Introduction

In 2016, after holding its 7th Party Congress, North Korea began ‘speed battles’ (200-Day and 70-Day Battle) while also attempting to stimulate their economy in an artificial and heavy-handed manner. These policy efforts resulted in a small improvement to North Korea’s growth rate, and also somewhat reduced the economic impacts of international sanctions.

However, the situation began to change drastically in the beginning of 2017. This was because international sanctions no longer recognized ‘livelihood purpose exceptions’ for North Korea’s main export, coal, and instead imposed total upper limits. These measures resulted in the North Korean economy beginning to show signs of being directly affected. With North Korea beginning to feel the economic effects of international sanctions, the country had no choice but to focus their policies for 2017 around responding to sanctions.

As such, this paper will focus on examining UN Security Council resolution 2321 (November 30, 2016), which began to actually impact the North Korean economy in 2017, and resolution 2375 (September 11, 2017), which is expected to impact the North Korean economy in 2018.2 This is because the responses to Security Council resolution 2321 are mostly linked to the policy trends for 2017, while Security Council resolution 2375 can be seen as being related to the policy outlook for 2018. First, the main details and economic effects of the sanctions will be examined, then North Korea’s responses to them will be analyzed.

* This article is part of 2017 The DPRK Economic Outlook

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