Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of six sectoral studies on the North Korean economy conducted under the common topic of ‘assessing the North Korean economy in 2017 and its outlook for 2018’.1 More specifically, this paper aims to consolidate the contents of these individual studies into a common narrative framework to facilitate the readers’ understanding of the North Korean economy. In other words, this paper sets out to bring together the different pictures drawn by the sectoral studies to build a one all-encompassing and comprehensive image of the North Korean economy.

This task can be either very simple or complex and difficult depending on the views set forth by the studies on hand. If their views are in harmonious agreement, the task is quite straight-forward, but if they are in conflict or contradict one another, it is not so simple. Thus, the practical job of this paper is to conceptually deconstruct these six sectoral studies and extract the basic trends they draw explicitly or implicitly concerning the North Korean economy in 2017 and 2018, then, based on this extraction, to identify the common denominators. At the same time, should the trends presented by the studies are not in agreement, it will be upon this paper to find a way to reconcile the different views and create a single coherent picture.

* This article is part of 2017 The DPRK Economic Outlook

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