The OECD recently published a paper on North Korea’s economy. It is a solid and expansive summary of the changes that have taken place over the years, and effectively captures the changes in the economy. Please take a look at this excellent paper on the current state of DPRK’s economy and economic policies from an international perspective.
As many on our team work with startups and technology, we are particularly interested in how a closed network like North Korea is digitalizing and how digital life is like. Som excerpts from this report on the topic as follows:
Digitalisation is making headway in North Korea. The country’s main wireless network, Koryolink, was built by an Egyptian firm, Orascom. Smartphones have spread, even though they remain far less common than in South Korea (Figure 19), and so have USB sticks (Tudor and Pearson, 2015). According to Park Ju-Min (2019), as many as 6 million people – one quarter of the population – may have a smartphone. Notwithstanding the sanctions, North Korean-branded smartphones have been found to include Taiwanese semiconductors, Chinese batteries and a modified version of the open-source Android operating system (that tracks users’ downloads). They typically cost USD 100 to 400 for a basic model, and monthly calling plans USD13 per 100 minutes.
On a separate note, we are featured on the topic of startups and frontier entrepreneurs in Professor and venture investor Alex Lazarow’s new book “Out Innovate”, published by Harvard Business Review Press. Alex talks about entrepreneurship ecosystems around the world, and cites us as an extreme example of frontier entrepreneurship:
In some countries, founders even have to worry about success. The entrepreneurial culture needs in North Korea, for example, are completely different from those anywhere else on earth. One of the founders there, Geoffrey See, explained, “In many markets, the risks to starting a business overwhelm the dream of the potential of the business. In North Korea, paradoxically, success can also be a big risk. Entrepreneurs are worried that the business will get confiscated. Therefore, in the past, they were motivated to take cash out of it and not reinvest in growth.”