Blog
North Korea Turns to Bonds to Address Financial Distress
According to a story in DailyNK by Jang Seul Gi, the North Korean government has taken the initiative to issue government bonds; several astute analysts of the Korean economy have picked up on the story (Tom Byrne at Foreign Policy here and Benjamin Katzliff Silberstein at 38North here). As with all such stories, we need to take it with the appropriate grain of salt. Nonetheless, the particular details reported by their informants are highly plausible. The episode provides another piece of evidence that the regime is coping with significant financial distress from the combination of sanctions and the economic effects of the border closures with China as a result of COVID-19. And it is also likely to show that as in the past, this distress is going to lead to a struggle for resources between the regime and the private sector.
Disrupting Supply Chains: Evidence on the Japan-Korea Conflict
The economic success of the Asia-Pacific has rested in no small measure on its finely-tuned supply chains. These global production networks are coming under stress from the COVID-19 crisis, but also from the new political economy of trade. The U.S.-China trade war has had as one of its stated objectives a “decoupling” from China, which of necessity means reducing American dependence on Chinese suppliers.
The Report on the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee Part 2: The Economic Message
I argued yesterday that the report of the party plenum was an attempted exercise in leverage; to hold out the threat of ongoing missile and nuclear developments—and as far as the eye can see—to extract concessions. But the report also suggests that the regime’s frustration stems from the fact that sanctions are having material effect.