How Kim Jong Un "Accidentally" Fixed North Korea's Economy
Oct 9, 2026 · 18 min · 9 segments
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Oct 9, 2026 · 18 min · 9 segments
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Now, with that out of the way, North Korea's economic boom is really being driven by two things.
Since 2022, Russia has become almost as exiled from global trade as North Korea itself, cut off from Western markets, suppliers, and financial systems by wave after wave of sanctions.
And it just so happens that these two pariahs share a border, a short 17-kilometer stretch of the Tumen River in North Korea's far northeast, crossed until very recently by a single aging rail bridge.
The two countries only broke ground on their first-ever road link in 2025, which says a lot about how seriously they are now taking this relationship.
Trade between the two has boomed ever since the war began because Russia has found itself very interested in something North Korea has spent the better part of 70 years hoarding: artillery shells.
Russia's war has been consuming ammunition faster than its own factories can produce it, and North Korea runs its military on the same Soviet standard calibers, which it has been mass-producing and warehousing for decades in preparation for a war that never came.
South Korean intelligence estimates that since 2023, the North has shipped somewhere in the order of 6,700 containers worth of munitions across that little rail bridge, potentially containing millions of artillery rounds.
Beyond the shells, North Korea has also been supplying the one thing Russia is running even shorter on than ammunition: people.
Now, this trade is still difficult to actually carry out for two reasons.
The first is a bit obvious.
Fighting men are not really a commodity that gets traded on international markets, not that something like that was ever going to stop either of these two governments.
The second is more practical.
Both countries have extremely limited access to the international financial system, which means they can't just wire each other money and settle their accounts like normal trading partners would.
The payment moves through a network of international banks that both sides trust to keep score.
North Korea and Russia have both been almost entirely cut out of that network, so the two countries have been forced to devolve into something closer to barter, swapping goods directly across the border instead of settling up in currency.
In exchange for its munitions and its men, North Korea has primarily been receiving food, fuel, fertilizer, and building materials, alongside, according to Western intelligence agencies, technical help with its satellite, missile, and submarine programs.
This barter arrangement has made the true size of the trade almost impossible to track.
Seoul's Institute for National Security Strategy puts North Korea's earnings at somewhere between $7.7 and $14.4 billion from late 2023 to the end of 2025, while the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses has put the cumulative total above $20 billion.
At the end of the day, exactly how many munitions Russia is receiving is literally classified military information, so on top of the sanctions both sides are already ignoring, they have a vested interest in keeping things vague.
But even if we take a conservative middle estimate of about $10 billion worth of exports since the arrangement began, that is an enormous number for this particular economy.
The Bank of Korea, which produces the most widely used outside estimates of the North Korean economy, puts the country's entire gross national income at around 32 billion US dollars a year, which is less than what Woolworths turns over in the same period.
Now, with that out of the way, North Korea's economic boom is really being driven by two things.
Since 2022, Russia has become almost as exiled from global trade as North Korea itself, cut off from Western markets, suppliers, and financial systems by wave after wave of sanctions.
And it just so happens that these two pariahs share a border, a short 17-kilometer stretch of the Tumen River in North Korea's far northeast, crossed until very recently by a single aging rail bridge.
The two countries only broke ground on their first-ever road link in 2025, which says a lot about how seriously they are now taking this relationship.
Trade between the two has boomed ever since the war began because Russia has found itself very interested in something North Korea has spent the better part of 70 years hoarding: artillery shells.
Russia's war has been consuming ammunition faster than its own factories can produce it, and North Korea runs its military on the same Soviet standard calibers, which it has been mass-producing and warehousing for decades in preparation for a war that never came.
South Korean intelligence estimates that since 2023, the North has shipped somewhere in the order of 6,700 containers worth of munitions across that little rail bridge, potentially containing millions of artillery rounds.
Beyond the shells, North Korea has also been supplying the one thing Russia is running even shorter on than ammunition: people.
Now, this trade is still difficult to actually carry out for two reasons.
The first is a bit obvious.
Fighting men are not really a commodity that gets traded on international markets, not that something like that was ever going to stop either of these two governments.
The second is more practical.
Both countries have extremely limited access to the international financial system, which means they can't just wire each other money and settle their accounts like normal trading partners would.
The payment moves through a network of international banks that both sides trust to keep score.
North Korea and Russia have both been almost entirely cut out of that network, so the two countries have been forced to devolve into something closer to barter, swapping goods directly across the border instead of settling up in currency.
In exchange for its munitions and its men, North Korea has primarily been receiving food, fuel, fertilizer, and building materials, alongside, according to Western intelligence agencies, technical help with its satellite, missile, and submarine programs.
This barter arrangement has made the true size of the trade almost impossible to track.
Seoul's Institute for National Security Strategy puts North Korea's earnings at somewhere between $7.7 and $14.4 billion from late 2023 to the end of 2025, while the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses has put the cumulative total above $20 billion.
At the end of the day, exactly how many munitions Russia is receiving is literally classified military information, so on top of the sanctions both sides are already ignoring, they have a vested interest in keeping things vague.
But even if we take a conservative middle estimate of about $10 billion worth of exports since the arrangement began, that is an enormous number for this particular economy.
The Bank of Korea, which produces the most widely used outside estimates of the North Korean economy, puts the country's entire gross national income at around 32 billion US dollars a year, which is less than what Woolworths turns over in the same period.
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