rights, a nonprofit based in Seoul, found that visits by large cargo ships to Nampo, North Korea's primary coal and oil terminal, had surged fivefold since 2019.

Blacklisted vessels no longer hide in the shadows.

Instead, the report said, they dock openly at Chinese terminals.