8 incredible facts about North Korea's economy

North Korea is one of the most secret nations in the world.

The dictatorship of 25 million people has been ruled by the Kim dynasty for more than 70 years.

The North Korean economy is struggling for its isolation policy, but the exact extremes of the country's difficulties are not known as no detailed data is provided.

We know that this is a nation in which a middle class worker takes home less than $ 2,000 a year, a large proportion of the population is malnourished, and citizens have to pay over $ 17,000 to leave the country.

Here are eight surprising facts about North Korea's economy:

Over 40% of citizens are undernourished

Since 2000, the percentage of malnourished North Koreans has risen from 37.5% to 43.4% in 2018, according to the Global Hunger Index.

However, the proportion of undernourished children aged less than five years has decreased over the same period of time.

According to this metric, North Korea is not the most malnourished nation in the world - it ranks 109th out of 199.

But the situation was severe after the famine in the 1990s, when up to 2 million people died.

Almost no one uses the Internet in North Korea

North Korea seriously restricts access to the Internet for its citizens.

There is a secure internet server in the country, but even 1% of the population can not get it.

Instead, citizens are forced to use a state-controlled internal network called Kwangmyong alone. The service is free (if you can afford a computer) but only allows access to a selected list of censored websites.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the only North Koreans who can use the Internet freely as we are are political leaders and their families, students in elite universities and people working for cyber troops in the country.

Vox reported that Kwangmyong "implements basic e-mail and browser tools that are limited to a hand-picked collection of" sites "that are copied and censored by the real internet."

It is possible to have trillions of dollars in minerals under North Korea

North Korea probably sits on a wealth of mineral deposits, with a study reaching nearly $ 10 trillion, according to Quartz.

Deposits can include more than 200 types of minerals, including iron, gold, zinc, copper and graphite. Also, there are very rare metals used in the manufacture of smartphones in China and South Korea.

Forecasts of mineral value come largely from South Korean companies, although Quartz notes that North Korea manages its mines inefficiently, and private mining is illegal in the Communist country.

Former leader Kim Jong-il spent $ 800,000 a year on Hennessy

At one time, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has spent over $ 800,000 a year on Hennessy, according to US News & World Report.

Cognac distiller even announced that for two years in the mid-1990s, Kim was Hennessy's largest buyer in the world, The Wall Street Journal reported.

One Hennessy bottle can be sold for $ 630 in North Korea, which is not much less than the country's average annual income, estimated at between $ 1,000 and $ 2,000.

In North Korea, there are two economies and two prices for everything

As a communist nation there is a state economy and an underground economy.

That's why there's two prices for everything, said Bil Brown, a professor at Georgetown University, told Marketplace last year. A state worker could only get a fraction of what another would get in China.

Textile worker in a state-owned enterprise in Pyongyang can make up to 3,000 North Korean wool a month, Brown said, while the same worker could do 100 times more by working in a Chinese factory. It's a "very destabilizing, ineffective system," he said.

North Korean hackers have denied over $ 670 million in foreign and digital currency

Though few people find their way to the Internet in North Korea, more than $ 670 million dollars and cryptoLight have been stolen by North Korean hackers, according to a UN Security Council report.

Big thefts made by hackers include $ 81 million from Bangladesh's central bank, $ 13.5 million from Cosmos Bank in India, and $ 10 million from Chile's bank's ATM network.

North Korea makes $ 50 million a year of illegal activity

And not just hacking. It is believed that the North Korean government is making $ 50 million a year from illegal activities such as drug sales and counterfeit US currency.

North Korea denied the claim but did not provide official economic statistics, making it difficult to determine the truth. The UN suggests that the illegal means has helped Kim's wasteful life.

It costs over $ 12,000 to escape from North Korea

Running out can cost a fortune and it's getting harder to quit after Kim Jong-un in power in 2011.

Defectors must pay brokers nearly $ 12,000 to leave the country. Others put the price at about $ 17,000. Just for comparison, the price for this enjoyment was only $ 45 in 2000.

As citizens make less than 2,000 per year, the only realistic option is that a family member has already escaped from outside.

But the most common method of leaving the country is by crossing the river that marks the border with China. However, increased border authorities make this exercise very, very difficult.

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